‘Get Your Wings’: Aerosmith’s Classic Second Album
‘Get Your Wings’ is the album where the band truly got theirs.
If you were an Aerosmith fan in 1974 you were probably really hip, from Boston, or both. At that point, the burgeoning group lacked much airplay and a breakthrough hit. Even though “Dream On” was hiding in plain sight on their debut album, it wouldn’t make the charts for another year. Word was getting out about this scrappy band that was tearing up clubs in the Northeast, however. All they needed was an album that would capture that lightning.
They got it on Get Your Wings, the sophomore effort from 1974. It’s no secret that Aerosmith were dissatisfied with the production of the debut. Enter Jack Douglas, who was both a veteran and an upstart: As a janitor at the Record Plant, he’d cleaned up after Jimi Hendrix and became an assistant engineer on John Lennon’s Imagine. He was fresh from sessions with the infamous New York Dolls, and in Aerosmith he found a band with just as much swagger and a lot more discipline.
Order the Get Your Wings 50th Anniversary deluxe vinyl here.
From the start, Douglas refines the band’s interplay, letting Joe Perry and Brad Whitford arrange their guitar parts instead of just doubling each other’s. He hits on the band’s inherent tunefulness, as the riff on “Same Old Song & Dance” grabs you from the start. And he makes sure you can hear every one of Steven Tyler’s lyrics, which are now displaying his trademark cheeky humor. In fact, one of the funniest jokes in the Aerosmith catalogue may be the moment in “Pandora’s Box” where Tyler rhymes “city slicker” with….well, go listen to it.
It wasn’t all laughs, though. “Seasons of Wither” continues the thoughtful streak of “Dream On.” Apparently inspired by the New England winter, it’s a moody gem that remains a band and fan favorite. With its long and atmospheric keyboard intro, “Spaced” may be the closest Aerosmith ever got to prog rock. Lyrically it’s their take on Bowie’s “Space Oddity” or Elton’s “Rocket Man,” about the dislocation you might feel when you’re out in the stars. Another gem, “Woman of the World,” shows the band’s growing instrumental prowess, particularly Tom Hamilton’s supple basslines.
All that said, Get Your Wings is probably best known for a cover tune. The Yardbirds were an eternal favorite of theirs, and “Train Kept a-Rollin” was in their club setlists from day one. By the time they recorded it, they’d devised a unique two-part arrangement, first funky and then full-throttle. It became such an Aerosmith standard that when Jeff Beck played it post-Yardbirds, he reportedly got asked why he was covering an Aerosmith song. Tyler and Beck finally rocked it together at the Hollywood Bowl in 2016; Joe Perry, meanwhile, has played it live with fellow ex-Yardbird Jimmy Page.
It would take another round of furious touring and one more trip to the studio before the band made its national breakthrough. But the elements were now in place, and Get Your Wings was where Aerosmith truly got theirs.
