Get A Grip
The band took a brief sabbatical from the music studio before recording their next studio album. The concert tour in support of “Pump” had been incredibly successful and the band needed a break to recharge their batteries.
Although music in the early 1990’s was undergoing a deep shift in trend with the youth dance and hip hop craze, Aerosmith stayed true to their Rock and Blues roots and recorded “Get A Grip” in 1993.
Get A Grip was a major commercial success, despite the shifting trends in mainstream music, and became Aerosmith’s first album to debut number 1 on the charts. It quickly went platinum and sold an incredible seven million copies in just a two and a half year span, but it would eventually sell over 15 million copies world wide.
Get a Grip had many hits, including 1994 and 1995 Grammy winning songs for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: for “Livin’ on the Edge” and “Crazy”.
The gripping lyrics and story telling videos featuring a young Alicia Silverstone propelled the songs ” Crazy, Amazing and Cryin” into the hearts of many music fans. These three songs received the most ‘love’ from MTV and Radio.
The Get a Grip album was a test in many ways because while the album was in it’s beginning stages, management and record company brass brought in songwriting collaborators to assist in the making of more commercially appealing lyrics, and because of the big success of “Get A Grip”, the band continued to use the services of songwriter collaborators until the early 2000’s. Hard core Aerosmith fans were not pleased with the band’s choices of using outsiders to write lyrics for Aerosmith and accused of the band of ’selling out’ throughout the 1990’s.
With the success of ‘Get A Grip’, came a world tour in support of the album which lasted an incredible 18 months.
Aside from the Rock Band’s grueling time schedule after the release of Get A Grip, the band also found time to launch themselves into the world of youth culture. They appeared in the Wayne’s World 2 movie and had themselves included in the video game RevolutionX and Quest for Fame. In 1994, Aerosmith performed at Woodstock ‘94, opened their own club “The Mama Kin Music Hall in Boston and released the music compilation “Big Ones”. Big Ones featured the biggest hits from Permanent Vacation, Pump and Get A Grip. They also included three new songs on the compilation album, “Deuces Are Wild”, “Blind Man”, and “Walk on Water”.
Tags: aerosmith, alicia silverstone, blues roots, commercial success, concert tour, grammy, livin on the edge, mainstream music, music studio, rock and blues, rock band, rock performance, three songs, youth dance