Aerosmith

In 1966, four years before he co-founded Aerosmith, Joe Perry watched Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck trade leads in the Yardbirds' two-guitar frontline in the film Blow-Up. "That was proto-Aerosmith," he said later, "two guitar players who can pretty much play with that kind of energy and that kind of creativity coming from two different schools" — a lineup he called rare for its era. Steven Tyler independently named the group among the bands Aerosmith "thought about... paying homage to," and the twin-guitar split Perry built with Brad Whitford directly extends that Page/Beck template.

listen: upstream & heresource: Something Else! Reviews — Joe Perry on the Yardbirds ↗share

1965

Train Kept A-Rollin'The Yardbirds

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1974

Train Kept A-Rollin'Aerosmith

listen forPerry has called the Yardbirds' Having a Rave Up his gateway record: "What really struck me was Jeff's playing. What an eye opener!" — the discovery, he said, that made him think "I want my guitar to sound like that." Cue up the Yardbirds' 1965 "Train Kept A-Rollin'," with its stop-start, train-whistle guitar intro, against Aerosmith's 1974 studio cover on Get Your Wings: the same rev-and-brake device opens both, Perry and Whitford's dual attack standing in for Beck's showcased lead.

By the summer of 1969, Steven Tyler had seen a lot of amateur bands, so when he caught Joe Perry's power trio at a Sunapee, New Hampshire club called The Barn, his review had a catch: "When I first saw these guys, they were terrible... but they did [Peter Green's] 'Rattlesnake Shake,' and there was a f---ing energy that all the bands I'd been in before couldn't do ever." That performance, by Tyler's own account, is what convinced him Perry was worth building a band around — and decades later Aerosmith still closes shows with Green's blues, once bringing original Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood onstage to play it.

listen: upstream & heresource: Biography.com — How Steven Tyler and Joe Perry Formed Aerosmith (formation story, Fleetwood Mac influence) ↗share

1969

Rattlesnake ShakeFleetwood Mac

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1973

Rattlesnake ShakeAerosmith

listen forFleetwood Mac's 1969 "Rattlesnake Shake," built on Peter Green's minor-key riff and a slow-building vocal howl, is the exact song that, per Tyler, sealed the Perry/Tyler partnership. Put it beside Aerosmith's own reading — cut live at a Cincinnati radio session in 1973 and later released on the Pandora's Box box set — and listen for how closely the band keeps Green's original phrasing and tempo rather than speeding it into their own style: a rare Aerosmith cover played as tribute, not reinvention.

Steven Tyler's first rock hero wasn't a guitarist but a frontman: "Mick Jagger was the baddest fucking character on my block," he said, admitting he was initially "a little afraid because I didn't want anyone to say I looked like Mick." Early reviewers noticed the resemblance too, tagging Aerosmith as Rolling Stones knockoffs — a comparison Tyler answered less by denying it than by raising the bar: "It's not like I'm trying to be the poor man's Rolling Stones. It's that someday, maybe, I can get close to their stature."

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1969

Honky Tonk WomenThe Rolling Stones

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1976

Last ChildAerosmith

listen forPerry has pointed to the Stones' rhythmic pocket rather than their riffs: "The Stones were a band that could really nail it... they always had that feel because they analyzed Johnnie Johnson's piano playing" — a nod to Chuck Berry's longtime pianist. Put the loose, horn-less swagger of the Stones' 1969 "Honky Tonk Women" against Aerosmith's 1976 "Last Child": both ride a single funk-inflected guitar vamp instead of a hook, the verse content to groove rather than announce itself.