These days, anyone even remotely hip to pop culture knows of Aerosmith. But at the time the Boston, Massachusetts band’s second album slipped into stores in March 1974, they were still struggling to reach a wider audience.
Although the band’s first album Aerosmith, which was released the previous year, received mostly positive reviews, sales were initially on the thin side. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, after the band zoomed to greater than great heights with their third album, Toys In the Attic, that the disc garnered renewed interest – thanks to one of the tracks, “Dream On,” that rose from the dead and turned into a ginormous hit single.
On all accounts, Get Your Wings (Columbia Records) should have been the album that zapped Aerosmith into a star-studded stratosphere. After all, it was a vast improvement over Aerosmith, which was good but not terribly unique as it basically consisted of standard hard-rocking boogie beats. The 1974 follow-up blazes with intensity through and through. Every song is sharp and detailed, there’s an increased confidence in the band’s performances, the sound is thick and robust, and the energy is so surplus that it’s enough to light up Disneyland.
Teeming with menace and muscle, tunes such as the whiplash-inducing “S.O.S. (Too Bad),” the crunchy “Woman of the World” and the sizzling and swaggering “Same Old Song and Dance” (which proposes a blast of cool saxophone work) rank as true blue hard-rock masterpieces. Mean, lean and burning with hunger, these cuts capture the spot-on chemistry and coordination of Aerosmith in full flight.
On a bit of a gentler note but no less powerful is the moody and spellbinding “Seasons of Wither,” while “Pandora’s Box” dispenses a funky signal. “Spaced,” with its airy and progressive hues, really does produce a spacey feel. A fiery cover of the Johnny Burnett Trio’s “Train Kept a Rollin,'” which was popularized by the Yardbirds in the ’60s, is also included on Get Your Wings.
Shaped of ripping riffs, zinging and stinging with life, arresting vocals dripping with charisma and personality, wickedly hot drumming, deep and deadly bass lines, and ripe and fresh hooks and melodies, Get Your Wings struts with purpose and direction.
Aerosmith’s debut album may have been riddled with comparisons to the Rolling Stones, but Get Your Wings favors a different approach, as it bears a slight resemblance to the London lads. If references are to be named, the heavy rock of Led Zeppelin and Montrose come to mind. But there’s no doubt originality prevails, making this the album where Aerosmith actually got their wings …
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To each his own, I suppose!