In the mid-1980s, in a bid to channel some of Van Halen’s trailblazing sound and energy (and success) Aerosmith turned to the band’s super producer Ted Templeman, who was behind the desk for the band’s six “monstrous” albums up to that point. But nerves, Joe Perry says, blighted the sessions for what would become 1985’s Done With Mirrors.
Templeman had credits with The Doobie Brothers, genius madman Captain Beefheart, and Van Morrison before playing his role in turning Eddie Van Halen and company into one of the biggest bands in the world.
With Aerosmith's own hotshot guitar duo, Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, returning to the fold after several years away, hiring Templeman felt like a shrewd move as the bad boys from Boston set about proving they could still roll with the punches. However, speaking in the new issue of Guitar World, Perry says it wasn’t quite the dynamic pairing they’d hoped.
By his admission, Aerosmith had “burned so many bridges that nobody would sign us,” and so, heading into the studio without a record deal, he says “the pressure was on”. That impacted their sessions with Templeman greatly.
“We got to work with Ted, who had an amazing reputation with Van Halen, which was incredible,” he reflects. “They sounded monstrous, and I guess we were expecting more from him, so we were both kind of nervous. We were nervous to work with him, and he was nervous to work with us, which kind of surprised us.
“I always felt like that record could have been better if we had worked on it some more,” he adds in retrospect. “Or if everybody got in the control room together and said, ‘We kind of feel uptight about working with you,’ but I don’t know... it’s just how it went.”
The band never addressed the elephant in the room. And while Done With Mirrors was a significant upgrade from 1982's Rock in a Hard Place, which saw the band filling Perry and Whitford-sized holes with Meat Loaf and Stevie Nicks session player Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay, it wasn’t a roaring success. But it served a larger purpose.
“I still wish I could have maybe polished a few more things and put a couple more overdubs on,” he continues. “All in all, I think it did what it was supposed to do. It kind of showed me what we needed to do for the next one.
“We had to do that record to get to the next step and take ourselves out of the usual way we were writing and recording.”
Later moving up to Vancouver, the band reworked their writing process to pen what is arguably their strongest three album run in Permanent Vacation, Pump, and Get a Grip.
“That started a whole new thing for us,” Perry adds, accepting that Done With Mirrors needed to happen before the band could properly get their mojo back.
Aerosmith were forced to retire from touring last year amid Steven Tyler’s ongoing vocal issues, but bassist Tom Hamilton has said that the band aren’t quite dead yet.
For more from Joe Perry, Yngiwe Malmsteen, Kiki Wong, and plenty more beyond them, grab a copy of the new issue of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.
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