Writers: Steven Tyler and Joe Perry
Producer: Jack Douglas
Recorded: February 1975 at the Record Plant Studios in New York City
Released: April 1975
| Players: | Steven Tyler — vocals, harmonica, percussion Joe Perry — guitar Brad Whitford — guitar Tom Hamilton — bass Joey Kramer — drums |
| Album: | Toys In The Attic (MCA, 1974) |
Following “Dream On,” “Walk This Way” was Aerosmith's second hit single, peaking at Number 10 in early 1977.
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler originally wanted to call the Toys In The Attic album Love At First Bite, after a line in the song “Adam's Apple.” Lead guitarist Joe Perry's original choice wasRocks, which the band used for its next album.
In the book Walk This Way: The Autobiography Of Aerosmith, Perry remembered Toys In The Attic as the album on which Aerosmith “started to become recording artists instead of having our albums being a record of us playing live.”
Of “Walk This Way,” Perry said, “I was into funky stuff, had played James Brown songs over the years, and at the time was listening to lots of the Meters from New Orleans, one of the best bands in the country, and I was asking, 'Why don't we write our own songs that have that feel to them? Let's try to write something funky so we don't have to cover James Brown.' At the sound check in Hawaii, I came up with that riff, added it to another one I came up with while watching a Godzilla movie — one of my favorite compositional methods — and Steven wrote the lyrics in the stairwell of the Record Plant.”
Tyler said the title was inspired by the part in the 1974 Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein where Marty Feldman tells Gene Wilder to “walk this way.” Bassist Tom Hamilton said the group told Tyler, “'Hey, the name of the song is 'Walk This Way.' He says, 'Whaddaya mean, I didn't write the lyrics yet!' But we said, 'Trust us.'”
Tyler wrote one set of lyrics, but left them in a taxi on the way to the studio, forcing him to rewrite the song at the Record Plant.
The “backstroke lover” in the lyrics refers to masturbation, while the verse about the cheerleader, her sister, and her cousin was drawn from Tyler's fantasy of being with two women, which he called “the most sensual experience you will ever have on this planet.”
Tyler was surprised when he read a newspaper article in 1976 “about how disgusting rock lyrics are, and they used 'Walk This Way' as an example of how lyrics should be nice and wholesome. I couldn't believe it. Obviously, they didn't get the meaning of 'you ain't seen nothin' till you're down on the muffin.'”
The song took on a second life in 1986, when the rap group Run-D.M.C. had a hit with a remake that featured Tyler and Perry, who also appeared in the video. Though Tyler and Perry were initially lukewarm to the idea, the song was a major part of Aerosmith's comeback.
Former Aerosmith manager Tim Collins said it took seven years for Aerosmith to get their royalties from Run-D.M.C.'s label, Profile Records.
