“MeltDown” is an amazing Aerosmith song left out of the Get a Grip sessions, getting to the very end of the production process, this is a properly called outtake. Written by Steven Tyler in 1992 and produced by Bruce Fairbairn, the song has been revisited by the band several times and keeps being mentioned in interviews.
It start slowly with ambient sounds followed by a Tom Hamilton bass solo intro that sounds dark and misterious. The chorus sounds like a GAG era rock/pop section, and includes a double bridge with an extended instrumental jam. It features Joe’s slide guitar, Steven on flute and nasty drums from the Kramedog.
Verses are mixed as being half spoken (with a sort of double layered vocal FX octaves lower), and half screamed-singed. The whole verse is played in Em with an added horror-movie-like sounding piano.
The bridge is amazing, is very powerful and there’s some screaming, and you can feel the “pain of mother earth been killed by man”. After the bridge, the song comes to an apparent ends but, as it fades out, the drums come back in and a sort of outro kicks in, guitar chords and drums played along with some slide guitar and random sounds, and one point Steven plays some flout, and then sings some soft vocal sounds, ala the end of “Fallen Angels” that mix well with the song giving it a feel of a sort of ancient Indian ritual. As Steven start screaming the drums speed up the song goes on to a Joe Perry solo and the song ends with a repetition of the bridge and chorus.
This song could be a perfect fit for a movie soundtrack. It was reworked during the 2006-2007 sessions, and then yet again during 2009-2011 – even with Steven and Joey confirming that the band was revisiting the song during an interview in WZLX on June 2, 2009 (9 songs completed in total by then) – hence coming close to being included in Music from Another Dimension (2012), and it even made a small live came in Japan in the Tokyo Dome on 28/11/2011.
It was mentioned again in 2015 by Tom Hamilton in an interview with The Morning Call:
Do you guys have stuff in the vaults that you might one day go back and think about releasing some of these vintage and classic shows maybe?
HAMILTON: “You know, it’s funny. We have a pretty much an album’s worth of that that I think has just been gradually posted over the last 20 years on the Internet. It has some gems of some songs that we were really looking forward to using in some of our great songs. They had a really good one called ‘Meltdown,’ and a really great one called ‘Diamond Dance Romance.’ Some nice ethereal stuff. Over the years it just wound up getting … People were making an extra copy for themselves at the studio. Now you can find it online.”
A version of the demo was compiled/reconstructed by fans using different bits and pieces of samples leaked over the years including 2 different studio versions, and 2 recordings of the demo being played over the phone from an online vendor, SLCD, with a copy of a CD of Aerosmith’s “Unreleased Tracks” selling for $500 and claiming that the CD had been provided by an ex-Geffen executive of the era during 2008.
The CD has since been sold, quiet possibly to Aerosmith’s management of the time, as it was discussed in the old AF1 forums and gained quiet a bit of fan attention.
Its possible the song was discarded for being over 7 minutes long and because of its lyrics touching on similar topic to “Livin’ on the Edge”. At least some of the demos were recorded in Massachusetts, Cohasset, as 2 instrumentals of the song were recorded there.
Meltdown
(Tyler)
The streets were cold and barren
The nights were dark and dank
And the sky, hadn’t had a rain cloud in it for 25 years….
The buildings were dead and the alleys
Stunk from things that used to live there
Ahhh that wasn’t the city I remembered
A Child in the street, barefoot pullin’ at his
Mama’s tattered coattails: like a rat dogs existence
With not a scrap left on the plate
And so much like a fable, their lives so unstable
Cause the only thing left was their faith
And there sure as hell ain’t much I can do
About it….
There’s a Meltdown in the sky
There’s a new day comin’ and I don’t know why
There’s a fear that gets me high
And the cold night numbs as the Jet Black clouds roll on by….
So sad was the scene that my eyes did behold
Made me wonder just who was the foe
And was it all to come true what Nostradamus
Had predicted such a long long time ago?
You could hear screams and moanin’
From the people atoning
For their sins of a guilt ridden life
And the final door shuts
From the wind that leaves cuts
From the edge on the blade of God’s knife
And there sure as hell ain’t much I can do about….
There’s a Melt Down in the Sky
There’s a new day comin and I don’t know why
There’s a tear stuck in my eye
There’s a new day comin’ and I don’t know why
Battle lines had been drawn
Mother nature how she cried
By her side, till the dawn
Couldn’t kill her if they tried
How they tried, open eyed, genocide
Then… she died
Battle lines had been drawn
Mother nature how she cried
By her side, till the dawn
Couldn’t kill her if they tried
How they tried, open eyed, genocide
Then… she died
There’s a Meltdown in the sky
There’s a new day comin’ and I don’t know why
There’s a fear that gets me high
And the cold night numbs as the Jet Black clouds roll on by….
The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos 