Rock In A Hard Place

Veteran Boston rockers Aerosmith have been plying their distinctive brand of raunchy, bluesy hard rock since 1970, clocking up literally thousands of shows around the globe, but until now, they'd only ever been to Australia once, as part of 1990's Pump Tour. They were on top of the world back then, the tour's titular 1989 album, Pump, having topped the album charts in Australia on the back of omnipresent radio staples Love In An Elevator and Janie's Got A Gun.

These days they may not have the chart currency they once had, but there are still plenty of Aerosmith disciples primed for a walk down memory lane, and even though they have a new album, Music From Another Dimension!, in their arsenal, it's the cherished hits and favourites that the icons are preparing to deliver.

“I think the way we've seen our fanbase from the different generations around the world react in terms of what they want to hear, there's going to be a few hardcore fans that are going to want to hear some of the new stuff, but mostly it's going to be the classics,” guitarist Joe Perry reveals of their plans. “Using the internet we've been able to track what people want to hear, and also just having toured South America and Japan, a lot of the interest has been in the stuff from the '80s and '90s, and we're certainly happy to play that because that includes some of our favourite songs. And we'll slip a few of the new ones in as well. [Our fans] tell us what they want to hear so we spend a while before each show working out what we're going to play that night.”

Key to the notoriously rambunctious band's success has been the chemistry between The Toxic Twins – Perry and frontman Steve Tyler – who despite their lifelong friendship have lived an incredibly tumultuous relationship. Perry famously quit the band for a few years in the early '80s due to Tyler's hedonism, and even as recently as a couple of years back they went through a very public feud about Tyler's decision to become a judge on reality TV show American Idol, the band even going as far as calling auditions for a new frontman. But all is now well in Camp Aerosmith, and Perry puts the band's longevity down to a learned understanding of their different personalities.

“I think it's been that we're kind of late bloomers – we started off just wanting to be a great live rock band, and we knew that becoming recording artists was a whole different animal, and it took a few albums to learn how to deal with that,” he reflects. “And then it was about figuring out just what it was that we were doing right and which got us to the top by the end of the '70s – that was the first phase.

“Then it was learning about how to deal with each other on a personal level – that was the main thing, not taking this whole thing personally. It's a family, that's what it was and is, and we learned how to deal with that after our break in 1980 when I left and Brad [Whitford – guitar] left. We took some time off from each other and realised that it's really just about the music, and we're all going to go off and have different lives – have wives, have kids, have families – and learn how to deal with that stuff and still keep our band together and hold on to that excitement. And that's what we did, and we just keep doing that day by day.”

Aerosmith will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 20 April - Stone Music Festival, ANZ Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park NSW
Sunday 28 April - Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne VIC
Wednesday May 1 - Entertainment Centre, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 4 May - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne VIC