AEROSMITH - Rocks

Three years after their debut record, entitled simply Aerosmith, two years after trying to consolidate their style with Get Your Wings (1974) and just one year after the seminal Toys in the Attic, Aerosmith found the right dosage to create this album, Rocks. With a dirtier sound than the previous materials, more psychedelic and more melodic than Led Zeppelin, aided by the same skillful producer, James Brown and by the blues rock of The Yardbirds, increasingly caught up in drugs, Aerosmith managed to put together their most important record in the 70s after Toys in the Attic.

Eleven years before Guns N'Roses launched their incredible Appetite for Destruction (1987) and 15 years before Nirvana brought forth the grunge madness of the 90s, with their Nevermind (1991), Rocks was being launched, one of the most influential hard rock albums and at the same time one of the most important records in the band’s career. Why did I choose these two examples, Appetite for Destruction (1987) - Guns N'Roses and Nevermind (1991) - Nirvana? Well, probably, if it weren’t for Rocks, there would have been no Guns N'Roses (Slash, Duff Mckgan, Axl Rose, Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin were strongly influence by the style of the "Bad Boys from Boston") and Kurt Kobain and Nirvana would not have shaken the rock scene of the 90s, same as James Hetfield probably would not have been so interest go grab a guitar and found Metallica, in other words, rock would have been infinitely poorer.

If I were to compare this record to a book or a book adaptation movie (depending on what you prefer), the first inevitable example is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. The state of mind and the atmosphere created by Steven Tyler & co. are an excellent description of the American music phenomenon in the 70s: equally dominated by a desire for innovation but lightened or blurred (as the case may be) by more or less controlled experiments with substances used by a whole generation for recreational purposes. In other words, Rocks is one of the records that stand witness of the musical peak of a generation.

H. Nota: 10