When Aerosmith released their self-titled debut album in January of 1973, they were understandably still figuring out who they were as a band. It would take a few years and several additional records before they got there.

“Listening back to it, I’m thinking, ‘Well, I should have used this’ and ‘if I only knew then what I know now,'” guitarist Joe Perry told UCR in 2022, recalling the experience of hearing some of their earliest recordings. “But it’s like, ‘Yeah, but there’s a charm to that, because we were forming our own sound.’ Not only just the straight-up rock and roll stuff, but you could hear hints of funk and that kind of thing. It was buried in there. It kind of showed the different roads we were going to go down.”

Key Insights from Their Early Years

• Initial Struggles: Aerosmith was still defining their identity as a band during their debut album release.
• Musical Evolution: Joe Perry reflected on how their early recordings hinted at their future sound.
• Studio Influence: Jack Douglas played a crucial role in shaping their second album, Get Your Wings.
• Growth as Musicians: The band evolved significantly after a year of touring before recording Toys in the Attic.

They Had an Important Ally in the Studio

Jack Douglas proved to be a key addition to the group’s process, coming on board to help shepherd their second album, 1974’s Get Your Wings.

READ MORE: How Aerosmith Avoided Sophomore Jinx With ‘Get Your Wings’

“I listened to that first record over and over, and I thought, ‘These guys know how to write tunes,'” he remembered in a 2025 conversation that you can now hear on the UCR Podcast. My feeling was that Steven [Tyler] wasn’t using all of his vocal capabilities and that both Brad [Whitford] and Joe wanted to be more than they were.”

“They really wanted to work on being great guitarists, in the English kind of way [like Eric] Clapton [and Jimmy] Page,” he explains. They weren’t there yet, but they had a good head start. I think that’s why I brought in two other players for a few tunes on [Get Your Wings], which, you know, they learned those solos while they were out touring for a year before we got to Toys in the Attic. They came back after a year of touring as completely different guitarists. I mean, not that they were bad, but they weren’t [at the] at the level they wanted to be.

Listen to Jack Douglas on the ‘UCR Podcast’

The Strengths of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford

“Brad was a really technically good [guitar player] and Joe, he was going to go for it. That’s what I put in my pocket as [far as] who I was going to use when it came to a part that had to be played note for note,” Douglas details. “Then it was going to be Brad in the arrangement. If it was time to just go really out there, it was going to be Joe.”

“You know, I still call him the most dangerous guitarist in the world. He just goes for it. You never know where he’s going,” the producer adds. “So I would just let him go when we were doing his solos. I mean, even if he went into another key, that didn’t matter. He’d come back to something else that was great. I would give him probably four tracks to do solos on, and then I would put the solos together into what you hear at the end of [songs like] ‘Sweet Emotion’ or ‘Walk This Way.’

READ MORE: The Lasting Power of Aerosmith’s ‘Sweet Emotion’

Aerosmith’s Most ‘Truthful’ Album

When it came to capturing the sound of the future Boston rock legends in the studio, Douglas says the key to making it happen was having an extended period of pre-production — as long as a couple of months. The extra time proved to be beneficial for albums like Toys in the Attic, where the group had very little material written but plenty of riffs and ideas to build from. Their process could be fluid as well.

“In doing Rocks, we rehearsed in their warehouse for a number of months. Every day, I would go to that warehouse early and treat it acoustically with couches and rugs and whatever I could to make the room sound tolerable,” he recalls. “In the end, it sounded so good in there that I just brought in a remote truck and didn’t move them at all. [We] just left them where they were.”

“You know, that room dictated the keys to the song,” he shares. The tempos were dictated by what sounded good in that room [and] . So that’s what I like about Rocks. It’s like that is the most truthful of all the albums as far as I’m concerned. It really truly sounds like Aerosmith.”

READ MORE: Aerosmith’s Rocks: A Track-by-Track Guide