By Steve Newton
Yesterday Aerosmith announced its farewell tour, a five-month jaunt beginning September 2 in Philadelphia and winding up January 26 in Montreal.
Unfortunately, they didn’t bother to pencil in a date for Vancouver–the city that was instrumental to their huge comeback success in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The band recorded three albums here at Little Mountain Sound with local producer Bruce Fairbairn–1987’s Permanent Vacation, 1989’s Pump, and 1993’s Get a Grip–which sold more copies than any of their previous studio albums (excluding 1975’s Toys in the Attic, the one with “Walk This Way”).
Get a Grip alone has moved an astounding 20 million copies worldwide.
“Every producer plays a different role,” Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry told me back in ’88. “But with Bruce it’s more like he just brings out the best in the band… And you can tell if you listen to Done WIth Mirrors [Aerosmith’s 1985 LP], and then Permanent Vacation. It’s us, and it’s our chord changes and our sound, but Bruce is like a lens. He makes it clearer.”
The three Fairbairn-helmed albums put Aerosmith back at the top of the charts, and apparently they really enjoyed being in Vancouver.
“We loved it,” Perry said, “and we took a lot of good memories with us. We really didn’t get a chance to do too much–I think one of us drove up to Whistler–but we did go motorboating around the harbour and all that stuff. And it was great because the people up there are really friendly.”
Hey Joe, if we’re so friendly, why not come up and say your last goodbyes?
Another reason the Vancouver omission sucks is that the opening band for the entire tour is the Black Crowes, and who wouldn’t want to hear those bluesy hard-rockers from Atlanta warm things up?
Anyway, I guess there’s always the chance the boys from Boston will come around, realize they’ve messed up, and slot Vancouver in somewhere down the line. Lord knows “farewell tours” by seventies rock bands have been known to go on for a long, long time.
Just ask Kiss.
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