Friday 22 May 2015
Ask your average person on the street about Aerosmith nowadays and the tunes they’ll name are the same as those of most reading this - Walk This Way, Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing, Cryin’, Crazy… all known from their late 80s and early 90s MTV music video heyday. But back in the 70s Aerosmith weren’t quite the coiffed TV ready rock stars you believe them to be, they were a down and dirty rock n’ roll band from Boston fuelled by alcohol, sex and death-defying amounts of cocaine.
In 1978 Aerosmith were on the verge of imploding under the weight of various band members' shared addictions. These habits coupled with tensions within the group meant the band were turning in increasingly sloppy performances and playing smaller and smaller venues.
Chip Away The Stone was originally released as a live recording on their Live! Bootleg in 1978 around the time everything was collapsing and very shortly before Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, the band's guitarists, left the group for a couple of years. The studio version of this track didn’t see the light of day until 10 years later on the compilation album Gems, but it’s the slightly cleaner alternate version below the Pandora’s Box boxset which is the best in my opinion.
Chip Away The Stone was originally released as a live recording on their Live! Bootleg in 1978 around the time everything was collapsing and very shortly before Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, the band's guitarists, left the group for a couple of years. The studio version of this track didn’t see the light of day until 10 years later on the compilation album Gems, but it’s the slightly cleaner alternate version below the Pandora’s Box boxset which is the best in my opinion.
Steven Tyler’s lyrics, as usual, conjure a short film inside your head around the slightly questionable story of wearing down a girl until she's so fed up she'll go out with you. Put like that it doesn’t have much class, but this song absolutely rocks with the help of a halftime verse groove laid down by the band and some great guitar interplay between Joe Perry and Brad Whitford building to a chaotic climax call and response vocal. I’d recommend throwing this on when you’re getting ready to go out tonight and having yourself a pre-game Appletons and coke.
Well you stand like a marble statue
Trying to look so hard
All decked out in your antique dress
While the boys all promenade
Even a rock will crumble
If you strike it night and day
If hammer I must, I'm gonna get through your crust
