At some point in the 1990s, amidst the rising popularity of the compact disc, an older cousin gave me his old cassettes of Aerosmith’s Get a Grip and Pump. By the time I entered junior high school in 1997, Aerosmith had become one of my favorite bands, in spite of the unending mockery I got from my parents. “Aerosmith? Are those guys still alive?” and “You’re 13 years old! Shouldn’t you be listening to newer music?” were among some of the frequent, heckling phrases I endured at that tender age.
Needless to say, when Nine Lives hit the shelves I was excited: a new album from Aerosmith! This’ll prove ’em wrong and show that these guys are still rockin’ just as hard as the likes of Bush, Fastball and Matchbox 20!
Well, as it turned out, I was only partially correct. The disc wasn’t a riff-laden hard rock magnum opus like Bush’s Sixteen Stone (please note the sarcasm…). But listening to it today, I have to say that the handful of good songs on the album have stood the test of time better than a lot of the other mainstream hits to come out of the late 90s.
I must admit though, even at the age of 13, I couldn’t help but scratch my head at the sound of this album when I first popped it into the cassette player. It was so slickly produced and layered with orchestral overdubs, it sounded almost like a different band than the one that had recorded Pump, let alone Toys In The Attic. It was also littered with ballads, and I can remember battling with my tape deck as I endeavored to jump to the hard rock numbers and skip drawn-out ballads like “Hole In My Soul.”
Listening to it today, I have mixed feelings. Aerosmith still had the knack for writing guitar-fueled hard rock songs in the vein of their earlier material. “Crash” is a great little song that recalls the furious pace of “Rats In The Cellar.” Likewise, “Attitude Adjustment” and the title track both have the same rockin’ vibe to them. It was cleaned-up and lacked the grit of the 70s, but the formula was still largely the same as the good old days.
Of all the songs on here, “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” is the one I remember most vividly, right down to the hokey music video of Steven Tyler being shipped through a mental ward or hospital. The song still holds up well ten years after its release. The horns and infectious chorus put it in the same league as their hits from the Permanent Vacation-era for me. “Taste Of India” was also one of my favorites when I first bought this album, though the whole Eastern motif is pretty hokey-sounding nowadays. Still, it’s a decent track, with
Sadly, for every good track, there’s a cringe-inducing ballad or formulaic pop song. “Hole In My Soul” is a wretched affair, a sort of precursor to “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” in terms of cheese and melodrama. “
Aerosmith still had what it took to write good rock songs and catchy radio hits at this point, and that commands some respect in itself. But the band’s dependence on outside writers and their focus on power-ballads had reached a turning point, and today Nine Lives can only be described as a hollow listening experience.