Album #7 Rock in a Hard Place (1982) – Off Spotify as usually
Track list
1."Jailbait" Steven Tyler, Jimmy Crespo 4:38
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"Lightning Strikes" Tyler, Crespo, Richard Supa 4:26
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"Bitch's Brew" Tyler, Crespo 4:14
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"Bolivian Ragamuffin" Tyler, Crespo 3:32
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"Cry Me a River" Arthur Hamilton 4:06
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"Prelude to Joanie" Tyler 1:21
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"Joanie's Butterfly" Tyler, Crespo, Jack Douglas 5:35
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"Rock in a Hard Place (Cheshire Cat)" Tyler, Crespo, Douglas 4:46
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"Jig Is Up" Tyler, Crespo 3:10
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"Push Comes to Shove" Tyler 4:28
Length 40:16
Before we get into this one, I’d just like to mention that I’m only covering the studio albums in this portion of the retrospective. I’ll probably go back and cover the live stuff along with the “spinoff” albums done by the band members side projects. I should have mentioned this on the Ruts review but accidently gapped it out. I haven’t forgotten Live! Bootleg, I just won’t be doing it quite yet.
Background –With Joe Perry gone off to do his own thing, this is the only Aerosmith album where he was not involved. Brad Whitford stuck around until 1981, but the slow progress on this album and the still constant drug use, tension, and other problems caused him to walk out and start his own duo with Ted Nugent singer Derek St. Holmes (who sang Cat Scratch Fever and other early Nugent classics). Brad would also play with the Joe Perry Project during this time. Joey Kramer almost left as well before this album started production, as Joe had asked him to drum for the project. Joey decided to stick with Aerosmith at the last minute. Before Rock in a Hard Place started production, Joey attempted to start his own band called Renegade with Jimmy Crespo, Tom Hamilton, his friend Bobby Mayo (who had played with Peter Frampton), and singer Marge Raymond, who had been in Flame. They had started recording an album (which the websites for Jimmy Crespo and Marge Raymond talk up like a lost classic) and even got a record deal before Steven decided to start work on this album. Not sure if the Renegade album was finished and shelved or left incomplete. Either way it would be amazing if that album eventually saw the light of day. As for Rock in a Hard Place there was a lot of drugs and a lot of wasted time. Eventually Jack Douglas was brought back to finish the record, which had become severely delayed and ended up costing 1.5 million dollars, which I think makes it one of the most expensive records from that time. It was slow, arduous, drug fueled, a giant money sink, saw band members leave to replaced by other ones, and didn’t include the band’s famous lead guitarist, who was off doing better things. Yeah, this is the Chinese Democracy of the 1980s. But does that make the album bad? (Note: If this album is remembered at all it’s remembered as “The one with Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay”, though that’s not entirely accurate, Rick Dufay is credited but doesn’t play on the album. He wouldn’t play on an Aerosmith song until their cover of “Shakey Ground” off of Music From another Dimension.)
Cover Art – Yeah, it’s very Spinal Tap. According to Brad, Steven didn’t find the Spinal Tap movie funny when it came out, maybe he was peeved about the whole Stonehenge thing. Thought this does mark the first use of the now iconic Aerosmith logo on an album. I really like the logo with the triangle surrounding it. If the cover had been this variant of the log with the blue on the album as a solid background, I think it would look very good. A bold way to debut a then new logo for a new version of the band. As it stands the Stonehenge cover is not great, not bad, just okay and a little weird. The “rock” visual pun is pretty lame. If they had at least picked a different angle of Stonehenge this would be much better.
Onto the Music!
Before I start going down track by track I have to say that this was a very weird experience finally listening to this album and I’m struggling to find words describing it. I’ll give it my best try…
Jailbait – Well at least they started out rocking! The band sounds much more energized than on Ruts and the recording quality in the music industry had definitely gone up between the late 70s and early 80s. It’s a weird, new style, but here it works and gets you excited to hear what comes next, as a good intro should. You can hear the backbone of Aerosmith in this, but things have certainly changed.
Lightning Strikes – Best song on the album! Start with a strange, spacey intro from what I can only assume is a synthesizer before guitars wail, the drums build, and the gritty hard rock starts coming through. A song about violent gang fights and the danger of the streets, Steven uses a threatening and dark voice that perfectly complements the theme. The drums pop and thump along, like fists connecting with bodies. There’s an edge here that was missing from all of Ruts, and it’s a treat to hear the band simultaneously get back to their roots and try something entirely new. This is the only song that Brad play on, providing a hard rhythm that perfectly complements Jimmy’s lead. It’s a shame, Jimmy could clearly rock and does some great solos. The two clearly had chemistry, maybe if the recording situation had been better, we could have seen the birth of a new Aerosmith that went off in a new direction with this lineup. Instead this song serves as a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been. This song also got the first ever Aerosmith music video, which must be seen. Joey has very bushy facial hair that makes him loom like later day Jim Morrison and Steven nails the leather clad street punk look which was all the rage in the 80s. It’s quite the ride, if a bit cheesy, but every Aerosmith fan should watch it to see a very strange version of the band. I probably won’t mention videos much due to wanting to stick to the music, but I had to mention this one. My only gripe with this song is the bass is a little lost in the mix (it’s not the only song with this problem). A lightning strike closes the track and this shifty street detour gives way to a host of bizarre creations…
Bitch’s Brew – Beginning with an odd “falling” acoustic intro, Steven screams and the dirty electric guitar comes in. I can’t help but feel something is missing from this song, it’s a very strange rocker with a nice breakdown in the middle, but I think some guitar interplay is what causes the lacking sound. I believe Jimmy is doing this one alone and that hurts the song, though he’s trying very hard. There’s a portion after the instrumental break where a voice comes back in to do the bridge and I have no idea if it’s Steven. I assume it’s him because no one else is credited with doing vocals, but man, he NEVER sounded like that before or after this. It’s at 2:47 on the Spotify track if you want to listen to it. It almost sounds like Bon Jovi or some other 80s contemporary I can’t name at the moment. Jarring to say the least.
Cry Me a River – Probably the most “normal” song on the album, stashed right in the middle of all the weird stuff. Steven shows off his bluesy voice, but not like off of Aerosmith, he’s got a much more confident style here and he nails the sadness of the blues. The instruments are very blues based but rocked up a little. This one really has that “80s sound” on it, must be something about the recording environment and equipment they used. Maybe this could have been a hit power ballad if it was rearranged a little, but then the smooth blues would have been lost. Not like their other 80s ballads, a sad yet fun blues rock number that has been lost to time. A shame, they were onto something.
Prelude to Joanie/Joanie’s Butterfly – These are two separate tracks but there’s no point in separating them here. The prelude is mostly just transcendental background singing with a “Robot” voice speaking almost incomprehensible whatever about Joanie and the butterfly that’s coming. I have no idea what they put Steven’s voice through to get that effect. The song proper is one of the most unique in the band’s history. It starts as a folky acoustic song that leads to a psychedelic hard rock with what sounds like sitar, bongos, and I can’t really tell what the hell else. There’s this thing that make this weird sort of bubble sound at about 4:21. You know in the 60s there was a lot of use of instrumentation borrowed from Indian musical styles? Yeah, this track has that, making it the must pure Psychedelic song they’ve ever done. Other song would dabble with the genre a little as previously noted, but this is full on psychedelic mixed with hard rock. A trip of a song and one that should be experienced, but I don’t think I’ll come back to it anytime soon. Not my thing.
Rock in a Hard Place (Cheshire Cat) – “Butterfly” fades out and this fades in. This song is marked by very hard symbol hits throughout it’s run time and I can’t help but think it’s a little jazzy. Jimmy co-wrote a lot of songs with Steven and I’m not sure if Jimmy is inherently a similar musician to Joe or if Steven really wanted him to be Joe, because this one really sounds like a Joe song with a slightly different guitar style. Had I not known this was from this album, I probably wouldn’t have noticed Joe isn’t the one playing, it’s that similar. Yet you can still tell the band is in dire straights even with this reminder of better times. It tries to get going, being a decent enough rocker, but it just ends with little fanfare or lasting impact. Though the angry cat meow near the end is at the very least an attempt to add something different. It’s only been maybe 25 or 20 minutes since I heard this and already, I can’t remember anything about it. If I didn’t take notes while listening I’d have nothing to say.
Jig is Up – Very deep intro on this one followed by what I think is a very high guitar with a strange tuning? As I said previously, I’m a drummer so the finer workings of the guitar are lost on me. This is Tom’s best bass work on the whole album, deep and groovy. Honestly this sounds more like a jam that was recreated in the studio and given lyrics, crazy ones at that. Steven never wrote anything quite like he did on this album. Jimmy gets a good solo in at the end, the guy has talent, but he never got a chance to truly show it off. We’re left with a few scattered moments of his great work on this album and this song.
Push Comes to Shove – Ho boy, this is a weird one. Again, this one is bluesy, with piano, harmonica and a nice low sound. This song is marked by the highs and lows in Steven’s voice. He goes from the shrill high he did on “You See Me Crying” to a very low and odd vocalization I don’t think he ever did again. It almost sounds like…Louis Armstrong? It’s either supposed to be that or Fat Albert. This song meanders all over the place, firmly rooted in the blues but simultaneously going completely off the rails to the sound of screaming harmonicas. The lyrics are also insane and hard to make out, something about “Me and the boys!” (how timely given the current hot meme!) and I think a sexual encounter with an aging woman…? Though I did catch one gem of a line, “Candle of youth burning low”. Damn, that’s good stuff right there. Even when high out of his mind and at a career low, Steven can still pull out some good stuff. The end of this sounds like being stranded in a boat with nowhere to go surrounded by blues artists slowly losing cohesion. Something tells me this would be an indie rock classic if it was revised and released today by some hipster band. I guess I would consider that a good thing. Then the track ends with the sound a loony bin barroom with smashing glasses and mumbled crowd noise, like they were playing some crappy dive bar. I guess that’s close to accurate for this period. Honestly, I had to throw in the towel after this one. The ride this album took me on was something else, haven’t experienced anything quite like it. I turned on “Rocky Mountain Way” to bring me back down as I’d been wanting to hear that all day. You know if that’s what’s bringing you back down to earth you’ve been on some weird ass odyssey.
Final Thoughts - …I can’t put this album into words. It’s bizarre, uneven, yet still has some unjustly forgotten gems and an edge that Ruts completely lacked. It doesn’t have a classic like the cover of “Remember (Walking in the Sand)”, but at least the rocking on this one was done right and overall this strange beast is better than what came immediately before. It could have been so much worse given the production. I won’t come back to this one for a while, but I highly recommend you listen to it. Not because of its overall quality (though it is not bad, a little underrated if anything) but because this is a freakshow of an album that everyone should hear at least once. If you’re into the weird side of music and you’re willing to roll the dice on a band that should have by all means died about 2 years before, you might just find a new favorite in this one. What a ride.
Previous Retrospectives
#4 Rocks
#1 Aerosmith
Submitted June 14, 2019 at 06:05AM by Ice-Tiger http://bit.ly/31wuq1H
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