Tag: Kings and Queens

My Sunday Song – “Kings And Queens” by Aerosmith

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic19 Comments

For My Sunday Song #302, we are talking about the song “Kings And Queens” from the bands 1977 album ‘Draw the Line’. The song was released on February 21, 1978 and it only made it to #70 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was written by most of the band including Steven Tyler, Joey Kramer, Tom Hamilton and Brad Whitford. It was not written with Joe Perry and one of the rare times that was the case, but drugs will do that. However, producer Jack Douglas managed to get a writing credit as well as he did a lot on this album as someone had to keep pushing the band forward.

Lyrically it seems more like a Zeppelin or even early Genesis as they delve in to sorcery knights and swords and stuff. It has this whole Medieval Knights of the Round Table vibe. It is also a rather violent look at the time and does not paint a glamorous picture. Tyler has stated that it is about all those that died during the period of the Holy Wars. With that being said, there is no rosy picture to paint. It should be dark and eerie and they captured that feel nicely both lyrically and sonically.

Side 2 of the album kicks off with one of the band’s best song called “Kings and Queens”. The song feels epic, grand and far beyond anything else they have ever done. The bass is extremely heavy, it has a mandolin by Jack Douglas, a banjo by Paul Prestopino, Tyler on piano and the rest of the band all in a world of their own making. Tyler gives what might be one of his greatest vocal performances as this song hits the mark on every aspect. It is so out of left field, yet so magical. Pure perfection!

Give the song a listen and let me know what you think. I think it should’ve gone higher than #70 on the Billboard Charts, but thats just me. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful and Happy Sunday.

“Kings And Queens”

Long ago in days I’m told
Were ruled by Lords of greed
Maidens fared with gold
They dared to bare their wombs that bleed

Kings and queens and guillotines
Taking lives denied
Starch and parchment laid the laws
When bishops took the ride
Only to deceive

Oh I know I lived this life afore
Somehow know now truths I must be sure
Tossin turnin’ nightmares burnin’ dreams of swords in hand
Sailin’ ships the Viking spits the blood of father’s land
Only to deceive

Living times of knights and mares
Raising swords for maidens fair
Sneer at death fear only loss of pride

Living other centuries
Deja vu or what you please
Follows true to all who do or die

Screams of no reply they died
Screams of no reply and died
Lordy lordy and then then they died
Lordy no then they died

Live and do or die
Long ago were days I told…Lord they died
Kings and queens and guillotines…
Live and no reply they died
Long ago were days I told…
Kings and queens and guillotines…

Written by Steven Tyler, Brad Whitford, Joey Kramer, Tom Hamilton and Jack Douglas

Aerosmith – ‘Pandora’s Box’ (1991) – Album Review (The Aerosmith Collection Series)

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Columbia Records was taking full advantage of the band’s new found popularity on Geffen Records. Even though they lost the band to another label, they still could release Aerosmith material for everything they had rights to and that was quite a bit. They kicked off with two live releases ‘Classics Live!’ and ‘Classics Live! II’ as well as compilation called ‘Gems’. The cool things about those releases is there were no repeats from old live albums or greatest hits collection. It made it enticing for collectors. And this was no different. Released on November 19, 1991, this was a 3 CD compilation full of the bands greatest hits (while under Columbia) with a ton of previously unreleased material. That alone makes this worth getting. There are 31 previously released cuts and 21 unreleased consisting of live, alternative mixes and pure rarities.

I am lucky enough to have the long box version and it really is a box. It contains a book plus 3 CDs all in jewel cases with artwork. If you picked up a later version, the long box was replaced with a cardboard sleeve and the book was shrunk down to CD case size. The set I have is the one you want…in my opinion at least. The box set did real well going to #45 on the Billboard Charts and it was eventually certified Platinum on August 16, 1996. If I’m not mistaken, since the set includes 3 CDs, they only had to sell 333,334 copies to reach the 1 million sold platinum status. Someday, I might go song by song, but for now I am sticking to an overview of each disc and what I like about it each one. So let us get to it.

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Aerosmith – ‘Classics Live!’ (1986) – Album Review (The Aerosmith Collection Series)

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Back in 1984, Aerosmith reunited with Brad Whitford and Joe Perry and went out on tour to celebrate the reunion. That tour was the Back in the Saddle Tour. The band had been on Columbia Records, but jumped ship and signed with Geffen Records in hopes of getting back in the good graces of the buying public. They planned out and released their comeback album ‘Done With Mirrors’ with little fanfare at least that was until they were on the Run DMC cover of their song “Walk This Way”. That combination of Hip Hop and Rock joining together and being celebrated so much on MTV brought them back in to the limelight.

This new found fame was great for Columbia Records because the bands new deal with Geffen still allowed Columbia to release material they owned of the band, which was a lot. Columbia took full advantage of this opportunity and the first release was a live compilation called ‘Classics Live’ in April 1986. The songs were collected from live shows ranging from 1978 up to 1984 and there was a bonus track any Aerosmith had to have, an unreleased studio track.

Four of the tracks on here come from the February 14, 1984 show at the Orpheum in Boston, Massachusetts. This was a very important show for the band because in the audience was Joe Perry and Brad Whitford who were no loner in the band at this time. Of course, this mean Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay were on guitar. But that wasn’t the important thing about this show. This was the very beginning of the original band getting back together and would start the band’s climb back to stardom.

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Aerosmith – ‘Greatest Hits’ (1980) – Album Review (The Aerosmith Collection Series)

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Aerosmith was a mess by this point in time. The drug use was out of control and during a show in Portland, Maine, Steven Tyler collapsed on stage. Even if that didn’t make matters worse, Steven was later in a really bad motorcycle accident that left him hospitalized for two months. It was a scary time and they needed a break. One way to do that was for the record label to release a greatest hits compilation which they did and on November 11, 1980, the ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation was released.

The album didn’t do that well as it only charted at #43. However, over the years it grew in popularity and has wound up being one of their biggest selling albums of all times with sales well over 11 million which would certify it as Diamond. Hell, I’ve bought it twice at least.

The track list was short at only 10 songs, but they are 10 great Aerosmith classics. While some songs are straight from the albums they were on, others have been edited. The album also included the Beatles cover of “Come Together” off the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack. Now, they have reissued the album with a bunch more tracks, but we are sticking with the original track listing. Now, my version is the CD version of it for some reason as I could’ve sworn I had a vinyl of this, but apparently not.

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Aerosmith – ‘Draw the Line’ (1977) – Album Review (The Aerosmith Collection Series)

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Drugs…Addict…What do these words describe? It is simple. They describe Aerosmith! Rock band certainly doesn’t describe them because at this point, drugs were way more important than being musicians as that was what they spent most of their time doing..drugs!

As a result of this massive drug problem, their manager, David Krebs, thought he needed to get them away from the drugs so he shipped the band to an old Convent in Armonk, New York. But what David didn’t take in to account that drug dealers are basically Grubhub, especially if your names are Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Place an order and they will deliver and that they did…in droves. So much so that Tyler and Perry were less involved in this album than any other. But it did give the rest of the band, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer more say in to what was going on with the album.

Producer, Jack Douglas, was back and did the best he could. The music is pretty straight-forward blues rock & roll and far less fancy stuff than prior albums. Heck, he was lucky to even finish recording the album with everyone still alive. The album took forever as they worked on it from June to October of 1977 as Joe and Steven were so drugged up all the time that they could only record in little increments of time. The album finally saw its release on December 9, 1977 and although the album did sell over 2 million copies (by 1996) and went to #11 on the Billboard Charts, it is still perceived as a lesser album than the prior two. It is also believed to be the beginning of the end as the tensions and drug use would eventually reach a breaking point.

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