The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos

Before Aerosmith, Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton were in a band called “The Jam Band” with high school friend Pudge Scott. They recorded a self-titled album on August 30th, 1969 with two Shure microphones over an audience at “The Barn” (a club where The Jam Band and The Chain Reaction frequented) and was taped with Pudge Scott’s father’s Concord two-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. The album was a live album with all cover songs.

The songs were:

Side 1
A – Rice Pudding, Jeff Beck
B – Shape of Things, Jeff Beck
C – Red House, Jimmy Hendrix
D – Let me Love You Baby, Jeff Beck
Side 2
A – Blues Delux, Jeff Beck
B – Give me Some Loving, Spencer Davis
C – Rambling Rose – MC5
D – Milk Cow Blues, The Kinks

The album was not ALL recorded in front of an audience! The album’s opening track was Jeff Beck’s “Rice Pudding” which was taped by Elyssa Jarret (Joe’s future ex-wife) during a rehearsal at the band house behind “The Barn.” The band had the tape mastered and transferred to Acetate at “AAA Recording” in Boston, Massachusetts. The album had really cool psychedelic cover art {with flames, eyeballs, and acidic whorls} that was drawn one stoned night by Joe Perry.

They printed out (depended on who’s the account you believe) three to six copies. But according to Joe, the bad quality of the tape made it wear out after only a few plays. Pudge Scott kept his copy and got it transferred to CD and presented each member with a copy.

In 2019, the intro video for their Vegas residency featured the cover of the album and the back of the original tape reel with the tracks list hand written.

While it’s a precious piece of proto-Aerosmith history and it shows the undeniable talent of the founding members, it’s remained unreleased all of these years because of the original tape quality and other issues (noise, buried drums, out-of-tune vocals, and other errors). We doubt it will ever be released officially.