Given the physical toll that Aerosmith’s members took on their bodies throughout the 1970s, the most of them should consider themselves blessed to be alive today. The “Bad Boys From Boston” put a lot of miles on their neurological system by getting as blitzed out of their heads as they could when they were recording records like Toys in the Attic, even if they have since tried to call it quits and have experienced their fair share of illnesses over the years. You can be duped by that kind of thinking, which is why Steven Tyler wasn’t persuaded he composed the song “You See Me Crying” when he heard it.
Okay, so the ballad isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Aerosmith. Songs like “Dream On,” which feature gospel-tinged piano and Tyler’s heartbreaking yet powerfully intense vocals, are the kind of show-stopping numbers that belong in a theater rather than a stadium. The band undoubtedly showed their sensitive side when writing these songs.
One of the band’s most melodically intricate tracks to date is “Home Tonight” from Rocks, despite the fact that the song attempted the same concept. This is the kind of piano showcase that nobody saw coming—it sounds nearly exactly like Paul McCartney’s solo work with the majority of the whimsy removed—in contrast to everything being dominated by guitars.
But no amount of fantastic music could prevent the band from disintegrating; Joe Perry quit the group because he believed his wife was being mistreated while they were on the road. When they were revisiting their biggest successes, Tyler didn’t even realize he had written the song. Perry and Tyler did not even get the chance to reconcile until after Aerosmith’s collapse and Perry’s solo tour.
Perry recalled telling Tyler that they had written the song in the first place on one of their press tours to promote their return, saying in Rocks, “It was one hell of a moment when [a DJ] put on ‘You See Me Crying.'” “That’s out of sight, we should cover that tune,” Steven remarked. Who is the creator of this? “What the fuck are you discussing?” I stated. “That’s who we are.” Is it? I was wondering where I was. In the singing booth.
If anything, Tyler’s ignorance of the song’s existence could have been a warning of things to come. When the band became big sensations in the late 1980s, Tyler seemed to have forgotten what a romantic or even sentimental lyric was, based on the form of their ballads moving forward.
While they did have some amazing lines on songs like “Janie’s Got a Gun” and “What It Takes,” Tyler started to substitute songs about a couple’s love for songs like “Pink,” which are filled with some of the funniest double entendres you’ve ever heard, or dad jokes. We might have avoided later songs that sounded like Dr. Seuss’s Guide to Sex if Tyler had chosen to go back to those earlier ballads like “You See Me Crying.”