Aerosmith, "Home Tonight"

21 Days to Find a Home



Spin magazine (probably Chuck Klosterman) has my favorite quote about Aerosmith's Rocks, which I'll paraphrase here: They'd one day get their own roller coaster at Disney World, but on Rocks Aerosmith were their own roller coaster.

It doesn't have as many hits as Toys in the Attic or Pump, but Rocks is their best album, Aerosmith at their wildest, loudest and hardest (hell, even Testament couldn't make "Nobody's Fault" sound heavier). After "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," it's easy to forget that Aerosmith made an album that inspired Slash, James Hetfield and Kurt Cobain to pick up guitars, but with one to Rocks I wonder why anyone remembers "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" at all. It's the only Aersomith album to have only one power ballad, and like everything else on Rocks it's a doozy, with vocal harmonies that deserve the Mick and Keith comparisons and one of Joe Perry's most transcendent solos. Listening again, I can't blame them for going soft after Rocks--how were they ever going to top this?

Metallica, "Am I Evil?"

"It was a cover of a song by the British band Diamond Head, a group I was completely unfamiliar with. The opening lines of the song deeply disturbed me, mostly because I misinterpreted the meaning (although I suspect the guys in Metallica did, too.) The lyrics described bottomless vitriol toward the songwriter's mother and a desire to burn her alive. The chorus was malicious and straightforward: 'Am I evil? Yes I am. Am I evil? I am man.'

I can't remember precisely what I thought when I first heard those words--I was a teenager, so it was probably something creative and contradictory, and I'm relatively positive I imagined a nonexistent comma after the fourth am. But I do remember how I felt. I was confused and I was interested. And if I could have explained my mental state at fourteen with the clarity of language I have as a forty-year-old, assume my reaction would have been the same complicated question I ask myself today: Why would anyone want to be evil?"

--Chuck Klosterman, Preface to I Wear the Black Hat

G N' R Lies: "Nice Boys"

Great songs can happen to mediocre bands. We hear it all the time in music, less so often in metal, where "hits" are scarce and most metal bands with one actual high-charting single (Faith No More, Living Colour, Queensrÿche) support their place in history with a few great albums. But near the top of the mediocre band/great song heaps sits Rose Tattoo, barely remembered today as the Australian metal band that isn't AC/DC.

Most of Rose Tattoo's songs are routine hard rock fare without the leery charm of Bon Scott and the Young brothers. However, on "Nice Boys," they hit it out of the park, with the band's usual slide guitar riffs and badder-than-thou lyrics coming together for one solid jukebox anthem.



Rose Tattoo's version isn't all too different from Guns N' Roses' more famous cover on G N' R Lies. But why is it inferior?



To these ears, Rose Tattoo are trying too hard. The guitar playing feels labored next to Slash's, the vocals sound strained vs. Axl's feral interpretation. Both versions are great, and both bands have chemistry, but only one of them is iconic.

Chuck Klosterman, the literary world's most vocal GNR fan, might agree. "Because rock is so tied to the abstract concept of 'cool,' it seems distasteful when anyone tries too much," he once wrote in Spin. "Bands that are unpolished and lazy (the Replacements, Pavement, Motörhead) are always more likeable than groups that do 'whatever it takes' to achieve a modicum of success (Bon Jovi, Jimmy Eat World, Flickerstick)."

Now that we know that Axl can spend decades working on a song, it's clear that Guns N' Roses are neither unpolished nor lazy. But on "Nice Boys," they played the part with the finesse of a Scorsese cast.

Derek and the Dominos, "Layla"

Emma is a (literally, I fear) sleepless humanitarian. I won't hear from her for months, or even years at a time, but sometimes she'll call me when she's 15 minutes away from my home, stopping by New York for a quick UN Conference in between ecology work and community organizing in South America. She's one of the most accomplished people that I know, but she's never heard "Layla."



With the restless energy of a pixie, Emma was gushing to me about listening to Eric Clapton's Unplugged record on the way to New York, which includes a popular version of "Layla" more in tune with blue-eyed blues and and soft rock that Clapton is currently akin to. I grumbled something about the original being better, and her reaction was the musical equivalent of when someone finds out that a movie they cherish was originally a book.

Who dares talk about "Layla" anymore? Who talks about "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Satisfaction?" There's not much that I can say that hasn't been said better (I like Robert Christgau's 1970 review and Chuck Klosterman's "The Ninth Day" chapter in Killing Yourself to Live). But today I'll write that I love both how innovative and how traditional "Layla" is. It's a proto-metal song that's catchy enough for Beach Boys fans, a plugged-in, blues-based shuffle with Duane Allman on guitar and a sonata's worth of movements. When Martin Scorsese uses Jim Gordon's piano segment to emphasize a montage in Goodfellas, its closest companion is the use of Mascagni in Raging Bull.



That blend of classical and anti-establishment sensibilities has been distinguishing metal for decades. Years after he praised "Layla," Robert Christgau trashed Metallica's Master of Puppets in his Consumer Guide, writing that the band's "stock in trade is compositions not songs" and that he was "no more likely to invoke their strength of my own free will than I am The 1812 Overture's." Eric Clapton should be as proud as James Hetfield and Tchaikovsky.