Toys in the Attic (CD - 1975)

Aerosmith: Steven Tyler (vocals, harmonica, keyboards, percussion); Joe Perry (acoustic guitar, slide guitar, percussion, background vocals); Tom Hamilton (guitar, bass); Brad Whitford (guitar); Joey Kramer (drums, percussion).

Additional personnel: Scott Cushnie (piano); Jay Messina (bass marimba).

Recorded at the Record Plant, New York, New York.

Personnel: Joe Perry (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, slide guitar, percussion, background vocals); Steven Tyler (vocals, harmonica, keyboards, percussion); Joey Kramer (vocals, drums, percussion); Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford (guitar); Scott Cushnie (piano); Jay Messina (marimba, percussion).

Recording information: Record Plant, NY; The Record Plant, NY.

Directors: Steve Leber; David Krebs.

Illustrator: Ingrid Haenke.

Photographers: Bob Belott; Jimmy Lenner, Jr.; Jimmy Ienner, Jr.

Arrangers: Jack Douglas; Aerosmith; Michael Mainieri, Jr.; Steven Tyler.

A truly inventive Aerosmith album, still suffused with a gloriously raspy sense of the blues, but quietly evocative in its timbre and approach. It showed Tyler working out lyrics that were so much more than simple cars and girls fodder, 'Adam's Apple' theorizing that creation could quite possibly have occurred with an alien mothership landing on earth and setting the wheels of the human race in motion. 'Sweet Emotion' throbbed slowly into life, 'Big Ten Inch Record', a salty R&B work-out, while 'You See Me Crying' was heightened and given body by a warm orchestration. A clear steeple of great work amid a skyline of repeating successes. minimize