America’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, Aerosmith are gearing up for a short summer jaunt they are calling the Blue Army Tour. The general tenor of the tour seems to be to hit smaller markets, some of which the band has never played before.

“Originally that phrase Blue Army,”  explains bassist Tom Hamilton, “was actually something that somebody thought up, probably Joe, back in the ‘70s, when we would pull up to an arena, and there would be a long line of people waiting outside to get in, all wearing denim jackets and jeans. So they would all be in blue, and looking like they were wearing uniforms. So we started using that term, the Blue Army.”

The idea of a blue army is actually poetically represented by the “B-cities” to be hit on this tour. Because, like Rush and like Styx, Aerosmith are in a class of bands that pride themselves on having broken in the blue collar manufacturing environment and the wheat fields of the Mid-west. They were not a Rolling Stone band, which is the same thing as saying they were not a band of the coasts, or at least they weren’t until all of America couldn’t help but embrace them.

“That’s a really good point,” muses Tom. “I think you’re right as far as connecting that term Blue Army with the Midwest. When I think of it, I can picture pulling up to a gig right now, in my head, and it’s probably some arena we played in the Midwest. Because we’d play the heartland, and that’s where we really went and made our name. Obviously we started in Boston, and then we made it in Detroit, and that was huge for us. And I think that’s where the word really started spreading, in the Midwest, after we broke in Detroit. You think of the gigs on the coast, like Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and then Atlanta, Miami, a lot of those cities, you think of the audience as being a bit more jaded than Fort Wayne, Indiana or Dayton, Ohio or Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio’s like a country, because there’s so many big cities. And then, you know, out in LA, finally we broke out there. In LA, we used to play this venue in Santa Monica called the Santa Monica Civic Centre. We must have done that place a bunch of times. San Francisco, and then finally up to Seattle and Portland, Oregon. But yeah, the Midwest, when I think of the Blue Army, that’s kind of where I’m thinking. It’s funny, when we decided to use that term for the tour, I’m thinking, gee, I hope there aren’t a lot of people down south that are pissed-off thinking the Blue Army is like the Yankees (laughs).”

But of course, the Blue Army also came out for the likes of Ted Nugent and Kiss... 

“Well, Ted Nugent, being one of Leber Krebs’s bands, they were pretty much soldered to us for a lot of that. We did a ton of touring with Ted opening. And then, Kiss, what happened was, we got into a rivalry situation with them within the first couple of times playing with them. And they made it really fast. We played down in Delaware or something, and it was the first show that they opened for us. They showed up in the afternoon, around sound check time, and they were just a bunch of long-haired guys like us. And then that night, the roadies were coming out to the dressing room saying, ‘You gotta come out and see what’s going on out in the hall.’ We went out there, and there’s a friggin’ drum riser ten feet in the air with smoke and friggin’ red and blue lights flashing, and these guys dressed up in their outfits and their makeup. We’re like, ‘What the fuck?’ And so we figured, oh my God, we’re going to have to be on our toes to get out there and claim our territory. We had some dates around the Midwest, Detroit, where there was rumours of fights between the crews. But it was not very long before they were off on their own headlining. So we didn’t do a lot shows together.”

Not only did Aerosmith’s management company have Deadly Tedly on their roster, but also the notorious New York Dolls—definitely not a band for the Blue Army.

“Yeah, well, we would go to New York and everybody was, ‘Oh my God, the Dolls!” says Tom. “And the Dolls, to me, they couldn’t even fucking play. And we would go to New York, and everybody was saying, ‘Wow, look at them and what they’re doing. Why can’t you guys do that?’ And I’m thinking like, Jesus Christ, you’re telling me all I’ve got to do is learn three notes and put on women’s outfits, and that’s all you need to do to make it? I didn’t appreciate the whole camp thing. But they were the darlings of the New York press. But, you know, we did do a couple of tours with them where we were out in the hinterlands, the Midwest, in those areas, and that’s when people weren’t so sophisticated and jaded and getting the joke. But in the end, when they came out with ‘Personality Crisis,’ I started to realize, okay, it’s really about the vibe and the attitude and the joke. So I started to appreciate them more.”

At press time, the band hadn’t worked out a set list for the projected 16 shows over the month and a half (we’ve heard through the grapevine that Joe’s a little rankled with Steven about the light schedule), and given Tom’s description, like everything in Aerosmith’s camp, it’s a little complicated.

“Not at this point. We have a situation where there’s a certain body of songs that we need to play every night. Or we feel we need to play every night. There are some nights where if we don’t play them, people say, ‘Why the hell didn’t you play that song?’ And so, you know, there’s that, and then we have a bunch of slots in the set where we can bring in ‘One Way Street’ from the first album, or ‘Seasons of Whither’ from Get Your Wings. Different stuff, deeper tracks. So we’re going to be starting to meet about that in about a month and starting getting serious about rehearsing.”

Besides the tour, Aerosmith is celebrating the 40th anniversary of their breakthrough album, Toys In The Attic.

“Oh God, I wanted it to be an improvement in every way,” chuckles Tom, when asked what the band wanted to differently over and above 1974’s Get Your Wings. “Get Your Wings was a fun album to make, but there was a lot of pressure on us. The label was not happy with how the first record had done, and said, your next album better be bigger or we’re going to drop you. So there was a lot of people that were involved on the production side of that record, that I felt... I kind of resented them. We had Jack Douglas, which was awesome. He was our friggin’ dream producer. But then there were other people nosing in. So when it came time to do the Toys in the Attic album, I just wanted to make sure that whatever I came in with in terms of my playing and my songwriting was the best I could do. So that we could rule off any possibility of being bothered by outsiders, when we made that record. We were being judged by people that weren’t friends of ours, basically. So, you know, I worked my ass off, and put a lot of practice in, and put a lot of effort into coming up with some ideas. Like the bass parts and some of the guitar parts in ‘Sweet Emotion,’ so if I had the chance, I had something to offer. So I had ‘Sweet Emotion’ and ‘Uncle Salty.’ And both of those songs, written by me and Steven, made it on that album, and they ended up being favourites, especially ‘Sweet Emotion,’ obviously.”

“The bass part came to me during Get Your Wings,” continues Tom, pressed for more detail on this top ten highlight of Aerosmith’s rock-solid catalogue of classics. “We were hammering away, and we had all moved back into an apartment together, and it was 24 hours a day, get the band together and write a record. And so I had that bass part, which is the intro to the song. But I wasn’t really able to get a lot of attention, so when it came time to do Toys In The Attic, I wanted to make sure I had something maybe that was more developed, so that if the moment came up, I could stand up and say, ‘Hey, check this out.’ So I just worked really hard on coming up with some other parts of the song, like the sections between the verses, the instrumental parts between the verses, that sort of went into a high energy-type thing. There was an album by Jeff Beck called Rough and Ready, and I just loved the bass playing on it, and thought, oh my God, I wish I could play like that. And so I overcompensated. So it was inspired by that, and so I kind of came up with those sections between the verses. We’d recorded the basic tracks for Toys In The Attic, finished a day early, and we had a day free, so Jack said, ‘Hey, if anybody’s got anything, let’s hear it.’ And so I said, this is it. This is my chance. So I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got these song ideas.’ And so we put it together, and then the arrangement, and then later Steven wrote that amazing vocal. It would’ve been something that never happened if we hadn’t have had that extra day. We were happy to have Jack Douglas producing us, because Jack was very good at making sure that everybody got attention for their ideas.”

So will we hear more from Toys in the Attic, perhaps, given this anniversary year of that fine and diverse record?

“Well, if possible, but we haven’t really discussed that in depth,” says Tom in closing. “That’s something  that is part of the process when we are coming up with the set list. And coming up with the set list takes us at least the first day or two of rehearsal. It’s not easy figuring out how to make it different, yet give people what they’re expecting, and not deprive them of songs they might want to hear just so we can get credit for being risky or original (laughs).”

(Top slider photo by Ross Halfin)