Aerosmith's "Rocks" Joins "Toys in the Attic" on Summer Set List

In addition to announcing that guitarist Brad Whitford will rejoin Aerosmith on the road July 7th after he recuperates from a head injury, Joe Perry noted in a Reuters interview that the band will likely add their 1976 album Rocks to a summer set list that already includes the entire 1975 LP Toys in the Attic.

Perry said Aerosmith will likely swap out Toys for Rocks in approximately two weeks. "We do a lot of songs off the first four records anyway," he told VH1 Classic Radio earlier this month when asked if the band would consider joining Mötley Crüe and other bands rocking full albums on tour. Aerosmith's trek with ZZ Top kicked off on June 10th, and some fans began noticing that the band has skipped Toys' closing track "You See Me Crying." Perry admits that the song is too difficult for Steven Tyler to sing now — he calls it "one of the toughest songs probably in our catalog" — but thinks Tyler might be able to tackle the song after limbering up his voice with a few more shows.

Rocks features tracks including "Back in the Saddle" and "Nobody's Fault," but Perry tells Reuters he'd actually like a break out a less popular album on tour: 1979's Night in the Ruts — a record on which he didn't even originally play on every cut. "I think there are probably two songs on there that we could play pretty much right off the bat," he said. "The rest of them we'd have to sit down and really take them apart, relearn all the guitar parts. There are some rockin' songs on there and it would be fun to play them live."

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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