Aerosmith May Never Release Another Album
Aerosmith kicked off a tour in Bulgaria last week that will take them throughout Europe and North America over the next four months, but don’t expect to hear another new album anytime soon. “Our contract to Sony is fulfilled and we’re free agents right now,” guitarist Joe Perry tells Rolling Stone. “We’re trying to figure out what that means. I don’t even know if making new albums makes sense anymore. Maybe we’ll just release an EP every six months. I don’t know what the future looks like.”
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Part of the group’s reluctance to commit to a new album comes from the tepid response to their 2012 LP Music From Another Dimension!, which was their first collection of original songs in over a decade. It debuted at #5 on the charts before disappearing without a trace. None of the four singles even scraped the Billboard Hot 100. “I’m obviously disappointed it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to,” says Perry. “But on the other hand, once a record is out, it’s out forever. Maybe in two years someone might hear a song off it and go, ‘What was that song? It should have been on the radio.’ And it might hit a wave again.”
Perry argues that factors beyond the band’s control sunk the album. “It was just one of those situations,” he says. “[Former Columbia Records chairman] Steve Barnett was the head of the company at the time. He was our biggest champion and he left the label three weeks before the album came out. At the same time, we tied our single [‘Legendary Child’] to the G.I. Joe movie. Part of the plan was also to play the song on American Idol. We were driving down there when we found out they were delaying the movie for six months because they want to re-film it in 3D.”
Despite the problems, Perry remains extremely proud of Music From Another Dimension!. “It felt like a record in the old tradition to me,” he says. “Everybody had a song on there. Brad [Whitford] wrote songs with Steven Tyler. Tom [Hamilton] wrote some himself. We had done it every other way, so we decided to go back to the old way. [Producer] Jack [Douglas] was there helping us. It worked out so well. The record was…is a great record.”