Origins in the Pump Sessions (1989)
The roots of Legendary Child go back to the Pump sessions of 1989. Aerosmith demoed a track called Guilty Kilt, whose bridge carried a riff that would haunt the band’s archives for decades. During the Pump tour in 1990, Joe Perry would sometimes work the bridge riff from the unreleased demo Guilty Kilt into his guitar intros, foreshadowing what would later evolve into Legendary Child. At that point, the riff was still in its embryonic form, years before the song itself was written and rearranged.
Steven Tyler later admitted that he and Joe Perry kept a stockpile of riffs that seemed too good to throw away. “Out Go the Lights was originally Bobbing for Piranha [from the 1988/1989 sessions for Pump],” Tyler recalled in Classic Rock Magazine (2019). “It was a great Joe Perry lick, and I arranged it with the band a gazillion years ago, but we never added any lyrics and I knew the lick was so good. Jimmy Page would have paid good money for it. All I had to do was finish it.”
Jim Vallance and the Vancouver Sessions (1991–1992)
In November and December 1991 Aerosmith reworked that riff into a new composition. Tyler and Perry collaborated with Canadian songwriter Jim Vallance, who later remembered: “I wrote Legendary Child with Steven and Joe during the December 1991 Get a Grip sessions… Aerosmith performed the song ‘live’ on a few occasions – they even recorded a complete studio version – but it was never officially released.”
The track was developed at Little Mountain Sound in Vancouver with producer Bruce Fairbairn in 1992. Archival paperwork confirms a 2″ multitrack reel (No. 191520) dated September 18, 1992, filed as an outtake alongside Messin’. Though fully recorded, it was left off Get a Grip and shelved.
Lyrics in Flux: 1992 to 2012
The earliest 1992 demo, cut during the Get a Grip sessions, shows Steven Tyler in full Pump-era mode. Verses about fortune tellers and devils tumble into raunchy lines like “Ah give it up and give me some head,” making the “legendary child” a metaphor for a lover of almost mythical sexual power.
A slightly polished version of the lyrics from the same year, taken from one of Steven’s lyrics notebooks and later transcribed and hosted on Aerosmith.com between 1997 and 1999 (1992 Swag Song Music Inc.), kept the erotic tone but recast Tyler himself as the “legendary lover.” In these pages he boasts, “I’ll give you legendary lovin’ that you never will forget,” presenting the legendary child as a woman whose passion proves unforgettable — and by extension, his prowess in capturing it.
By 2012 the song had been reinvented as autobiography. Tyler quoted Walk This Way — “I took a chance at the high school dance / Never knowin’ wrong from right” — and turned the chorus into a tribute to Aerosmith’s survival: “That same show 40 years ago / Being televised tonight.” Here the “legendary child” is no longer a lover but the band itself, reborn after decades of battles, proof that their story is still alive. He explained: “It was a sketch back then… I re-wrote lyrics and it became Legendary Child, about Aerosmith.”
The three versions mark the band’s evolution—from raunchy outtake to autobiographical anthem.
1992 demo → legendary child = lustful, mythic woman.
1992 notebook draft → legendary child = a notorious lover, with Tyler casting himself as her equal.
2012 album version → legendary child = Aerosmith itself, celebrating survival and career longevity.
2012 Patriots anthem → legendary child = the New England Patriots, recast as heroes battling on the field.
False Starts and Outtake Resurrections (2006–2007)
The track was reconsidered during the abandoned 2006–2007 “outtakes album” project, when Aerosmith thought about completing unfinished songs from past decades. Tyler said: “I took a couple licks that I knew we had there. They were just sitting there.” Perry defended using older riffs: “Some people don’t get that… They say: ‘Well, it was written way back when, so it must be a reject.’ Well, that just isn’t true. It just wasn’t its time.” (Classic Rock Magazine Aerosmith 2019)
Jack Douglas and the Final Push (2011–2012)
When Aerosmith regrouped with longtime producer Jack Douglas in 2011, Legendary Child finally returned to life. “We changed some lyrics and then recorded it from the ground up with a slightly different arrangement,” Douglas said. “We made it sound like it would fit on a record done today.”
Production engineer Warren Huart recalled that one day was spent entirely on perfecting Joe Perry’s guitar tone for the riff, experimenting with Marshall stacks, ribbon mics, fuzz pedals, and endless tweaking until the sound clicked.
For Tyler, the moment Perry laid down the riff symbolized the band’s return. “Joe put the lead lick down. It was, ‘Oh my God, we’re back.’ It was so incredibly true at that moment to me that the band was back in the severest of ways. I was overjoyed.”
The 2012 Leak
On March 28, 2012, a 1992 demo of Legendary Child leaked online, more than a month before the official release. Allegedly, the source was a longtime private collector frustrated with Aerosmith’s management, who cited overpriced tickets and the dismissal of senior fan club members’ privileges ahead of the new tour. The leak caused an uproar, with fans online judging the song “dated” before hearing the new version. Tyler later acknowledged he knew of the leak and was clearly unhappy, noting he didn’t know how it had happened but that it unfairly painted the band’s new work as lazy recycling of an old outtake.
Joe Perry defended the practice of reviving old material: “All those times getting started, getting ready to make a new record, there were more and more demos building up… Some of it, it just wasn’t the right time. As far as I’m concerned, a piece of music is done when we’ve finished it, when it’s been recorded, mixed, mastered. It doesn’t matter if I wrote the riff yesterday or 20 years ago.”
Jim Vallance Returns
The revival of Legendary Child also reopened the story of its origins with Canadian songwriter Jim Vallance. When Vallance heard in March 2012 that the track was finally being released, he contacted Aerosmith’s then-manager Trudy Green. To his surprise, she told him that Steven Tyler and Joe Perry had no memory of him co-writing the song — and that he could expect no credit or royalties. Vallance described Green’s tone as combative, saying she demanded he “prove you wrote it.”
Fortunately, he still had boxes of work-in-progress recordings in his basement from the early 1990s. After digging through them, he found DAT tapes labeled “Aerosmith 1991” where he, Tyler, and Perry could clearly be heard discussing and working on Legendary Child. Vallance digitised the recordings and sent them to Green as proof. With memories refreshed, the conflict was resolved, and Steven Tyler even phoned Vallance personally to apologise for the oversight.
The Video Drama Behind Legendary Child
The Legendary Child music video was directed by longtime Aerosmith collaborator Casey Patrick Tebo, who campaigned on Twitter in early 2012 requesting to lead the project. The video was shot on May 3, 2012, originally conceived as a tie-in with G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The band performed against a massive military-style set while movie footage was spliced in, making the song part of the film’s promotional push.
Aerosmith also used this look for their high-profile premiere of the track on the American Idol finale, May 23, 2012. The performance featured the same military stage pieces built for the video, and Tyler even linked the song’s theme to the band’s battles in the music business: “If there ever was a foe, the music business was.” The plan had been clear—tie the single’s debut to the G.I. Joe campaign and use Idol as a launchpad.
But just days before that performance, Paramount delayed G.I. Joe’s release to 2013, forcing Aerosmith and Sony to pivot. The Idol rollout went ahead, but the music video was shelved, since its film tie-ins no longer made sense.
Reinvention with and original narrative
During the delay, Tebo and Steven Tyler regrouped to create a new storyline. On June 2, 2012, actress Alexa Vega announced via Twitter that she would be starring in the video, and two days later Tebo confirmed her scenes had just wrapped. They cast her as a roller-skating heroine pursued by villains symbolising Aerosmith’s past—lawyers, ex-managers, ex-wives—while the band’s performance footage from May was retained. By mid-June, Tebo was tweeting that the video was finished and that its release date was in Sony’s hands. Tyler’s fingerprints were all over the reboot, from narrative concepts to the trailer-style intro monologue. That narration, using footage and music from Tebo’s 2011 tour intro film and delivered by voice actor Ed Weigle, was clearly written in Tyler’s voice. It stitched together Aerosmith’s career as a comic-book saga of survival—bad sushi, shady managers, Sasquatch, and all—before framing Legendary Child as “Episode One” of a bigger tale.
When the video finally premiered on July 10, 2012, it mixed this surreal chase narrative with the band’s performance on the original military-style set. The lingering G.I. Joe influence created some confusion, but the Tyler-shaped storyline gave it an eccentric personality rooted in Aerosmith’s imagination.
A Mystery Ending and Lost Momentum
The clip ends with Vega opening a coffin-shaped package, revealing mystery rather than resolution. Fans speculated it was symbolic of Aerosmith’s future—or even a teaser for Music From Another Dimension! The “Episode One” label also fuelled hopes of a trilogy of videos in the tradition of the Alicia Silverstone mini-saga from the 1990s.
Years later, Tebo shared his original cut, complete with G.I. Joe footage intact. In hindsight, the project shows Aerosmith caught between two competing rollouts: a Hollywood cross-promotion that collapsed, and a quirky, self-referential narrative that never fully connected with fans. The delayed release, long intro, and mixed imagery ultimately dulled its impact, despite the band’s star-power Idol debut.
A Comic-Book Rollout That Never Happened
Looking back, the “Episode One” framing in the Legendary Child video may not have been random. In the lead-up to the album’s November 2012 release, Aerosmith and Casey Patrick Tebo launched a string of comic-book styled trailers and webisodes that seemed designed to extend that concept. On August 24, the band released the first album trailer on YouTube, combining pro-shot live footage, studio interviews, and a snippet of Legendary Child. On September 7, Episode One: The Beginning appeared on Vimeo, opening with comic-book panels that dissolved into studio clips with “Luv XXX” playing underneath. Just ten days later, on September 17, Episode Two: The Writing followed, featuring Joe Perry and Jack Douglas working through riffs, alongside rehearsal footage narrated by Joey Kramer.
The idea was to run a full series of eight online-exclusive episodes, but the plan shifted midway. One instalment — the behind-the-scenes recording of Can’t Stop Loving You with Carrie Underwood — was given as an exclusive to RollingStone.com and PerezHilton.com (which years later vanished from their sites), the official sequence was renumbered, with Episode 6 being released as “6/7” to compensate. The uneven rollout reflected the last-minute adjustments from the label, but it also revealed Tebo’s attempt to give the cycle some continuity.
Despite the confusion, the series managed to tie together the album artwork, the Legendary Child video, the trailers, and the making-of documentaries into a recurring comic-book aesthetic. Even the visuals carried into the Global Warming Tour, reinforcing the sense that the whole Music From Another Dimension! campaign was meant to feel like a graphic novel come to life — a bold concept that was never fully realised.
The Patriots Anthem: A New Twist
In October 2012, Aerosmith rewrote Legendary Child yet again—not for an album or film, but as a spirited anthem for their hometown team. Titled “Legendary Child – Patriots Anthem,” this version was released as part of Pepsi’s NFL Anthems campaign to fire up New England Patriots fans. Joe Perry reflected on how timeless the riff was: “I probably wrote that riff 25 years ago… it typifies what we envisioned Aerosmith to be. … If I had heard that song 30 years ago, I’d say that’s exactly what I’d hope the band would sound like 30 years later…”
The song was offered as a free download and blasted through Gillette Stadium to soundtrack the Patriots’ playoff push, showing just how adaptable Legendary Child had become.
Legendary Child LIVE
Onstage, Legendary Child was performed during the Global Warming Tour of 2012–2013, Aerosmith played it 26–27 times. Its first outing was on May 23, 2012, during the American Idol finale in Los Angeles, and its last performance was on August 16, 2013, in Osaka, Japan.
More often than not, the band used it as their final encore, blasting audiences out the door with a triumphant message of survival and legacy. The riff born during Pump, refined in Vancouver, shelved for decades, and finally reborn in Boston with Jack Douglas, found its true place as a closer—both in their setlists and in their story.
1992 Demo Lyrics (Recorded during the Get a Grip sessions, leaked online on 28 March 2012)
I tell you what I’m talking about,
Once upon a fortune teller story I was told,
A gypsy saying the love to me,
That never would grow, (whoa whoa whoa)
And now the heat is on,
My soul’d be paying twice,
She lives a half a mile away from hell,
In a place called paradise,
Because if you think you see the devil’s horns
Baby you’re so right, yeah
Cause I been lookin for an outside fix
To make my insides right
But now my luck has finally changed,
For what it was it sure was strange,
Yeah as far as I can see,
There is a God ’cause he sent me a
Legendary child
Legendary child
I think that what I’m tryin’ to say, is,
Just one look knocked me out
I woked up on the bed,
Ah what I need, I think it love
Ah give it up and give me some head (whoa whoa whoa)
And I hope that you’ll deliver,
And she’ll aim me with her eyes,
and then my back bone start to quiver,
I was headed for the big surprise,
She said what she was looking for, I told her yeah that’s me, yeah
She said now cover up your eyes, and tell me what you see, I told her,
I see the love and lots of pride, it’s always been right there inside,
Room for hate, there’s not a lot,
The voice inside said “Boy you gotta!”
Legendary child…
1992 Notebook Lyrics (Draft hosted on Aerosmith.com between 1997–1999)
I tell you what I’m talkin’ about,
Remember not too long ago,
I was down and out of luck,
I was out to do the dirty deed and didn’t give a f***,
And then she caught my eye,
The girl was lookin’ fresh,
And what was underneath it all,
Was passion in the flesh,
If you think you see the devil’s horns,
Baby you’re so right,
Cause I been lookin for an outside fix,
To make my insides right,
Your reputation tells it all,
I see the writing on the wall,
O yea as far as I can see,
There is a God ’cause he sent me a,
Legendary child
I think that what I’m tryin’ to say, is,
Just one look knocked me out,
She smiled at me and said,
Aa what I need, I think it’s love–
Aa give it up is what she said,
Aa give it up and gimme h***,
I’m a legendary lover
And tonight you won’t regret
I’ll give you legendary lovin’ that you never will forget
And if you want to play with fire, baby now’s the time
Yea cause you never tasted honey that’s as sweet as mine
We played the game of tongue ‘n cheek
And loved until our knees got weak
Had so much class that queen of sleeze
And rumor has it that she’s a
Legendary child
2012 Album Version (Released on Music From Another Dimension!)
I’ll tell you what I’m talkin’ about …
Makin’ love at 17, yeah we had the luck
But we traded them toys for other joys
And we didn’t give a …
(Whoa whoa whoa)
I took a chance at the high school dance
Never knowin’ wrong from right
And that same show 40 years ago
Bein’ televised tonight
‘Cause getting from inside my head to the Taj Mahal
I went from never havin’ none to wanna have it all
I wanna keep that dream alive
And eat that honey from the hive
With all the noise and all the clamour
No surprise, you know I am a
Legendary child
I think that what I’m trying to say — is
Sticks and stones will break your bones
At least they’ll rearrange
I’ll drop a dime, and every time
I get myself a nickel’s change
(Whoa whoa whoa)
They say we don’t know Jack
At “The Plant” we proved them wrong
We traded in our souls at night and sold them for a song
And if Satan had a lady friend her name was Mary Jane
I never wondered why she tried to drive us quite insane
And how we got that golden fleece
From toking on that pipe of peace
Well yeah, as far as I can see
There is a god ’cause I got me a
Legendary child
Legendary child
2012 Patriots Anthem:
I′ll tell you what I’m talking about
Live the dream, steal the scene and add a little luck
It′s what they say, we came to play and never give up (whoa-oh)
Muskets roar, another score, that’s how we get it done
Raise your fists and shout it out, that’s our number one
′Cause tonight we′re gonna win that game and be right in your face (face, face, face)
And we know you’d rather be right here than any other place (place, place, place)
You came to win and no more jive, and eat that other team alive
With all the clamor, all the noise, it′s no surprise, you know them boys are
Legendary child
I think what I’m trying to say is
Interception, what a drag, how critical the mass
We′re throwin’ down the challenge, let the critics kiss my ass (whoa-oh)
It′s all about the game if you wanna live the dream
Freezing cold out in the rain, so let me hear you scream
‘Cause someone’s gotta win or lose if fate would have its way (way, way, way)
It′s all about the play we choose that makes us win the day (day, day, day), yeah
′Cause tonight we’re gonna go to town, you know that we don′t mess around
Then beat ’em all and fans are crazy
Meet me at the goal post, baby
Legendary child
Legendary child
The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos 