The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos

While it may seem that Aerosmith has little interest in recording new music, the door is never fully closed. Despite the challenges and diminishing sales compared to their heyday, the band members consistently hint at the possibility of new material whenever asked. Below is a collection of media quotes from 2010, shedding light on the potential for future albums from this legendary band:

The Guardian. “Joe Perry on how Aerosmith patched it up” by Rob Fitzpatrick, published on Thu 3 Jun 2010: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jun/03/joe-perry-aerosmith-steve-tyler-reunited

Might that new album get made now? Is there a thirst out there?
“Actually, I’m not sure there is,” Perry says. “Until a couple of years ago, fans would ask for more records like the old records, but that’s all fallen off. New material is not that important any more. We’ve been at this for a long time. I think of some of the songs I’ve written or co-written and I think, why should I bother trying to top that? It’s like Leonardo Da Vinci painting the Madonna again. Why should I paint the Madonna again?”

Steven Tyler Tells All: The Real Story Behind His Aerosmith Battles and ‘American Idol’ Triumph, By Rolling Stone, April 27, 2011: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/steven-tyler-tells-all-the-real-story-behind-his-aerosmith-battles-and-american-idol-triumph-99723/

Earlier this year the entire band – minus Perry – flew to Los Angeles to work on demos, and Tyler is talking to Toys in the Attic producer Jack Douglas about working on some of the songs. Working titles include “Asphalt,” “Bobbing for Piranha,” and “Legendary Child.” The story describes the material as “slinky riff-rock, big-chorused soul ballads, leaning more Seventies than Nineties.”

Aerosmith to Start Recording First Album in 10 Years. BY ANDY GREENE. JUNE 8, 2011: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/aerosmith-to-start-recording-first-album-in-10-years-99904/
Earlier this year, Aerosmith recorded a series of demos in Los Angeles. Tentative track titles included “Bobbing For Piranha,” “Asphalt” and “Legendary Child.” “They still sound like Aerosmith,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt in a recent cover story about Tyler. “Slinky, riff-rock, big -chorused soul ballads, leaning more Seventies than Nineties.”

On the Charts: Jack Douglas on Producing Aerosmith’s Music from Another Dimension! By Etan Rosenbloom. December 20, 2012: https://www.ascap.com/playback/2012/12/wecreatemusic/on-the-charts-jack-douglas-on-producing-aerosmiths-music-from-another-dimension
And that doesn’t mean we recorded 20. We recorded 24, so there’s four left over. Then there’s material that we only developed, so I would guess in that first few months, we developed about 28 or 30 ideas…

How many albums do you think you and Aerosmith have in you after this one?
I can’t speak for them because they’re not here in the room with me. But I think we’re going to go this way: For certain there’s another Aerosmith album, maybe another two. Then each guy in the band needs to express themselves in any number of ways. You’ve got Brad Whitford who’s got a family of incredible players, and all he’s interested in is playing the blues. So I would expect an album from him. I would expect an album from [Aerosmith bassist] Tom Hamilton, who is a really good writer and has a load of stuff, and now he’s proven he can sing, but he wouldn’t be opposed to bringing in other singers. These aren’t gigantic albums that are gonna sell a whole s**tload, but they’re really cool. And if you don’t have to run up a giant studio bill because you own your own studio, you can do this stuff. So I would imagine that every guy in the band will have his own thing along the way. Steven’s gonna make a really important solo record. But not for me or for our own label. I think that Universal or Sony or somebody will make him a deal that’s a good one, and he’ll do his own solo record and then come back and do Aerosmith records. But I think that’s it. I think there’s two more. We’re gonna be old guys if there are three. ::laughs::

Especially if you wait another 11 years between studio albums!
Oh, that is not gonna happen. ::laughs:: There’s not gonna be a record 22 years from now. I can guarantee you that. We’ll probably be alive, but hopefully we’ll be sitting on islands, laughing.

Aerosmith New Dimension. Mix Magazine, August 2012 issue: http://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Mix-Magazine/10s/Mix-2012-08.pdf
Music from a New Dimension took “only” nine months to make—though it was not nine solid months. Roughly speaking, the flow of the album’s recording went this way: The first three months, which consisted of songwriting and recording of basic tracks for most songs, took place at Aerosmith’s Boston studio, Pandora’s Box. The studio was originally built a decade ago by Douglas, designer John Storyk and the group’s longtime (now former) engineer Jay Messina, then updated by Douglas about a year ago. Additionally, Perry recorded some guitar parts at his own fabulously equipped Boston studio, The Boneyard. From there, the action shifted to Huart’s (and co-owner Phil laurigas) Swing House complex. Many overdubs, some re-tracking and ground-up work on two cover tunes— The Temptations’ obscure “Shakey Ground” and The Yardbirds’ “I’m Not Talking”— as well as a new ballad by Diane Warren called “All Fall Down” (featuring Carrie Underwood) were done at Swing Time. Additional recording (such as Underwood’s lead vocal) and some mixing took place at Huart’s personal studio, Spitfire. Several tracks were mixed by Neal Avron (Linkin Park, Fallout Boy) on an SSL 4000 G-Plus at Paramount Studios in Hollywood; others by the prolific Chris LordAlge on the 72-input SSL 4000 E Series board in his Tarzana (L.A.) studio; the rest were handled by Huart and Douglas on Spitfire’s 4o-input SSL 4000 G. Jack Douglas on first sessions in Boston: “First is the writing process. The idea of the album was to write it and make a record that really sounds like the band. They come into my office with dry [acoustic] guitars and I have an old cassette machine and I start recording. I’m writing stuff up on a chalk board behind me, with fake titles attached to the different riffs and ideas. [Notorious Boston mobster] Whitey Bolger had just been captured so we had one song that was called ‘Welcome Home, Whitey!’ There was one called ‘Butt Weight’ [as in the late-night commercial offers that say ‘But wait!’]. There was another with the working title ‘We Know Where Your Kids Are.’ Then we would take them to the next room over, which is a bigger conference/rehearsal room where we had a piano, some small amps and their instruments, and we would record into my computer and start to work the licks up. Everybody is sitting at this big table and each guy is putting in ideas. We would work stuff up in there, record it and listen back to it for a couple of days, make changes, and as soon as it got to be a recordable song, we’d go right into the [main studio] room and cut it while it was fresh.”

The Guardian, “Aerosmith: ‘records don’t make sense'” by Sean Michaels, on Tue 29 Apr 2014
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/apr/29/aerosmith-theres-no-reason-to-make-another-record

Aerosmith see “almost no reason” to ever make another album. The band’s drummer has revealed that the group have given up plans for a follow-up to 2012’s Music from Another Dimension, claiming that there’s not enough money for records to “make sense”.

“It would be great to make another record, but it’s almost, why bother?” Joey Kramer told Ultimate Classic Rock magazine. “Records don’t sell, and they don’t do anything … There’s almost no reason to do it, you know, judging from the last one and how it went over.”

Music from Another Dimension was the lowest-selling album of Aerosmith’s career, peaking at No 5 in the US and No 14 in the UK. But Kramer says it’s “a really good record” that’s “[still] going to be played 20 years from now”. “Certain things held it back,” he said, suggesting the poor state of the music industry affected the success of the album.

“We used to make a lot of money on records,” Kramer explained. “Now all of our money is made on touring.” And although “artistically, it would be fun to make another record”, “to what avail?” he asked. “Music now is so disposable … We’re not the Justin Biebers and the Nicki Minajs of the world, so unfortunately, records don’t make sense.”

Aerosmith Records ‘Very Rock ‘n Roll’ New Song, Says Guitarist Brad Whitford
Published by Billboard on 08/17/2017
URL: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/aerosmith-new-song-brad-whitford-interview-7933950/
Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford talks to “Billboard Argentina” about the band’s future, says they recorded a new song while on tour in London. According to Whitford, the band is still “going to be playing for the next five years” and will most likely be releasing singles with new tunes: “You don’t have to record a whole CD anymore. We’ve started recording a new song. It’s very rock ‘n roll.” He also hinted at exploring a crossover with Latin artists: “You can’t ignore Latin rhythms.”

Tom Hamilton @ Rock N’ Roll Fantasy’s MasterClass virtual series via Zoom, Date: 06/28/2020: https://aerosmithbackburner.com/2020/06/30/tom-confirms-aerosmith-is-working-on-box-set-with-unreleased-material-during-rock-n-roll-fantasy-masterclass/
“At one time we did a cover of “Highway Star”, you know that song by Deep Purple? We do have a bunch of stuff, and we are in the process of working on a box set, but we are just getting started, so I can’t even begin to think of what we are going to put on there that are unreleased tracks, but we do have some good stuff that just never got finished. Well, that’s the thing, we are just starting, so, I wish I could tell you more.”

Marti Frederiksen @ Rock N’ Roll Fantasy’s MasterClass virtual series via Zoom, Date: 07/27/2020: https://aerosmithbackburner.com/2020/07/29/marti-frederiksen-talks-writing-and-producing-aerosmith-with-new-details-on-outtakes-during-rock-n-roll-fantasy-masterclass/
“I mean, yeah, listen, that’s the “collaborating” word coming back in to. When you write these songs, you give them to the record company, or to the A&R guy, and they go “no, not quite this song”. You know, it could be the best song in the world, and if that guy is just in a different mood, and just doesn’t feel like that’s right on the record, then it can be shut down that simple, and “Innocent Man“, that song, I mean, we have a full-on (production), I mean, it’s probably out there now, but we do have a full-on production of that, just like that record (Just Push Play), with strings and all those background (vocals), and everything, and the same with the other ones you named (Easy, Ain’t it True, Bridges are Burning, I Love you Down), some of them were just done.”

Joey Kramer @ Rock N’ Roll Fantasy’s MasterClass virtual series via Zoom, Date: 08/31/2020: https://aerosmithbackburner.com/2021/01/05/joey-kramer-confirms-work-on-new-aerosmith-boxset-and-second-book-during-rock-n-roll-fantasy-camp-masterclass/
“As far as stuff that’s gonna be released or not gonna be released, you know we’re like kind of sorting through all of that stuff now, there’s so much of it man, there’s so much footage of us playing live and recordings of us playing live, in outtakes from albums and, all the amount of stuff that’s around, it’s difficult to go through and it’s difficult to decide….…The answer to your question is I don’t really know, you know we’ve been in the process of sorting all that shit out for a long time, so the answer to your question is I don’t know, I don’t really have the answer, I’m sorry that I don’t, but that’s kind of just the way it is.”

Peppy Castro interview with the Aerosmith BackBurner, Date: 09/24/2020: https://aerosmithbackburner.com/2021/01/05/peppy-castro-talks-about-his-friendship-with-joey-kramer-writing-tramp-aerosmith-balance-and-upcoming-musical/
“Its something that fans go crazy over, you give fans facts and behind stories, and what band is bigger than Aerosmith? They are iconic, they are legends, so that would be great to do man, I think they are very smart to do that, to take some jams that were left on the editing floor, and put it on a box set, give it to the fans, its a great idea.”

50 years ago in a high school gym, this no-name band became Aerosmith, James Sullivan, Boston Globe correspondent, Date: 11/05/2020: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/11/05/arts/50-years-ago-high-school-gym-this-no-name-band-became-aerosmith/
The golden anniversary of the first Aerosmith gig kicks off what the band hopes will be an extended period of retrospection, says Perry. They’re discussing an upcoming release that could showcase a recently discovered rehearsal tape from the period before the band was signed to Columbia Records. The original reel-to-reel tape turned up, Perry believes, in the band’s old van, a 1964 International Harvester Metro delivery truck. “There was a lot of stuff tucked in the corners — ticket stubs, a notebook, gas receipts,” Perry explains, speaking by phone while lying in the sun at his Florida home. It’s a pristine recording, he says: “Even though some of the lyrics are different and it’s a little different in the arrangements, if you played it side by side with the first album, you might find it hard to figure out which is which.”

Joey Kramer @ Rock N’ Roll Fantasy’s MasterClass virtual series via Zoom, Date: 02/2021: https://aerosmithbackburner.com/2022/03/26/joey-kramer-confirms-work-on-sequel-book-during-second-masterclass/
In February 2021, during Joey’s second MasterClass, he seemed to have forgotten about his previous claims, stating to “know nothing” about an upcoming release and that he was very much enjoying his time off relaxing with his family.

Aerosmith Bring Entire Recorded Catalog to Universal Music, Tease 50th Anniversary Plans, Published by Billboard on 08/24/2021: URL: https://www.billboard.com/pro/aerosmith-universal-music-group-deal/
“It’s been a long road but I’m extremely happy and proud to say on behalf of Aerosmith we have been able to bring our 50 years of music under one roof by partnering with UMG,” said Aerosmith co-founder and lead guitarist Joe Perry. “This will allow us to bring our music to our fans in ways we never were able to before. It’s something we’ve dreamed about happening for a long time. It’s a win for Aerosmith, UMG and ultimately our fans. Needless to say we are very excited. It’s an incredible way to celebrate 50 years and the many more years to come.”

Published by Classic Rock Magazine on 05/27/2021

Recently it’s been reported that you said Aerosmith have only a few more years and a couple of albums left in them. Is this something that’s been discussed as a band, or is it how you feel personally?

Joe Perry: Nah, it’s kind of looking at our ages and that kind of thing. Y’know, surmising… We’re basically whacking our way through the jungle trying to figure how it will work; I don’t think there’s a set plan. I can remember talking to one groupie in Boston and she said that she spent a lot of time with the English bands. She said that most of them figured they’d have a couple of hot years and then that’s it. And that was the kind of thinking; no one thought that it could be a career. I grew up when music was a social statement: us against them, don’t trust anybody over 30, et cetera. And that has obviously changed [laughs].

Does that mean there won’t be a new Aerosmith album?

JP: Not at all. Steven and I have talked about it. It’s just a matter of when. He’s got his solo thing that he does. And there’s times when he’s doing other stuff. But, hey, ultimately I would really like to get in the studio with him and the other guys and do some stuff in the next six months. It doesn’t have to be a whole fucking album. We’ve got enough songs that we could play until 2025 and never do the same set twice. But I still think there’s some riffs in there that if the band got together, we could really sink our teeth into.

ST: I don’t know how that’s going to go. The band want to do a farewell tour in the States, but if we did that we would be out for a year. I don’t know when we’d have time to do another Aerosmith album. I just spoke to Joe about that the other day. I told him I’d love to do a Toxic Twins album.

Joe Perry: We’re at a place where not many people are interested in new music from us. It’d be nice to make another record but, practically, I don’t know if it’ll happen. Steven wants to do a solo record, I have another solo record I want to do, and I’m working on an autobiography. I don’t see us taking the time out to do it.

Steven Tyler: Is it the last Aerosmith album? I’m doing a record, but there’s definitely another Aerosmith album in us. As long as we’re walking the earth there will be one.

For Record Store Day, Aerosmith is releasing an LP of recordings made in 1971, Jim Sullivan, for WBUR, Date: 11/24/2021: https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/11/24/record-store-day-aerosmith-1971-the-road-starts-hear
Aerosmith also has a multi-CD box set in the works. Perry says, unlike some bands, there’s no massive backlog of unreleased new songs waiting to see light of day. “It would be great if we had an album’s worth of unheard material,” Perry says, “but it didn’t work that way for us. On the other hand, there are a lot of songs — like ‘Dream On,’ ‘Sweet Emotion’ and ‘Kings and Queens’ where there’s a different vocal, or guitar solo or tempo. A different vibe. I think that would probably be more interesting for fans to hear.” Perry says those out-takes have the high-quality sound they achieved with producer Jack Douglas at the Record Plant in the mid-1970s, the New York studio where they did their first five albums. “I’m anxious to dig into some of those and hear some of those different takes.”

Joe Perry on Aerosmith’s Upcoming Las Vegas Residency, Their Underrated ’70s Output, Written by Sarah Grant, March 31, 2022: https://www.spin.com/2022/03/joe-perry-aerosmith-interview/
If there’s no pressure of getting a chart hit, why doesn’t Aerosmith just make another hard rock record? I mean, do I really need to write another “Draw The Line” when there are probably three different versions of that song we have that for some reason we didn’t use? Just knowing what it takes to make [that kind of] Aerosmith record — Steven playing the drums, having a microphone recording all the time and us jamming. I don’t know.

The People Vs. Joe Perry: The Aerosmith guitar hero on rock’n’roll advice, Wayne’s World and the future, Date: 05/23/2023: https://www.kerrang.com/joe-perry-interview-rocknroll-guitar-hollywood-vampires-aerosmith
We’re talking about doing a new record, but there are so many undiscovered versions of the songs in that Aerosmith catalogue. There’s a lot of that stuff that we’re looking at now: the archives, little chunks of music, live recordings. Thanks for reminding me of those!”

Joe Perry: “I don’t know if there’ll be a new Aerosmith album”, By Classic Rock published 06/20/2023: https://www.loudersound.com/news/joe-perry-aerosmith-new-album-2023
Pushed as to whether if the Boston band are planning a follow-up to 2012’s Music From Another Dimension!, Perry replies. “I don’t know. At this point, I want to tour as much as we can. I want to get out and play to the fans. That’s really the focus right now, to get out and play live. If we get time to work on some new music, that would be great, but knowing Steven [Tyler] and knowing our age and what it takes to do an album… I don’t know. I’m always playing, I’m always writing stuff, but at this stage, I can’t say. I just want to get through this next tour and play live and give something back to the fans. Perry continues: “We’ve never been the kind of band that you can sit back and go, ‘Well, this is what the next three years are gonna be like, this is what our next five years are going to be like.’ Especially now, at our age. The air is getting thin up here, man. So many people are passing on into the next step, so to speak.”

Guitar World: “My work was being compared to Jeff Beck, and they’re crediting Joe Perry. I was so upset. But people who actually listen can tell the difference”, Published by Andrew Daly on 11/07/2023: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/aerosmith-brad-whitford-peace-out
Aerosmith have released just four studio albums in the 30 years since Get a Grip. Why is that? “I cannot put my finger on it. I guess I’ll call it out-and-out laziness. Because I’m still writing, and I still play guitar every day. I don’t know… I can’t figure out what happened. Other than maybe frustration because sometimes it was like a woman being in labor and not wanting to do that, I can’t figure it out.”
Is the desire to make new music still there? “Maybe six or seven years ago, we were on the phone having a meeting with everybody, and the subject came up. So I asked, and I had a very simple plan; I said, ‘Let’s pick a city or studio, and we’ll book it for one day; it can be a day that works for us all, maybe a Saturday.’ I said, ‘Everybody can fly in Friday and Saturday morning; we have an open-ended session with one goal: to make a song and have one demo.’”
That sounds reasonable, given the band’s recording history. “Right. I play every day. I pick up the guitar, and out of my hands comes something that I’ve never played before. Maybe it would be an intro or even the main riff. I know Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton do that, too. So I said, ‘We go in and come out with at least a one-song demo. I don’t even care if Steven just sings ‘blah, blah, blah.’’
“I said that, and they just said, ‘Oh, we can’t do that.’ I was in shock; it’s not rocket science for us. It’s not impossible, and we’ve done it before. I don’t care if the song was a piece of shit; it was to be an exercise in creativity. But nobody wanted to fucking do it. So I threw my hands up in the air, and that’s where my hands remain to this day.”
Is Music from Another Dimension! Aerosmith’s final studio record? “Yeah… I think that it is. And that’s sad because, I hate to say this, and we were talking about the idea of potential earlier, but that was just a piss-poor record. It’s like… where is that certain something? I guess it got left behind somewhere.
“I think there are just a lot of scars, I guess I would say. And, God knows, we love the shit out of each other; we’re brothers through and through. But there’s a lot of dark stuff from the past, and I guess, like with anybody else, it’s hard to get past that.”
Bands often announce farewell tours, only to return a few years later. Is this really it for Aerosmith? There shouldn’t be any drama; we humans have enough shit going on. So when we finish this tour, that’s going to be it “In my mind, it’s not possible to keep going. I don’t bullshit anybody; I just don’t do it, and sometimes that upsets people. That’s just the way it is. People have to be willing to accept that. And I was probably the last person to sign on for this tour because even though this is a multimillion-dollar business, the reality is you’ve got to work awfully hard to end up in a good place financially.
“But it’s not really rocket science, and it should always be more fun than you’ve ever had, right? There shouldn’t be any drama; we humans have enough shit going on. So when we finish this tour, that’s going to be it.”
Who is America’s greatest rock and roll band? Kiss or Aerosmith? “That’s a really tough one. I think you’d have to come up with things to sort that out categorically. But what I love about Kiss is they can go on forever because of their makeup. So that’s one aspect of what they do that’s very different from what we do. But the last Kiss show I saw was absolutely brilliant, and there are days when I’ve come off the stage with Aerosmith and just went, ‘Wow. What the hell was that? How do I recreate that?’
“Some shows are great, and you search for ways to do it again, but that’s the beauty of this. You never know when you’re going to have one of those supernatural shows. It’s not something you can rehearse; a lot of it comes down to the band and the audience. Sometimes you end up with a magic moment you can’t predict; I think all the good bands have those moments. We have them, and so does Kiss. I don’t know how you choose.”

Ultimate Classic Rock Magazine, “Aerosmith Has ‘Quite a Bit’ of Archival Material to Release”, Bryan Rolli, Published: June 28, 2022 https://ultimateclassicrock.com/aerosmith-archival-material-joe-perry-interview/

Perry says there’s a lot more where that came from. “If you take a song like ‘Dream On,’ that take that was put on the record, there were probably two or three other takes that we decided not to use for one reason or another,” he explains. “As a fan, if I heard [Led Zeppelin’s] ‘Heartbreaker’ and I heard a different take of that, in that [same] studio quality, I would love to hear that.”

The guitarist says this archival material could surface instead of a new Aerosmith studio album. “I was thinking about, ‘Well, do we need to write another record?’ Then I started thinking: Going back, all of these songs have alternate takes that have different things about them,” he says. “We have so much of that stuff, and also some of the rehearsal tapes of some of the songs. And we’ve been recording everything live since we came back together [in the mid-’80s]. We have show upon show. There’s just so much material there, so much video, and we’re finding so much more. I think it took our guys about three years to go through all of the stuff, including the videos, and just catalog everything, so we could see [what we had].”

Fans of Aerosmith’s hedonistic mid-’70s heyday can rest assured there’s something for them among the archives as well. “Going back into the ’70s where people didn’t have cellphones with cameras, it’s a lot harder to find video, but there’s a surprising amount of videos that were made and assembled, mostly because back then, the record companies would use them for promotion when they would get together every year to show what new product was coming out,” Perry explains. “They would shoot videos of the bands or the different performers. There’s a lot of that stuff stashed away that hasn’t seen the light of day.”

Perry says Aerosmith is “looking over the next two or three years at releasing this stuff, decade by decade in different formats. There’s a lot of stuff there. At the same time, we’re still out there touring, so it’s not like we’re just going to sit back and curate our museum, so to speak. It’s part of our history, but we’re still going out there and doing it.”

Whispers of an AEROSMITH Mega Reissue REMIX BOX SET! 30th, November, 2023, https://aerosmithbackburner.com/2023/11/30/whispers-of-an-aerosmith-revival-unpacking-the-rumours-of-a-mega-reissue/

On November 30th, 2023, rumors surfaced about Universal Music planning to reissue Aerosmith’s entire discography with Surround mixes and unreleased materials. A deluxe box set was set to serve as a teaser for this reissue campaign. The project was reportedly delayed due to Steven Tyler’s lack of involvement, leading to a 2023 Greatest Hits album release. Bandmembers were also spotted in a studio, with Tyler working on new mixes and potentially new vocal tracks. Social media updates from Tyler and Aerosmith hinted at developments, including a revival of the 1991 ‘Sweet Emotion’ video.

Joe Perry Says New Aerosmith Music ‘Definitely a Possibility’, By Bryan Rolli, Published: July 31, 2024, https://ultimateclassicrock.com/aerosmith-new-music-possible/

“As for Aerosmith, I don’t know. We’ll see. There’s definitely a possibility, but at the minute we’re looking at the set for the tour and the songs we can play.” “As far as new music is concerned, I know that Steven’s got some stuff in his back pocket, but I really think the main thing right now is getting back on the road and playing. We’re also remixing some of the early stuff and finding some interesting outtakes, so it’ll be fun to look at that stuff.”