The Back-Burner: Aerosmith Outtakes & Demos

Inside the jacket of Rock in a Hard Place appears a reproduced Criteria Recording Studios reel log dated 29 March 1982, Studio E, listing Aerosmith with Jack Douglas producing during the Miami sessions that ultimately shaped the album.

On that sheet, among the handwritten entries in the title column, is a line that reads “NEW SONG DEMO (FAR, FAR AWAY).” It sits as a discrete entry on the reel, just like the other titled items logged on subsequent days, suggesting this was not a generic note about the reel containing demos, but rather the working identifier of a specific piece recorded that day.

Speculation branches in two directions. One possibility is that “Far, Far Away” was an orphan demo that never advanced beyond its initial recording and remains unheard outside vaults. The other, more intriguing suggestion raised by a private collector, is that it may have been an early working title for a song that ultimately appeared on the album, with “Joanie’s Butterfly” floated as a potential candidate.

Complicating matters further, some outtake lists attribute the name to a book titled “Aerosmith: Rocks Phoenix.” Attempts to trace this publication turn up nothing conclusive, with no clear ISBN record, publisher listing, library entry, or verifiable catalogue presence. The reference remains as elusive as the song itself.

Studio paperwork from that era frequently used temporary names drawn from lyric fragments, mood descriptors, or even offhand references. “Far, Far Away” may therefore represent a lost composition, a discarded fragment, or the embryonic stage of a song that survived under another name.

The title could be a reference to The Wizard of Oz (which is sampled at the start of “The Farm”), or even Star Wars. The same studio tape jacket lists two other early piano songs and beyond. Yet “Far, Far Away” remains a documented but unresolved piece of the Rock in a Hard Place puzzle.