Published on Nov 30, 1997
By all rights, Aerosmith was dead in 1983. The band had suffered
the loss of key members Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, and the drug
use and abuse of a decade had finally taken its toll on everyone
involved. After the dismal failure of
Night In The Ruts and
Rock In A Hard Place, even Columbia Records had given up on
the band.
But no sooner could you say “comeback of the millenium” than
guitarist Perry and lead singer Steven Tyler got the drug monkeys
off their backs, and the five founding members of Aerosmith
reunited to give it one more shot. Enter Geffen Records and
producer Ted Templeman (who had been influential in Van Halen’s
early days) – and in 1985, the comeback began with
Done With Mirrors.
Why this album isn’t viewed in the same light as
Permanent Vacation,
Toys In The Attic or
Nine Lives I’ll never understand, ’cause simply put, this
album kicks ass. Aerosmith are out to prove that they weathered the
storm that almost cost them their careers and lives – and came
through it all even stronger.
Kicking it off with “Let The Music Do The Talking” (originally
done by the Joe Perry Project after his departure from Aerosmith in
1979), the band shows off the form they hadn’t displayed since
Rocks or
Draw The Line. The slide guitar on this one is incredibly
tasty, and Tyler is in fine form vocally.
But this isn’t the strongest performance on
Done With Mirrors – in fact, I have a hard time deciding
which is the best song on the album (recently released as a “budget
line” title by Geffen). Is it the shuffle-boogie of “My Fist Your
Face” (c’mon, how can you
not love a song with a title like that?), or is it the
syncopated build-up of “The Reason A Dog”? Is it the balls-out
approach taken on “The Hop,” or is it the noodlings off of two
chords that are used creatively on “Shame On You”?
Fact is, there’s not a weak moment on this entire album – though
I’ll concede the bonus track “Darkness,” as ambitious as it was for
Aerosmith, is the one that seems the least Aerosmith-format.
‘Course, that whole format went out the window with the success of
ballads like “Angel” and “Janie’s Got A Gun”.
So why didn’t
Done With Mirrors succeed in the big picture? Maybe it was
because this album was the least cock-rock that I ever remember
Aerosmith being – there’s not a whole lot of singing about getting
parallel here. Maybe it was because people didn’t think a band that
had come so close to self-destruction could be capable of putting
out high quality material again. Maybe it was because the musical
tides had changed. (If this was the case, the band’s guesting on
Run-DMC’s cover of “Walk This Way” helped them out more than they
ever thought it would.)
No matter what the reason that this album didn’t top the charts
was,
Done With Mirrors is a damn fine record, and one that
deserves to be re-discovered by everyone. Long-time Aerosmith fans
who haven’t dusted this one off in a while will be shocked to hear
how solid of a work it is, while newer fans will probably think
that the band never missed a beat on first listen. (The only
complaint – I sure hope that Geffen put all the type-setting back
to the correct style – it’s really hard reading a mirror image of
everything.)