As a young adolescent I wasn’t cool enough to know about anything cool.  The year 1989 was a breakout time for me – both in my interests and in terms of my acne.  Prior to that year it was all Weird Al and whatever I heard on pop radio.  Before 1989 all I wanted was to keep my toe in the water so that I didn’t fall completely behind in youth culture and wind up asking “What’s a Fresh Prince?” or not understanding that ‘bad’ was ‘good’ and ‘rad’ was radically better.

            What people don’t know these days is that the 80s didn’t end until 1992, so in 1989 we were definitely still into hair metal, hair spray, leather and denim jackets, hockey player and mullet haircuts, Paula Abdul and the mall.  The big event that year was Tim Burton’s Batman film, which had a soundtrack performed by Prince.  Every publication slammed this album, suggesting that he had lost his golden touch.  I was into everything Batman that year but Prince gave me a weird feeling.  I really liked “Batdance,” the lead single from the soundtrack.  I hated what that might mean.  As funny as I think this is today, I thought that liking Prince meant you were gay.  I was a fan of Guns and Roses, Poison, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe, all of whom flirted with or fully committed to androgyny, but Prince was a step over the line to me.  In my twenties, after Prince changed his name from a symbol back to being Prince again, I decided at long last that I could begin buying Prince albums.  In defiance of my 13 year old biases I remain a straight Prince fan to this day.  And I really like the Batman soundtrack.

            I entered junior high school in the fall of 1989.  My history teacher was the type of person who wanted the students to think he was still cool.  It got annoying.  A former athlete, he teased students like a jock does, pointing out things about their appearance they had little control over.  But he allowed one cool moment to happen:  he found out that a girl from Jamaica was an aspiring rapper, so he let her rap one day.  Somebody pounded a beat on a desk for her and she went for it, mixing in Jamaican patois with American slang.  Hip-hop was not used to sell laundry detergent like it is today, and you didn’t hear it in Disney movies or on Broadway.  This was possibly a first – a freestyle rap asked for and condoned by an authority figure in a public school.  I still remember how this normally quiet girl came to life as she rapped in front of the blackboard.

            I also remember that, for some reason, there was a collection of plastic WWF pro wrestling figures hanging from the ceiling over the students’ heads.  I had to take a standardized test under the watchful, cocked eye of one of the Bushwhackers*.

            The other unforgettable item in this classroom was an enviable hi-fi stereo and speakers, and most days while we completed worksheets we were allowed to listen to the rock station.  This is where I got to hear the B-52s’ “Love Shack” every day (like my Prince dilemma, it took me a few decades to admit that this is my all time favorite song).

            The other song that played every day that autumn was called “Love in an Elevator” by some new band called Aerosmith.  In the song, the singer seemed to be advocating the joys of making love inside the confines of an elevator.  I was fascinated.  After watching the music video, I confirmed that indeed this band was very fond of using this manner of conveyance in their love making.  It was then that I decided I needed to buy this cassette tape.

            This wasn’t just any other purchase.  This would mark the first time I would buy a tape with my own money, the first time outside of my comfort zone. 

            But I’d have to sneak it past my parents.  They were not very restrictive over content.  If they thought I’d enjoy a critically acclaimed movie I could watch it no matter what the rating.  No books were ever off limits.  On the other hand, they seemed to believe Tipper Gore and the PMRC** when she said that children needed protection from certain records.  One time, after reading a Newsweek exposé on the rowdy Beastie Boys and their degenerate fans, my father came to me inquiring if I too felt the need to fight for my right to party.  And he was serious.

            Now, as a parent, I understand the concern.  You don’t want your son to get any weird ideas.  And at 13 I was completely in the dark about sex.  I didn’t know what it meant when Steven Tyler sang “go-ing dooowwwnnn” suggestively on “Love in an Elevator,” but I knew enough from context clues that it was A) something I needed to know more about and B) something I needed to hide. 

            One Saturday morning I talked him into taking me to the record store.  I found the Aerosmith cassette tapes, but since I didn’t know they were around since the early seventies I had trouble locating the one I wanted.  I couldn’t ask the clerk – what if he and my dad were in cahoots?  I found the album Pump, saw that it had the track I heard in class, and bought it. 

            In the car, my dad told me to play the tape in the tape deck.  I was nobody’s fool.  This wasn’t a question.  I couldn’t say, “I can wait until I get home.”  This was an inspection and I wanted to pass.  I quickly scanned the names on side A to find a few tunes for the short ride home.  First side, first track:  “Young Lust.”  As a regular attendee of Catholic mass, I knew the definition of lust and assumed Mr. Tyler wasn’t going to be subtle on that track.  Further on that side I had to face “Love in an Elevator” and “Janie’s Got a Gun,” two tracks I had no way of defending on the spot.  The third single, “The Other Side,” started side B and it was an innocuous jam, catchy and empty headed.  My play was to fast forward the tape to side two and let the chips fall where they may.

            My father’s tape deck had a convenient technological advancement that allowed you to seek the gaps between songs.  Thus, hitting the fast forward button once would only get you to the next song, not all the way to the end of the side.  I had to pretend I didn’t understand how this fast forward button worked and press it five times while my father looked at me like I was one of the apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

            Aerosmith became my new obsession.  I quickly realized that in my attempt to become cool I had become a fan of a very cool band.  I learned about their longevity, the drugs, the breakup and the comeback.  Every time I saved $7.99 I would buy a new cassette tape, starting with Toys in the Attic (because I had heard “Walk this Way” somewhere), then Permanent Vacation (because you couldn’t escape “Dude Looks Like a Lady”) and on and on until I had all of their output.  “Walk This Way” is one of the best rock and roll songs ever recorded, a perennial favorite for inclusion on my mixtapes.  I remember listening to their self-titled debut album on the bus one morning.  Imagine hearing “Dream On” for the first time and having to process that at 7 am.  It struck me at once as moving and profound yet depressing, as if life was already over.  In essence, if you think you’re going to be anything you had better dream on.

            Once I had obtained every studio and live recording released between 1973 and 1989 I had my opinion of what was the best.  The first four albums – Aerosmith, Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic and Rocks – and Pump were the absolute best.  I could find no fault in them.  They swung harder than any band, the riffs were dirty and dynamic, and the sexual innuendo, from what I could understand, made me feel bad, as in good.

            But then came the nineties.  You know the story – Nirvana, Seattle, grunge, alternative.  Hair metal died a quick death.  Did that matter to my favorite rock and roll band?  Not really.  Pearl Jam was just as inspired by Aerosmith as Guns n Roses was, even though Eddie Vedder only wanted to talk about Neil Young and the Who.  Aerosmith still got love on MTV and from younger artists, like the Black Crowes. 

            My love for the band was tempered when they released a single called “Livin’ on the Edge” from their 1993 album Get a Grip.  I watched the video for this tune and immediately my heart sank.  “There’s something wrong with the world today/ I don’t know what it is …”

            Oh, no.  Steven Tyler, the man who told me about his young lust only a few years prior, was turning into an old man.  As a teenager, all you hear from older generations is that “kids don’t know anything,” “back in my day …,” “the country is going to hell,” etc.  The song was comfortably delivering curmudgeonnish tripe like this, and I hated it.  It didn’t help that the record’s three huge singles, “Amazing,” “Crying” and “Crazy,” were the same song rewritten three different ways with varying amounts of country music affectations.  At least “Eat the Rich” was cool, but in pre-iTunes times one did not simply walk into Sam Goody and obtain a record on the strength of one song.  That album was a hard pass for me.

            I did pay attention to the band, though.  Their MTV unplugged set was revelatory – proof that a band that played together for two decades had the chops.  A three disc box set, Pandora’s Box, revealed many treasures, including a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rattlesnake Shake” that has to be heard to be believed.  A late career album, the awfully titled Honkin’ on Bobo, was exactly what I needed – proof positive that Aerosmith could still do it.

            Then again, you had to see Steven Tyler as a judge on American Idol.  Was that okay?  What about the band cutting back on touring and instead serving a residency in Las Vegas?  What are they, the rock and roll Rat Pack?  And how much longer did I want to see Tyler sassafrassin’ around on stage, singing about getting laid like he was still a teenager? 

            Meanwhile, I had gotten serious.  I had a corporate job (sadly, only a one story building, so no elevator).  I had begun listening to Radiohead.  I began denying that I was an Aerosmith fan.  Hiding it.  As I became more sophisticated they became synonymous with beer bellies, fireworks and monster trucks.  Aerosmith was dirtbag music.

            Then I figured out something that I had a hard time comprehending at first.  Steven Tyler and my father are the same age, born within months of each other in 1948***.  When the band released its first record, my dad was a newlywed.  The same year that Aerosmith had their first big tour, I was born.  And when Mr. Tyler was boogie-footin’ around in 1989 my dad was going to work.  As they aged in the new millennia, both were prone to embarrassing themselves, but Tyler was rewarded for it.  Nobody ever seemed to say, “Christ, you’re in your seventies now!  Stop singing songs about chasing women!”

            Then I reached my early forties, the same age as Tyler during the period of time between Pump and Get a Grip.  What am I like now?  I’m not a former athlete trying to look cool around seventh graders.  I’m also not some legendary musician that exudes coolness.  But you know what?  I’d like a little young lust back in my life.  I’d like to feel F-I-N-E fine once in a while.  And if somebody copped a feel in an elevator now and then, what’s the harm?

            Looks like I’m a dirtbag after all!

*The Bushwackers were a tag team from New Zealand that licked each other’s cheeks.  It seemed that the WWF were implying that they were inbred hillbillies.

**Out of touch Boomer organization that created Parental Advisory labels for albums with explicit language.

***Same year as Billy Crystal.