Steven Tyler points to what he calls the "delivery room" in his partner Joe Perry's Boneyard Studio. It's not much bigger than an office cubicle, crammed with an equal number of guns and guitars. "We basically sat in this room and didn't leave until we'd write something," says Tyler, 52, of the sessions that led to Aerosmith's thirteenth studio album, Just Push Play. "That was the rule. You could go down the hall to pee, and that's it. We locked ourselves down here with the idea we were gonna write the best album that's ever been written."

Tyler doesn't hide his enthusiasm for the way Aerosmith's new record, slated for release March 6th, came together. After twenty-eight years of working -- and fighting -- with the highest-priced producers in the business, this time he and Perry decided to handle the production by themselves.

"When we started to talk about outside producers, my stomach started to curdle," recalls Perry, 50. "To have someone come in, and us turn over control again, it didn't feel right."

As a result, Just Push Play has a rawer, edgier sound than anything Aerosmith have released since 1989's Pump. Gone is the glossy pop of 1997's Nine Lives, co-produced by Glen Ballard, and slick power ballads such as the Diane Warren-penned "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." In their place is a full-frontal guitar assault, bucketfuls of salacious attitude and the enduring Aerosmith mixture of wry turns of phrase paired with insinuating, combustible melodies.

Perry says the band encountered all kinds of skepticism about what became the first Aerosmith project produced mostly on their own: Producers they'd worked with in the past snickered, and Perry notes that some executives at the band's label, Columbia Records, were nervous about the decision. That only fueled the band's determination. "What better fodder for creativity than to prove somebody wrong, when you think you're right?" Tyler says, laughing as he walks from the recording studio on Perry's suburban-Boston estate to the mixing room, which has just been built in an adjacent farmhouse. Tyler had arrived a few minutes earlier in a siren-red VW Beetle, chomping an unlit cigar and looking every bit the professional gym-visiting rock star -- he can still wear the form-fitting T-shirt, still seems at home in the complement of gauze scarves he has favored since the Seventies. "Talk about the mother of invention," he continues. "How about the 'Oh, yeah? I'll show you, motherfucker.'"

And they have: Aerosmith returned to the public eye with a stunning Super Bowl halftime performance of "Walk This Way" with guests 'N Sync, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly. Since then, the first single, "Jaded," has infiltrated rock radio, and the band will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in March.

"Everybody told us we needed experts to do the technical things for us," Perry says. "I think a lot of sound guys are like lawyers: They don't want you to know what they're doing or how easy it is...As artists, we know there's nothing better than the first vocal Steven sings and the first guitar solo I take. I've been pulling guitar solos off demos for years. This way, those inspirations were built into the tracks from the start. So sometimes Joey [drummer Kramer] is just ripping, because he's hearing Steven's voice on there." Though new songs include the inevitable strutting shuffles and piano-based ballads, Tyler, Perry, guitarist Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton and Kramer have also taken some detours: "Avant Garden" exudes the serene tone of a late-Lennon psychedelic meditation, while "Just Push Play" is one of several tracks that borrow the sonic-collage techniques of modern electronica. "Light Inside" applies the exotic Eastern textures that the band used on "Taste of India," from 1997's Nine Lives, to a beseeching spiritual theme sung in knotted eight-part harmony by Tyler. Says Perry, "You just listen to the voice on that track -- without the band, it's really scary."

Columbia Records president Don Ienner says he and others at the label were not just scared but "blown away" by what they heard coming from the Boneyard: "It sounds like their third record. They're so invigorated. There's a newfound incredible passion that I think came from taking complete creative control themselves." He adds that the fact that they did it at home, at their own pace, was crucial: "They were under no time pressures, no constraints. They were home, and that helped everybody relax. They just had a look in their eyes. I think they should make a shrine out of Joe's studio. . . . This is their statement."

Once the basic tracks were moving along, Aerosmith faced another hurdle: the mix. They didn't want to interrupt the recording process every time one track was ready to mix. So Perry bought the farmhouse next door and within six months converted it into a mixing room. "That let us work on building the tracks over here," he says of the studio, "and have a mix going at the same time."

That's exactly what's happening on this cold winter day: While Tom Hamilton is laying down overdubs, Tyler and one of the band's songwriting collaborators, Mark Hudson, are listening to "Jaded," trying to figure out just how prominent a backing-vocal part should be. It's a tiny thing, the kind of part most people won't even hear. Tyler wants it mysterious but audible. Others think it should be further back in the mix. Eventually they give it the car test: A CD is burned, and the band plays it back at full volume in a rented sport utility vehicle with an ordinary off-the-rack stereo system. They come back to the mixing room, tweak again. Burn another disc. Try it all over again. Eventually, they find the balance they like.

These split hairs and sonic experiments have energized the band. "What we realized, ultimately -- it's all about the little things," Tyler says. "If you're gonna be honest as an artist, you're gonna realize that some of your worst mistakes were your best hits. There you are with Pro Tools, playing around, you've got three times as much fucking up. That equals, if you got the balls, three times as much great stuff. If you have the balls to make a mistake, then you can go somewhere.

"I think I realized this in a tub in a hotel in Hiroshima, the Four Seasons, with one candle going," Tyler adds. "I got a package from the U.S., the Latin Playboys on cassette. I'm listening to it, knowing those guys just turned on the machines and played, and there's a track on there that's got a vibe from hell. If that ain't what it's about for me anymore, then I've sold out. I love all the Number One hits and all that stuff, but there comes a place where if I can't look at Joe and say, 'Fuckin' A, I can't wait to get onstage and play this,' then it's over." He stops for a minute, drops one of his sly grins and adds, "This stuff, I can't wait to get out and play it."

[From Issue 864 — March 15, 2001]