Aerosmith- Pump 1989 (Review)

Aerosmith- Pump 1989 (Review)

By: Ghost Writer

Before anything, a little bit of history, I started really listening to Aerosmith when I was around 10 or 11 years old during a 6 month stay at an uncle's family house in Los Angeles, back in Mexico I remember people asking what then wellness this Aerosmith thing listening to? thing It was around 1987 or 1988 and the musical rage at the time were Motley Crue, Def Leopard and Bon Jovi, everybody was talking about those bands and I was frequently ridiculed for playing my Done With Mirrors and Permanent Vacation records, surely nobody argued about the stunning qualities of the music in those records, but Aerosmith was simply not a name well known to Mexico in those years, with the flood of internet information still many years ahead of time.

One day something changed, a mainstream newspaper put a report about the top rock touring bands in the USA, two of my favorite acts at the time came on the top, AC/DC and you guess it, Aerosmith, and suddenly from being a complete non trusty music outsider, I was seen as a musical visionary, someone who listened to music long before it became popularly known, I started being asked for musical recommendations and I was even assessing some friends at a local radio station.

Now, back to the main point, I was a big fan of Done With Mirrors, I listened earlier to an Aerosmith greatest hits record at my Grandpa's house, too many uncles living there with varied musical tastes enriched my musical vision, I learned there about The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad and Herb Albert among others, and of course that Aerosmith compilation, so when Done and Permanent came out during my USA stay, I was quick in getting into them, Done was raw and obscure, a great comeback for a band that was nearly destroyed in the late ups, early 80s, but I guess it showed so much promise that Permanent Vacation was easily to get into people's mind, people started to believe again in those old bad boys from Boston, Heart's Done Time and it's menacing beats, the desperate Magic Touch and the enormous hits Rag Doll and Dude (Looks like a Lady), but still, the big bang was still a couple of year ahead waiting to happen.

1989 was not only an important year for the world, with so many changes going on, musically it brought back Aerosmith back to the big leagues, Pump was the kind of stellar record no one believed Aerosmith was capable of making despite Permanent Vacation, everyone's hopes were on bands like Motley Crue, Guns and Roses and Skid Row, but Aerosmith came simply with one of the year's stellar recordings, opening with the blasting Young Lust with its hardwired guitars, stomping drums and Steven Tyler's always lust craving lyrics, and if that wasn't enough, they followed it with another stunner called F.I.N.E., again with Tyler's unique phrasing and the powerful grooves of Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton, arguably one of the best hard rock rhythm sections of the time, Aerosmith had managed to recapture their early magic in a way no other hard rock American bands like Kiss or Van Halen were able to, even being able to come up with huge commercial hits like Love In an Elevator, a monster of a song with monstrous riffing, a solo guitar duel, a great drum brake and more and more sinister, bluesy tinged, neo psychedelic guitars, and talking about psychedelics, they are also present on the massive Monkey On My Back, with Joe Perry's slashing riffs and a tale about the old druggy days.

Although on later records Aerosmith will get too corny on ballads, you can't forget that they weren't exactly jumping here on the power ballad trend of the late 80s, in fact, history tell us that Aerosmith since their first record were efficient practitioners of the epic ballad with the timeless Dream On from their debut album, so ballads like the classic Janie's Got a Gun and What It Takes are primal examples of an art form pretty well developed by this band at this point, while their funk side always present on Tyler, who always have reminded me of a rock n roll James Brown is brilliantly represented on the groovy The Other Side along with a powerful brass arrangement (A skill already developed on Dude...from Permanent Vacation), while on My Girl they simply lift up some of their Beatles influence like when they covered the Liverpool's quartet I'm Down on Permanent Vacation.

Pump in my opinion is the undisputed greatest recording from Aerosmith second coming of age, and it possible ranks fairly along their legendary recordings from the 70s, after Pump, the band simply lost some of the creative spark and became engaged on the star status they acquired thanks to this monumental recording, Get a Grip started an annoying trend of corny ballads made for table dancing and for elaborated videos, Pump was the last great Aerosmith record and the proof that the drug damaged 70s legend could make magic all over again.