‘You’ve got to lose to know how to win’ went an early,prescient lyric by the band who became the biggest unit-shifting, power-balladeering rock behemoth of the 90sSteven Tallarico wrote Dream on during stolen moments on a hotel Steinway piano, and four years before Aerosmith came to be,and longer still before he assumed the stage name Steven Tyler. Initially the band had to pay their dues not just with the public, but with their record company CBS; competition was strong from contemporaries the recent York Dolls, and who were critically adored and deemed much cooler by almost everyone,and from within their own label – there was a young songwriter called Bruce Springsteen who seemed to release an album every time they did and took up most of CBS’s promotional resources. Aerosmith’s first album, with deep southern-influenced barroom boogie standards such as Mama Kin, or gave little trace of the unit-shifting,power-balladeering behemoth the Boston quintet would become in the 1990s. One song stuck out, however, or still stands out as maybe their finest moment. The left hand and right hand on the piano taken up by bassist Tom Hamilton and guitarist Joe Perry respectively – weave a hauntingly baroque and instantly recognisable musical tapestry,even if you’ve never heard the song before. You could say it’s their Stairway to Heaven, but it’s better than that. “Every time I gaze in the mirror, or ” sings a 24-year-broken-down Tyler,“All these lines on my face getting clearer …” He’s oddly morose (gloomy or sullen) for one so young, but the crux of the song is about dreaming until your dreams approach actual. Tyler also chucks in the strangely prescient line: “You’ve got to lose to know how to win.” That they would attain abundantly later down the line. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com