Not only did Toys In The Attic fly up to No.11 in the US after its spring 1975 release, Sweet Emotion also crashed the Top 40, issued as a single with another Hamilton/Tyler co-write, Uncle Salty. I loved it, although I didn’t understand half of the lyrics.”
When we got our tape and I heard Sweet Emotion, I freaked out. That’s Steven’s idea – the intro riff turned into a monster, basically. “At the end of the song it gets really heavy. I’m a huge Led Zeppelin and Who freak, so I’m a sucker for a rock song that starts out with a quiet, dreamy, shadowy beginning and then bursts into some huge thing. That whole intro, and the way Joe plays on it, is something I’ve always loved. “Joe and Brad learnt the parts I’d written, and expanded on them. Not until later do you think: ‘Oh my god, that came out fucking unbelievably’. We didn’t know the magnitude of it until later. The best songs start out as little tidbits. As for the others, it was, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool’, or whatever. “We had all the basic tracks down for the other songs, and Jack Douglas, the producer, said: ‘You’ve got an extra day booked. We felt that we were growing into the studio we were really progressing. It was one of the peak experiences of my time in the band. Returning to the Record Plant, they “did all the material that had already been put together for Toys In The Attic.
Maybe I’m just a self-doubting kind of person.” Again, for months and months, I was the only one who ever heard the song. I really loved the funky energy of the bass playing on that record, and I guess I was trying to do my version of it. One was Jeff Beck’s Rough And Ready album. That I came up with because when we all lived together, back before we ever had a record contract, there were certain records we listened to in our apartment. By now Hamilton had added to his Sweet Emotion bass riff: “There’s a part after each verse, where the band kinda jams out for so many bars. What he should be proud of is that it's one of the only tunes to use a voice-box that's still heard regularly on the radio today.Released in 1974, Get Your Wings stalled at No.74 in the US chart, but by then Aerosmith were already at work on songs for their third album, which became the superstar-making Toys In The Attic. I just need to keep coming up with my own passwords to get in there."īassist Tom Hamilton says of his part in the song's inception during the recording of Toys In The Attic: "We had an extra day at the end… this one made it at the last minute. And if that's they way he chooses to let me in, that's fine. Tyler says of his turbulent relationship with the guitarist: "To this day, he wears a load of armor, but the music was always the saving grace. Much of the anger in the song was directed to Perry's then-wife. The band's first two albums went gold, as well. Such insolence made for major success with "Sweet Emotion." Tyler's angry swagger helped push the song, as well as the Toys In The Attic album, to platinum status. Where the band did bear resemblance to the Stones was in its surly attitude, particularly Tyler and ever-aloof lead guitarist Joe Perry. But there was a lot more to us than that." That's all those beanbags wrote about us. And Tyler is not one to forget: "The critics saw the lips, and they thought Mick. Lead singer Steven Tyler's ample lips, more often than not, were the foundation of the Mick Jagger jibes. Since day one, Aerosmith has suffered critics' claims that the band was nothing more than second-rate Rolling Stones imitators. Joe Perry–lead, rhythm, slide and acoustic guitars Steven Tyler–vocal, keyboards, harmonica, percussion Recorded: February 1975, at the Record Plant, New York City