Aerosmith - Greatest Hits.

Aerosmith
Greatest Hits
(UMC)
by Paul Davies
            This Greatest Hits package ransacks the celebrated back catalogue of Aerosmith’s 50-year career arc. In doing so, it begins by showcasing, to full effect, the delinquent, sleazy rock’n’roll addicts who knocked out a classic run of early yearly albums. Their self-titled debut album heralded in Get Your Wings, Toys In The Attic, Rocks and Draw The Line. The two-year wait for 79’s Night In The Ruts broke this regular release pattern as they continued to set the dirty-glam American rock bar high. Maybe too high as band members were brought down and wasted asunder with the ensuing lifestyle success and the nefarious demands it created. Firstly, Joe Perry then fellow guitarist Brad Whitford's exit led to a very worthy guitar replacement in Jimmy Crespo – there’s nothing included from the decent Rock In A Hard Place album - who more than helped to hold together the faltering voyage of a band nose-diving into oblivion.

            It was the eventual return of the Perry/Whitford axis that pivoted Aerosmith into stonewall hit-makers of anthemic pop-metal tunes. 1987's Permanent Vacation particularly consolidated this new musical blueprint, and this judicially selected Greatest Hits set of songs covers these bases and quite a bit more. As the original Walk This Way invites the long in the tooth and those still cutting them- the Run DMC collaboration version is also included - fans to travel back in time and retrace their early memories as debut album live stalwart Mama Kin revs up into Dream On then Lord Of The Thighs. From this auspicious start, things swiftly move up a few gears before hitting overdrive across these multiple-format releases.

            There's something for every pocket from a single CD and LP primer to a Three CD/Four LP, and Super Deluxe Edition presented in book-style sleeves containing many visual treasures, immersion into Aerosmith’s rock craft and career trajectory. From initial recordings to a rapid Stateside rise on the rock’n’roll rollercoaster to spectacularly crashing back down to earth in an early to mid-career mess, this carefully abridged collection details Aerosmith’s unlikely resurrection. It’s the unlikely tale of the return of a cleaned-up band as Joe Perry and Steve Tyler led these American rockers to break into foreign territories; something they largely eschewed in their first decade together. From following their idols to becoming a cornerstone of the rock establishment, selling over 150 million albums, these releases chronicle the survivalist nature of, arguably, the greatest of extant American rock’n’roll institutions.