Published on Mar 18, 2004
By 1982, Aerosmith shouldn’t have even existed. Founding members
Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had packed their respective guitars and
jumped ship following the disappointing
Night In The Ruts album back in 1979. The substance abuse of
various members of the band is now the stuff of legend. Yet in
1982, Aerosmith regrouped with the help of new guitarists Jimmy
Crespo and Rick Dufay for the album
Rock In A Hard Place.
To say that the end result was a letdown would qualify for
understatement of the year. Featuring a band who sounded completely
worn down and uninspired, this disc easily qualifies as Aerosmith’s
worst release, and probably should never have even been
attempted.
The fault does not lie with the new guitarists, though. Granted,
neither Crespo nor Dufay have the kind of crunch that Perry and
Whitford had, and they don’t sound like their styles completely
mesh with what Aerosmith was known for. But they came into a
situation akin to trying to board the Titanic just after it hit the
iceberg — you know the ship is sinking, but you’re there bailing
water to the best of your ability.
In fact, it’s rather hard to really pinpoint the fault with
Rock In A Hard Place, since there seems to be enough blame
to go around. In one corner, you have some of the most pitiful
songwriting to ever come out of Aerosmith’s camp. Tracks like
“Bitch’s Brew,” “Joanie’s Butterfly” (why does something tell me
this isn’t about some pet insect?) and “Bolivian Ragamuffin” all
feel like third-generation cast-offs, scraped from the bottom of
the songwriting barrel just to release an album. In another corner,
vocalist Steven Tyler really sounds bored with the whole process,
contributing less than satisfactory vocals on tracks like
“Jailbait,” “Jig Is Up” and — undoubtedly one of the most painful
songs I’ve ever had to listen to — “Cry Me A River.”
A third aspect of blame would have to come from whoever put
Tyler and crew up to doing this album — and, frankly, I don’t
quite know who that would be. It’s hard to say that
Rock In A Hard Place was trying to capitalize on the
Aerosmith name, especially seeing that the band had been on a
downward slope since
Draw The Line in 1978, and that this was Aerosmith’s first
album in three years. It might have been an answer to Whitford and
Perry’s new bands, almost as if to say that Aerosmith could exist
without them. Let’s just say that nobody in this equation got the
upper hand, as The Joe Perry Project and Whitford/St. Holmes are
both long-forgotten footnotes in the annals of rock history.
Despite having three-fifths of the original band, the sad fact
is that this is just not Aerosmith, and
Rock In A Hard Place only serves to stain the band’s name.
Had this been released under a different moniker, it still would
stink, but at least it would stink on its own. Instead, it almost
served as a painful last chapter in the saga of Aerosmith — that
is, until they somehow got a second chance at commercial life.