“OH YEAH” outtakes, sessions, demos and leaks!

Not much is known about the short sessions for the 2002 “Oh Yeah” compilation album. Steven and Joe went to Mauii to write and record new material, from which “Girls of Summer” and “Lay it Down” came.

During those same sessions the cover of the “Spider-man Theme” was recorded. 2 others songs were presented by Steven but the band rejected them, namely “Oxygen” and “”A Good Thing” (could it be a re-worked version of 1991’s “Good Thang” written with Diane Warren?).

Rumour has it that Tyler was pissed off at the band for rejecting his songs and that he went around asking radio DJ’s for their opinion, and that’s how the Oxygen demo leaked in 2004. Another version has the leak happening at the hands of the head of fan relations from AF1 in Japan, where they received a copy of the demo, and they shared it with a Japanese fan. Tyler seem to really like the song and eventually got it released in 2011. He used the original vocal tracks recorded in 2004 and simply added some additional backing vocals, guess singer and further instrumentation:

The working title for “Lay it Down” was “Bad Enough” and it was the band’s intention to get it included on the Spider-man soundtrack, but got rejected (hence recording the theme instead). Apparently, they only changed the lyrics in the chorus.

Around the same time long time Aerosmith’s producer, Jack Douglas, gave an interview where he mentioned another song called “Climbing the Walls” being worked during the sessions as well.

A pop version of “The Grind” was reportedly written here as well. It would be released 2 years later with a thick blues flavour on their 2004 album “Honkin on Bobo”.