Magical things can happen when you’re in there, I always think. I’ve accumulated a pile of songs hopefully the band will try them out at some point.ĭoes the will exist to go back in the studio? Steven’s doing his solo project this year, and I’m always working on material, but other than that, no. “Sick as a Dog” is really fun to play as well, and we get a lot of requests for it. We haven’t sat down and had that meeting yet. I’d like to think we’ll add some songs to the set that we haven’t played for a while, or maybe haven’t played at all. Maybe we’ll work up something from that record to play. We haven’t really come up with any new stuff since Music from Another Dimension!.
Have you got any new songs to take on tour later on in the year?
It’s useful, like an NFL team watching film after the game. We record every show, then sit down and watch it from the audience’s point of view. This band has actually been filming itself for years, and not just what people have seen. That’s pretty startling, particularly if you’ve got a horrible zit that night. At that size - and obviously we play in front of these big video screens every night - you’ll occasionally glance back and catch this massive image of yourself. You see things that you don’t realize you were doing and promise yourself that you’re never going to do them again. When I watch myself on film, I usually cringe. What’s it like seeing yourself at that size? I noticed a similar thing when Joe and I played together in high school bands. I don’t know why, but it seems like whenever we play there, it rains all day long and stops as soon as the band goes on stage.
I think we brought all that energy to the U.K. We were just finishing a tour of Europe, and were playing really well and having a really good time. That’s why when we set out to make this, we really went all out to try and make it as intense as possible. It really captures the band at the height of its powers I think. The sensory input you get from a live show will always be way beyond anything that could be possible on film. Is going to the cinema ever going to be a substitute for actually being at a gig? To help mark the film’s one-day release, bassist Tom Hamilton sat down with PopMatters to talk about which songs are the most fun to play live, the ongoing frustrations of being in the band and why, after 40 years, it’s still all about sex. It opens with “Train Kept A-Rollin’”, and although it features hits like “Love in an Elevator”, “Jaded”, and “Janie’s Got a Gun”, also notable is the inclusion of deeper cuts and fan favorites like “Mama Kin”, “Eat the Rich”, and even “Hangman Jury”. The set will please both old and new fans. For their new effort, Aerosmith Rocks Donington 2014, they’ve moved things on one step further, deciding to exhibit the concert film in cinemas … for one day only. Aerosmith haven’t put out a live DVD set since 2013’s Rock for the Rising Sun (which showed the group touring Japan in 2011, following the natural disasters that shook most of that country).