Get Your Wings is the second studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released March 1, 1974. The album is the first to feature production from Jack Douglas, who produced the band's next four albums. Three singles were released from the album, but none of them made the pop charts.
The album has been released in stereo and quadraphonic, and certified triple platinum by the RIAA.
Background
In 1973, Aerosmith released its debut album to little fanfare. As guitarist Joe Perry recalled in the 1997 band memoir Walk This Way, "There was no nothing at all: no press, no radio, no airplay, no reviews, no interviews, no party. Instead the album got ignored and there was a lot of anger and flipping out." The band had been somewhat nervous recording their first album, with vocalist Steven Tyler going so far to alter his singing voice, and they had very little chemistry with producer Adrian Barber. The band moved into an apartment in Brookline and began intensive rehearsals in a dungeon-like basement of a store called Drummer's Image on Newbury Street. By the time they began recording Get Your Wings, however, Jack Douglas had agreed to work with the band, beginning a long and successful studio collaboration. According to Perry, Columbia had wanted the band to work with Bob Ezrin, who was also a producer with Alice Cooper. It was Ezrin who introduced the band to Douglas, and for "all practical purposes, Jack became our producer. Ezrin might have shown up three or four times, but only to make suggestions, like bringing in additional musicians to augment our sound."
Recording and composition
Get Your Wings was recorded at the Record Plant in New York City between December 1973 and January 1974. Jay Messina engineered the sessions. Douglas later recalled, "To the best of my memory, the preproduction work for Get Your Wings started in the back of a restaurant that was like a Mob hangout in the North End. I commuted there from the Copley Plaza Hotel and they started to play me the songs they had for their new album. My attitude was: 'What can I do to make them sound like themselves?'"
One of the most famous tracks is a cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", made famous by one of Aerosmith's favorite bands, the Yardbirds. According to Douglas, the crowd noise at the end of the track was taken from a "wild track" from The Concert for Bangladesh, which he had worked on. The single version omits the echo and crowd noise. Notable for its start/stop groove, the song became their signature show-stopper, and still ends concerts today. In 1997, drummer Joey Kramer explained to Alan Di Perna of Guitar World that its unique rhythmic feel originated "probably just from jamming on it at soundcheck and experimenting with putting a James Brown kind of beat behind it. I played with a lot of R&B-type groups before joining Aerosmith". In the same interview, Perry stated that "Train" was the one song "we all had in common when we came together."
In 1997, Perry told Aerosmith biographer Stephen Davis:
The tracks were the stuff we'd been working on at our apartment on Beacon Street in the summer of '73. I wrote the riff to "Same Old Song and Dance" one night in the front room and Steven just started to sing along. "Spaced" happened the same way in the studio, with a lot of input from Jack. "S.O.S." meant "Same Old Shit" and came from the rehearsals at the Drummer's Image... "Lord of the Thighs" and "Seasons of Wither" were Steven's songs. Of all the ballads Aerosmith has done, "Wither" was the one I liked best.
In his autobiography, Tyler writes that "Seasons of Wither" had been "germinating in my head for a long time, but the other more sinister tracks, like 'Lord of the Thighs', came from the seedy area where we recorded the album. 'Lord of the Thighs' was about a pimp and the wildlife out on the street." Tyler plays the piano on "Lord of the Thighs", whose opening beat is similar to the one Kramer would tap out a year later in "Walk This Way". He stated that the title was a pun on the famous William Golding novel Lord of the Flies, and "the critics hated us for this. We weren't supposed to be smart enough to use literary references".
The original lyric for "Same Old Song and Dance" – 'Got you with the cocaine, found with your gun' – was altered for the single version to 'You shady looking loser, you played with my gun'.
The closing "Pandora's Box" was written by Kramer, who recalled in 1997: "The summer before, we'd rented a farmhouse in East Thetford, Vermont, while we were rehearsing in New Hampshire, and that's where I wrote the melody of 'Pandora's Box.' Steven wrote the lines about women's liberation, a big new issue in those times." According to Douglas, the clarinet at the start of the track is a union engineer playing "I'm in the Mood for Love".
In 2014 Perry reflected, "We all put in endless hours, fueled by whatever substances were available...I knew the album, in spite of a few bright spots, still didn't capture the power of the band. We were better than the record we were making. And yet I didn't know how to get there. I didn't know how to get from good to great.
"On the second album," Tyler noted, "the songs found my voice. I realised that it's not about having a beautiful voice and hitting all the notes; it's about attitude."Get Your Wings is the second studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released March 1, 1974. The album is the first to feature production from Jack Douglas, who produced the band's next four albums. Three singles were released from the album, but none of them made the pop charts.
The album has been released in stereo and quadraphonic, and certified triple platinum by the RIAA.
Background
In 1973, Aerosmith released its debut album to little fanfare. As guitarist Joe Perry recalled in the 1997 band memoir Walk This Way, "There was no nothing at all: no press, no radio, no airplay, no reviews, no interviews, no party. Instead the album got ignored and there was a lot of anger and flipping out." The band had been somewhat nervous recording their first album, with vocalist Steven Tyler going so far to alter his singing voice, and they had very little chemistry with producer Adrian Barber. The band moved into an apartment in Brookline and began intensive rehearsals in a dungeon-like basement of a store called Drummer's Image on Newbury Street. By the time they began recording Get Your Wings, however, Jack Douglas had agreed to work with the band, beginning a long and successful studio collaboration. According to Perry, Columbia had wanted the band to work with Bob Ezrin, who was also a producer with Alice Cooper. It was Ezrin who introduced the band to Douglas, and for "all practical purposes, Jack became our producer. Ezrin might have shown up three or four times, but only to make suggestions, like bringing in additional musicians to augment our sound."
Recording and composition
Get Your Wings was recorded at the Record Plant in New York City between December 1973 and January 1974. Jay Messina engineered the sessions. Douglas later recalled, "To the best of my memory, the preproduction work for Get Your Wings started in the back of a restaurant that was like a Mob hangout in the North End. I commuted there from the Copley Plaza Hotel and they started to play me the songs they had for their new album. My attitude was: 'What can I do to make them sound like themselves?'"
One of the most famous tracks is a cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", made famous by one of Aerosmith's favorite bands, the Yardbirds. According to Douglas, the crowd noise at the end of the track was taken from a "wild track" from The Concert for Bangladesh, which he had worked on. The single version omits the echo and crowd noise. Notable for its start/stop groove, the song became their signature show-stopper, and still ends concerts today. In 1997, drummer Joey Kramer explained to Alan Di Perna of Guitar World that its unique rhythmic feel originated "probably just from jamming on it at soundcheck and experimenting with putting a James Brown kind of beat behind it. I played with a lot of R&B-type groups before joining Aerosmith". In the same interview, Perry stated that "Train" was the one song "we all had in common when we came together."
In 1997, Perry told Aerosmith biographer Stephen Davis:
The tracks were the stuff we'd been working on at our apartment on Beacon Street in the summer of '73. I wrote the riff to "Same Old Song and Dance" one night in the front room and Steven just started to sing along. "Spaced" happened the same way in the studio, with a lot of input from Jack. "S.O.S." meant "Same Old Shit" and came from the rehearsals at the Drummer's Image... "Lord of the Thighs" and "Seasons of Wither" were Steven's songs. Of all the ballads Aerosmith has done, "Wither" was the one I liked best.
In his autobiography, Tyler writes that "Seasons of Wither" had been "germinating in my head for a long time, but the other more sinister tracks, like 'Lord of the Thighs', came from the seedy area where we recorded the album. 'Lord of the Thighs' was about a pimp and the wildlife out on the street." Tyler plays the piano on "Lord of the Thighs", whose opening beat is similar to the one Kramer would tap out a year later in "Walk This Way". He stated that the title was a pun on the famous William Golding novel Lord of the Flies, and "the critics hated us for this. We weren't supposed to be smart enough to use literary references".
The original lyric for "Same Old Song and Dance" – 'Got you with the cocaine, found with your gun' – was altered for the single version to 'You shady looking loser, you played with my gun'.
The closing "Pandora's Box" was written by Kramer, who recalled in 1997: "The summer before, we'd rented a farmhouse in East Thetford, Vermont, while we were rehearsing in New Hampshire, and that's where I wrote the melody of 'Pandora's Box.' Steven wrote the lines about women's liberation, a big new issue in those times." According to Douglas, the clarinet at the start of the track is a union engineer playing "I'm in the Mood for Love".
In 2014 Perry reflected, "We all put in endless hours, fueled by whatever substances were available...I knew the album, in spite of a few bright spots, still didn't capture the power of the band. We were better than the record we were making. And yet I didn't know how to get there. I didn't know how to get from good to great.
"On the second album," Tyler noted, "the songs found my voice. I realised that it's not about having a beautiful voice and hitting all the notes; it's about attitude."false2025-11-07 21:32:09Get Your Wings19931993-01-011993-01-0138Hard Rock1112682110030f6ac4355-a051-49a5-ba59-f55178137aed3d2b98e5-556f-4451-a3ff-c50ea18d57cb29346fb6-69c8-3f12-90c3-9d6cbce18259/media/data/media5/Music/Aerosmith/Get Your Wings/folder.jpgAerosmithAerosmithAerosmith is an American rock band formed in Boston in 1970. The group consists of Steven Tyler (vocals), Joe Perry (guitar), Tom Hamilton (bass), Joey Kramer (drums), and Brad Whitford (guitar). Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has also incorporated elements of pop rock, heavy metal, glam metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many subsequent rock artists. Aerosmith is sometimes referred to as "the Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". The primary songwriting team of Tyler and Perry is sometimes referred to as the "Toxic Twins".
Perry and Hamilton were originally in a band together, the Jam Band, where they met up with Tyler, Kramer, guitarist Ray Tabano, and formed Aerosmith; in 1971, Tabano was replaced by Whitford. They released a string of multi-platinum albums starting with their eponymous debut in 1973, followed by Get Your Wings in 1974. The band broke into the mainstream with Toys in the Attic (1975) and Rocks (1976). Draw the Line and Night in the Ruts followed in 1977 and 1979, respectively. Throughout the 1970s, the band toured extensively and charted a dozen Hot 100 singles, including their first Top 40 hit "Sweet Emotion" and the Top 10 hits "Dream On" and "Walk This Way". By the end of the decade, they were among the most popular hard rock bands in the world and developed a following of fans, often referred to as the "Blue Army". Drug addiction and internal conflict led to the departures of Perry and Whitford in 1979 and 1981, respectively. The band did not fare well and the album Rock in a Hard Place (1982) failed to match previous successes.
Perry and Whitford returned to Aerosmith in 1984. After a comeback tour, they recorded Done with Mirrors (1985), which did not meet commercial expectations. It was not until a 1986 collaboration with rap group Run–D.M.C. on a remake of "Walk This Way", and the band's multi-platinum album, Permanent Vacation (1987), that they regained their previous level of popularity. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the band won numerous awards for music from the multi-platinum albums Pump (1989), Get a Grip (1993), and Nine Lives (1997), while they embarked on their most extensive concert tours to date. Their biggest hits during this period included "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", "Angel", "Rag Doll", "Love in an Elevator", "Janie's Got a Gun", "What it Takes", "Livin' on the Edge", "Cryin'", and "Crazy". The band also filmed popular music videos and made notable appearances in television, film, and video games. In 1998, they achieved their first number-one hit with "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from Armageddon's soundtrack and the following year, their roller coaster attraction opened at Walt Disney World. Their comeback has been described as one of the most remarkable and spectacular in rock history. Additional albums Just Push Play (which included the hit "Jaded"), Honkin' on Bobo (a collection of blues covers), and Music from Another Dimension! followed in 2001, 2004, and 2012, respectively. In 2008, they released Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which is considered to be the best-selling band-centric video game. After five decades, the band continues to tour and record music. From 2019 to 2022, the band had a concert residency in Las Vegas, which was interrupted from 2020 to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2023, the band began a year-and-a-half-long farewell tour, called "Peace Out: The Farewell Tour".
Aerosmith is the best-selling American hard rock band of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide, including over 85 million records in the United States. With 25 gold, 18 platinum, and 12 multi-platinum albums, they hold the record for the most total certifications by an American group and are tied for the most multi-platinum albums by an American group. They have achieved twenty-one Top 40 hits on the US Hot 100, nine number-one Mainstream Rock hits, four Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, and ten MTV Video Music Awards. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and were ranked number 57 and 30, respectively, on Rolling Stone's and VH1's lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2013, Tyler and Perry were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2020, the band received the MusiCares Person of the Year award.