2007.09.DD - Harp Magazine - How Aerosmith’s Rocks Changed My Life (Slash)

How Aerosmith’s Rocks Changed My Life

By Slash

Artist: Aerosmith
Album Date/Title: 1976, Rocks
Standouts: “Back in the Saddle,” “Nobody’s Fault,” “Rats in the Cellar,” “Sick As a Dog”
Fun Fact: According to RIAA stats, the fourth Aerosmith LP was one of the first albums to ship platinum.

Alright, it was Aerosmith’s Rocks, and I first heard it when I was about 14 years old. I used to race BMX bikes and the older guys put it on, and it just grabbed me—Fuck, this is bad. I only got to hear it for like a second the first time. The second time I heard it was—there was this girl that used to hang around a certain group of friends, and she was probably the best-looking girl in school and in the neighborhood, and she’d just broken up with her boyfriend. I tried desperately to pick this girl up for the longest time, and finally she invited me up to her house.

I was aspiring to get in this girl’s pants, more or less, so I go up to her room, and she’s got tapestries on the wall and incense and pot, her stereo—a typical teenage-girl’s room at the time. She put on some records; we listened to Zeppelin; we listened to Yes; and then finally she put this record on that I recognized immediately from like the first fuckin’ note.

It was Rocks. I must’ve listened to this record in that girl’s—her name was Lori—bedroom probably a half-dozen times, from front to back, over and over again, and I completely ignored her. The whole purpose of my being there completely went out the window. Finally I think she said, “I think it’s time for you to go.” And I was like, “Okay, see ya.” I got on my bike and I took off and she never spoke to me again.

But that record spoke to me in such a way—it was like it embodied everything that I was about, and I had just never heard it put to music. It was raw, it was nasty, it was really rhythmic, it was very sort of drugged out, fuckin’ all over the place and [there was] this sort of angst in Steve Tyler’s voice. It was the perfect fuckin’ hard rock teenage record… like what punk rock was for everybody else at the time. It was the most aggressive, sleazy, guitar-driven, you know… not angry record, but like pissed-off party music.

I was sold. And not too long after that, I picked up the guitar and off I went.

Interview by Randy Harward

https://web.archive.org/web/20071008231253/http://harpmagazine.com/articles/detail.cfm?article_id=6172