“The group that puts the raunch in rock ’n’ roll will devastate you on this, their first record.”
That was the pitch in an ad that ran in the Post-Gazette on Oct. 18, 1973, promoting the first show that Aerosmith ever played in Pittsburgh. It was at the Syria Mosque in Oakland with British glam-rock pioneers Mott the Hoople headlining and Spirit as the middle act.
The bad boys from the Boston band released that self-titled debut album on Jan. 5, 1973, the same day the label, Columbia, released “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.,” the debut album from a new singer-songwriter named Bruce Springsteen.
One of those albums got great press, and it wasn’t Aerosmith’s. For the first few years, the media had trouble seeing Aerosmith as anything other than a weird American amalgam of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
Hang around, though, and the respect will come eventually. Aerosmith’s debut included what would become the band’s calling card, “Dream On,” which didn’t have much impact the first time around, but shot to No. 6 on the charts in April 1976 after its late 1975 reissue. That was just a month before Aerosmith released its fourth album, “Rocks,” which shows you how strange it was with singles back then.
Since that 1973 show, Aerosmith has been back to the Pittsburgh area more than 26 times, including 12 at the Civic Arena (two of which, 1980 and 1982, were without Joe Perry) and 10 at Star Lake, but there’s been an oddly long gap of late. Beginning in 2010, four U.S. tours have crisscrossed the States without a Pittsburgh date and then 2019 and 2022 were spent exclusively in Las Vegas residencies.
The PPG Paints Arena show on Wednesday will be the first one here since June 2009, when they did Star Lake with ZZ Top in a reunion of the 1976 Three Rivers Stadium show, a contender for the wildest concert/event in Pittsburgh history.
Aerosmith is on the 40-date Peace Out Tour, billed as a 50-year celebration of the band as well as a goodbye tour. This will be the second night of Peace Out, which opened in Philadelphia on Saturday with an 18-song set beginning with “Back in the Saddle.” The band touched on the early years with such vintage tracks as “Seasons of Wither” and “Rats in the Cellar” as well as the MTV era when songs like “Cryin’,” “Janie’s Got a Gun” and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” thrust them more into the mainstream.
Over its half-century run, Aerosmith, which purged drugs and alcohol in the ’90s, has been remarkably healthy and stable. The band now rolls into Pittsburgh with four of its five original members: singer Steven Tyler (75), guitarists Joe Perry (turning 73 on Sunday) and Brad Whitford (71) and bassist Tom Hamilton (71). Drummer Joey Kramer, who was last with Aerosmith for its Vegas residency in the fall of 2022, is replaced on this tour by John Douglas, and the band is also augmented by keyboardist Buck Johnson, saxophonist Seth Stachowski and backup singer Suzie McNeil.
We’ve seen how singers over 60, and some over 50 for that matter, have struggled with their vocal command.
USA Today wrote about the Philly show, “Tyler’s holy howl remains remarkably flexible, which he verified on the gravelly choruses of ‘Cryin’’ and the prescient ‘Livin’ on the Edge,’ and the band’s musicianship is in peak form for this victory lap.”
Back in 1990, the Pittsburgh Press did an interview with Tyler, then 41, where he talked about rockers getting old, though not necessarily himself.
“The Stones are falling off,” he said. “I saw Jagger, and he was like way laid-back.”
Asked if there was any chance that Aerosmith would be playing arenas when they were in their 60s or 70s, Tyler did not rule it out.
“As long as it flows, I’ll be out there,” he said. “I can’t see doing this from a wheelchair, no. But, man, as long as I am up there rockin’, there will always be people that want to rock ‘n’ roll. They need somebody like me to draw the kid out of them.”
Fortunately, a wheelchair for Steve Tyler seems like a long way off, but he’ll probably rock that, too.
Aerosmith has had some impressive openers along the way, including Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue and The Black Crowes. The latter joined Aerosmith at their first-ever Star Lake show in 1990, will back with them on Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena. It’s at 7 p.m. $85; ticketmaster.com.
First Published: September 5, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: September 6, 2023, 9:16 p.m.
