Steven Tyler said that his original idea for the album cover was a teddy bear sitting in the attic with its wrist cut and stuffing spread across the floor. They decided, in the end, to put all of the animals in instead.
The album was ranked #229 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "Walk This Way" and the album's title track are part of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list.
For Aerosmith's previous album, 1974's Get Your Wings, the band began working with record producer Jack Douglas, who co-produced the album with Ray Colcord. In the liner notes to the 1993 reissue of Greatest Hits it was said by an unnamed member of the group that they "nailed" the album. At the beginning of 1975 the band started working at The Record Plant in New York City for the album that became Toys in the Attic. The sessions for Toys were produced by Douglas without Colcord - the album was engineered by Jay Messina with assistant engineers Rod O'Brien, Corky Stasiak and Dave Thoener. The songs for Toys were recorded with a Spectrasonics mixing board and a 16-track tape recorder. By this point, Aerosmith had fully matured as a band and Steven Tyler made sex the primary focus of his songwriting on the album.
According to producer Jack Douglas, "Aerosmith was a different band when we started the third album. They'd been playing Get Your Wings on the road for a year and had become better players - different. It showed in the riffs that Joe [Perry] and Brad [Whitford] brought back from the road for the next album. Toys in the Attic was a much more sophisticated record than the other stuff they'd done." In the band memoir Walk This Way, guitarist Joe Perry concurs, "When we started to make Toys in the Attic, our confidence was built up from constant touring." Preproduction took place in the attic at Angel Studios in Ashland, Massachusetts.When Toys in the Attic was released in April 1975, it eventually made #11 on the Billboard 200, a full 63 positions higher than Get Your Wings. The single release of "Sweet Emotion" became a minor hit on the Billboard Hot 100 reaching #36 in 1975 and "Walk This Way" reached #10 on the Hot 100 in 1977. The album also introduced to contemporary audiences a rock n' roll cover of "Big Ten Inch Record," which was originally an old R&B song recorded by Bull Moose Jackson in 1952. Rather than produce a rock reimagining, Aerosmith's cover largely stays true to the original song, down to its jazz-style instrumentation. For his review of Toys in the Attic for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the album's style a mix of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones riffs, and said it was filled with songs about sex with a different style than there ever was before. Greg Kot called the album a landmark of hard rock. For the Blender magazine review, Ben Mitchell called Toys in the Attic cocaine-influenced and mentions the songs "Toys in the Attic", "Walk This Way", and "Sweet Emotion" as "standout tracks".
Aerosmith make reference to the album and its lyrics in the song "Legendary Child". The line "But we traded them toys for other joys" refers to the title of the album and their struggles with addiction. It may also be referring to the title track of the same name. The line "I took a chance at the high school dance never knowing wrong from right" references lyrics from the songs "Walk This Way" and "Adam's Apple" respectively.
Track Listing
- Toys In The Attic
- Uncle Salty
- Adam's Apple
- Walk This Way
- Big Ten Inch Record
- Sweet Emotion
- No More No More
- Round And Round
- You See Me Crying
Download Link
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic
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