The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos

In 2003 I heard the ‘Permanent Outtakes’ bootleg. I loved it, listening to it was a great experience, it made me feel like I was in the studio working with the band. It was also a master class of song production, and allowed an overview of the evolution of the song ideas through many different takes.

I surfed the web looking for every bit of information available, asked in forums, and eventually, in 2004, a private collector contacted me and shared a few seconds of a few of these un-released songs. I used those clips to keep informing my ideas and understanding of the songs, and a proof that these were not just song titles, they existed!

I created a first version of this website in Geocities keeping track of all the bits of information I was able to find about them. In March 2006 I travelled to Boston to see my first Aerosmith show, Steven got voice issues, that lead to the tour cancellation, but I got to meet the private collector and got to hear the songs in full, a once in a life time opportunity.

I was ready for the occasion so able to take notes, guitar in hand to figure out chords, and keep in mind that this happened after years of research and speculation on how the songs would sound like, so, I was prepared for the experience and absorbed all the information like a magnet, memorising the structure of most of the songs.

As soon as I got back home I recorded simple acoustic renditions of the songs, re-constructing them from my notes and all the previous info gathered.

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