It’s easy to get confused when thinking about outtakes and demos. Both are part of the songwriting and production process, and each can go through countless takes, versions, arrangements, and iterations before anything gets released.
Back in 2004, we at the BackBurner asked Jim Vallance — the award-winning Vancouver songwriter and co-writer of several Aerosmith hits — how he defined them. He explained it clearly:
“A ‘demo’ is usually a rough recording done in a home studio. If the band likes it, and the producer likes it, and the record company likes it, then the song gets recorded in a ‘real’ studio, at which point it’s considered a ‘master’ recording. If, for some reason, the master recording is not completed (vocals not finished or something) or it’s not released, then it’s called an ‘out-take’. Basically, outtake means not used.”
— Jim Vallance, via email (2006)
The decision to release (or not release) these tracks can depend on many factors: artistic direction, label strategy, or simply quality. John Kalodner, Aerosmith’s legendary A&R man, put it bluntly in 2005:
“All I can say as their A&R person is that most of them were not released because they were not good enough.”
— John Kalodner, via the Ask a Question section of his website (2005)
The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos 