TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
ON A SATURDAY NIGHT
IF WHAT YOU SEE
IS WHAT YOU GET
THEN GIVE ME A BITE
Rock in a Hard Place
is the seventh
studio album
by American
hard rock band
released on
August 27, 1982,
by Columbia Records.
It was certified gold on
November 10, 1989.
It is the only
Aerosmith album
not to feature
guitarist
Joe Perry,
following his departure
from the band in 1979.
Fellow guitarist
Brad Whitford
also left during
the recording in 1981.
The band spent
$1.5 million
on the recording
of this album,
which saw them
reunited with producer
Jack Douglas
Background
Aerosmith
had released
six studio albums
during the 1970s.
But as the decade concluded,
multiple problems arose.
Guitarist
Joe Perry
had left the band
in 1979
after incidents at
the World Series of Rock
in Cleveland, Ohio
and was replaced by
Jimmy Crespo.
Meanwhile,
Steven Tyler's
drug abuse
increased.
After recording the single
"Lightning Strikes",
guitarist
Brad Whitford
also left Aerosmith
in 1981
and was replaced by
Rick Dufay
when the recording
of the album
was finally complete.
Guitarist
Dufay
recalls the difficulty
in completing the album
in a 2008 interview:
"They tried to make that album
for two years
but Steven couldn't finish stuff
and they had trouble
with their
original producer
but once they got
Jack and me on board,
we were just pushing it.
When we went down to Florida,
Steven was way too fucked up
to do anything,
he was nodding off
when he was trying
to write lyrics
and I said to Jack
that we had to get him out
and get him together.
It took about two
or three months
and we pretty much
nursed him back
to health.
We got him off
the hard stuff,
sat in the sun
and had some laughs
and I established
a bond with him.
It's pretty well documented
on the
Behind the Music show.
He was pretty sick
and I just
took care of him
and even had
to wipe his ass for him !!
An outtake
from the album titled
“Riff & Roll”
was released on their
1991 box set,
Pandora's Box.
From contemporary
reviews,
J. D. Considine
lamented in
Rolling Stone
how the band had
decided to maintain
their old sound
on the album
in spite of the
heavier direction
of mainstream
rock music in
the early 1980s,
stating that
"fast power chords had made
Aerosmith's bluesy boogie
almost obsolete".
He praised
"Perry lookalike Jimmy Crespo"'s
guitar playing,
but wrote that
"despite an occasional burst of
primal energy,
much of the LP
rocks by rote."
Ken Tucker
of The Philadelphia Inquirer
gave the album a one
out of five star rating,
Saying that
"It's sad when once-vital
hard rock bands
outlast their usefulness,
if only because there
are so few of them around."
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