The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos

In 2003, the Permanent Outtakes bootleg surfaced, offering fans a rare window into Aerosmith’s studio process. The collection revealed the evolution of song ideas through multiple takes and gave listeners a sense of sitting alongside the band during production.

One fan in particular pursued the mystery further. After spending months searching the web and posting in forums, he was contacted in 2004 by a private collector who shared only a few seconds of several unreleased songs. These short clips confirmed that the tracks were real and not just abandoned titles.

To organise what he had uncovered, he launched the first version of this website on Geocities, collecting and documenting every fragment of information available. The breakthrough came in March 2006, when he travelled to Boston for what was meant to be his first Aerosmith concert. Although the show was cancelled due to Steven Tyler’s vocal issues, he met the same collector in person and was given the chance to hear the songs in full — a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Armed with years of research, detailed notes, and a guitar in hand, he carefully worked through the material, memorising song structures and progressions. When he returned home, he immediately set about recording simple acoustic renditions to reconstruct the songs from memory, ensuring they could be preserved and studied further.

The covers above as all in different stages, I would often revisit them trying to add more instruments trying to mimic the original Aerosmith style, while developing my own and adding my personal creativity when I had no further information on a certain section of a song. It was important for me to try to preserve my memory of the songs (melodies, lyrics, rhythm and song structure) and keep practising the technical side of home studio music production. I practised playing and recording covering of Aerosmith songs from 2001 till 2012, after this I finally felt like I was ready to explore writing my own music, it was a fun exercise.

Now, as to why I don’t post the full songs online is very simple, first of all, I never got copies of the full songs, I just heard them, took notes, reconstructed and researched. Additionally, the original clips were simply lost forever in burned and broken hard-drives without backup, I don’t have those either, just my research. People online tend to not believe me, but this is the truth.

Even if I had them, I don’t think it would be right for the band for us fans to damage them by leaking their un-released songs, specially when over the years they have been constantly revisiting them to get them officially released (Lizard Love, Legendary Child, Seddona Sunrise and Devils New Disguise are good examples of this).

#GetTheAerosmithOuttakesReleased