AEROSMITH guitarist Brad Whitford spoke with Steven Rosen from Ultimate-Guitar.com recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Do you think that you fell into that trap of trying to write a hit on the Nine Lives or Just Push Play albums?

Brad Whitford: "Oh, absolutely! And it’s a point of contention in the band between different people about how things are approached and stuff. It’s one of those topics of discussion. But some of it was so obviously trying to write for radio and it just misses the mark completely. It becomes an embarrassment down the road, I think. 'How could I ever do that?'”

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Nine Lives and Just Push Play represent the most recent phase of the band. Before that, there Permanent Vacation, Pump, and Get a Grip. There were the Bruce Fairbairn-produced records and a bit more modern sounding than the previous albums.

Brad Whitford: "I would agree. That was an interesting period for us. Bruce Fairbairn was so fabulous to work with. He understood that and of course that’s what attracted him to the band and why he wanted to do it. And he tried to stay faithful to a lot of that; there’s a lot of good stuff on there. It was a good experience. We were out of our element; most of those records we recorded in Vancouver. Get out of your own element a little bit sometimes helps the situation. And we just spent a lot of time on the sounds; a lot of good hard rockin’ guitars and stuff on there. Even the stuff that became sort of hip kind of music, it wasn’t contrived; it didn’t seem to be contrived. It wasn’t like we were trying to hard and sometimes I think it just comes down to the writers and the material and everybody being on top of it. And being honest, being honest right upfront; no bullshit. We just started working on this new album with Brendan O’Brien. If he heard something that vaguely seemed to be going in that direction, he would just say so right away. And it was like, 'Oh, yes, please.' And I think Bruce was really good at that. It was a good period that made for some great period."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Then before that was Night In The Ruts, Rock In A Hard Place, and Done With Mirrors which was that sort of transition period. There were some problems going on and the band just couldn’t find its footing and there was no cohesion. Would you agree with that?

Brad Whitford: "Most definitely! People were drifting in and out and just getting the whole band to show up for anything, it just wasn’t happening. Things started drifting apart. On Draw the Line, we actually just started recording with myself, Joey, Tom, and Jack Douglas. We just started rollin’ tape and kind of doing our own things for several weeks before we could even get Joe and Steven into the room. Yeah, it was a strange time. It produced some interesting music; yeah, it was a weird period."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: And then we get to the early phase of the band with the first record, Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic, Rocks, and Draw the Line. That was the period of the band really finding their way and you honing those twin guitar riffs with Joe.

Brad Whitford: "That was definitely my favorite period. It was a whole different approach to making records then. Rocks and Toys, those are 16-track albums so you had to figure a lot of things out before you even got really going. 'Where are we putting the drums?' And you had to be very creative with your overdubbing and stuff like that because you didn’t have a lot of options as far as 24- and 36- and as many tracks as you wanted. Which has become a curse; this sort of infinite approach to it. It hasn’t changed much – we’ve always recorded most of what we’ve done in a live recording situation. But getting those great live performances and being creative with the overdubs and all of that. Mixing was fabulous because it was done by hand and each mix was a performance. Sometimes you’d have four guys on the board operating faders and memorizing it; you didn’t have computerized mixes. So, I don’t know, it was so much more organic which I think made it so much more fun and creative. You had to be creative all the way through."

Read the entire interview here.