Why:
I don’t think I ever actually bought a copy of Metal Hammer, but I used to stand and read it in WH Smith’s.
I’d done the same with home computer magazines six years earlier.
Then, it was all about tips for games. The Hobbit. Valhalla.
Now it was all about picking up mythology from the written word.
We all knew Aerosmith from Run DMC’s Walk This Way (I have a 7” single of this – given to me around this time by a school friend), but I’d taken it a bit further.
In the revision period leading up to my GCSEs I’d bought both the 1980 Greatest Hits and the 1978 Live Bootleg double album.
Toys and Rocks followed in short order
I loved them both.
Still do.
And then of course there’d been Permanent Vacation.
I never owned it on vinyl, but Rag Doll, Dude and Angel were often on the radio rock shows. Dude was even on TV.
I had a tape of it, with Whitesnake’s Saints and Sinners on the flip.
I remember a lunchtime by the river with a friend’s stereo and Permanent Vacation. Smoking cigarettes.
The days out of school to smoke dope started coming about a year later.
Aerosmith will always sound like summer to me.
And then there was the release of Pump.
I bought it from the local record shop on the day of release.
Honestly?
It wasn’t what I’d expected.
Some great songs, but Dulcimer Stomp? Hoodoo Medicine Man?
I still think FINE is a great song. And I honestly enjoyed Elevator. Jamie’s Got a Gun once made me cry.
On the inner sleeve of the record it says that F.I.N.E stands for “Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.”
Obviously, it refers to the girl(s) in the song.
But it wasn’t obvious to me.
I thought it was something to aspire to. “One day” I thought, “one day…”
Metal Hammer was worked up about the 1989 tour dates.
Because apparently the band hadn’t toured outside America since the late 70s.
They hadn’t played the UK since Reading in 1977.
Everyone was excited.
Steve and Joe had come onstage at the end of Bon Jovi’s Milton Keynes bowl show earlier that year to play Walk This Way and announce their return.
It was one of the most exciting things I’d seen in my life.
And now Metal Hammer had published a list of all the songs they wanted Aerosmith to play for their UK dates.
It was a list of every song they had ever recorded.
In order.
Obviously we went.
The support band was the Quireboys.
In those pre-internet days I had no idea that their whole “look at us we’re boozy, it’s a bar on stage and we have piano” schtick was basically stolen from the Faces.
I remember Spike, the singer, working the crowd.
“Who wants to come to a party?
YEAH!
“A really good party!”
YEAH!
“A…. SEX PARTY!”
YEAH!
It’s nearly 30 years later and I’ve still never knowingly been to what you could call a sex party.
At 16 I’d maybe awkwardly kissed three or four girls. All while drunk, though maybe not as drunk as them.
When they finally came on, Aerosmith weren’t the band from Live Bootleg.
But they came on to Rats in the Cellar which was thrilling, and both Sweet Emotion and Walk This Way were played.
I walked home from the station to my parents late, the main road was empty.
I walked in the road. Ears ringing.
I felt FINE.
High: Sweet Emotion
Drinking: Someone may have tried to get a pint. And they may have managed to get served. It wasn’t me.
Thinking: what *exactly* goes on at a sex party anyway?
Setlist on setlist.fm
My Old Gig Tickets 