How big were Aerosmith in the 70s?

Just wondering...Let's say Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones were the most popular rock groups on the planet at that point...How high up was Aerosmith on the radar in 1975-1976? Were Toys in the Attic or Rocks big sellers upon release?

My question is, basically, was Aerosmith's level of fame/popularity in the mid 1970s at all comparable to their popularity in the late 80s/early 90s?

 

It depended on your hair style

Led Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult were very popular with my group of friends.

The hair band fans seemed to enjoy the Aerosmith genre more than hard rock. I seem to recall it as an emerging genre more popular in the 80s. A good example would be what the record company forced on the band Heart. Even the album covers tell a story.

 

"Rocks" and "Toys In The Attic" are classic albums.

 

By "the 80's", Aerosmith was finished (imo).

 

According to Wikipedia Toys In The Attic was #11 on the album charts with two top 40 singles. Rocks hit #3 also with two top 40 singles. Dream On was also rereleased as a single in '75 and hit Top 10 in '76. Pretty big.

 

They need to put out a "deluxe" Rocks and Toys reissue, with the '75 Central Park concert as a bonus disc.

 

From debut to Night In The Ruts is a mighty fine run of albums (I'm including Ruts as it might be my fave by them). A different band emerged in the 80's and then the ballads and hit singles took them to a more mainstream audience - but too much sugar coating for many - the real band lies in those 70's classics.

 

They were Led Zeppelin for the younger set. My eldest brother, who graduated H.S. in 1969, was a big Led Zeppelin fan. My elder brother (who was about ten years younger than the eldest) and his friends were into Aerosmith. They eventually liked Zeppelin too but for a couple of years there (75 and 76) Aerosmith was the big band for that age group. I disliked both at one time or another but finally came around, but I was atypical of my age group. My graduating class was into REO and Styx.

I'm not at all implying that there was a division between Zep and Aero fans, just that for a brief period in the mid-70's, Aerosmith seemed more "current." Led Zeppelin was a more "adult" band - have a chuckle at that!

 

I just listened to "Done With Mirrors" recently and I think it's an overlooked album of theirs. It really seems to fit in well with their 70's output, much more so than the 80's stuff it tends to get lumped in with. I'd argue it's the last true Aerosmith record.

 

Beyond that, LZ's 'heyday' was petering out IMO. I remember thinking Physical Graffiti was kind of inconsistent, while the first 5 represented an unbeatable supergroup run 1969 ~1973. There seemed to be a long gap between Houses of The Holy and Physical Graffiti, too.

 

I remember one interview where one of them (I forget which) laughingly complained about their "comeback" record being written backwards so no one could read it. That being said I'd stand up for "Done With Mirrors" as well.

 

They were huge, selling millions. They were all over FM and AM radio.

 

I grew up outside Boston, so they were always big there. The Done With Mirrors reunion was orchestrated by WBCN DJ Mark Parenteau and the Permanent Vacation release and tour was huge, I saw them three times in the 1988-1990 period. Once at Boston Garden, once with Guns n Roses opening and once in Worcester where they filmed the Angel video.

 

Remember, the topic is "in the 70s", not 80's. (Though I suspect like every thread here, it will just degenerate into a list of bands people like)

 

Back on topic: I remember Aerosmith being very big in 1976, 1977 just not, I don't know, 'legendary' or supergroup status and...I just wasn't much into them. They were all over the radio, though, and played lots at parties and dances. Like someone else posted, they were appealing to a younger group, which I actually was in as a 16/17 year old, but I preferred the 'adult' rock bands -- 'Stones, Zepp, and I really was into 60s stuff. Still am.

 

They were big. Maybe a step below LZ. They peaked somewhere around '77ish. I'm sure they played a stadium show near me around that time (it may have been with another big band but they were likely the headliner).

 

They were selling millions, playing big venues, got a lot of coverage in the rock press and a lot of play on FM. However, they weren't nearly as big on Top 40 as they would be a decade hence.

It took a lot of money to fuel those epic drug habits of theirs.

 

I love Aerosmith but they were second tier compared to a band like Led Zeppelin in the seventies. When Led Zeppelin released a new album it was an event. Led Zeppelin was selling out stadiums in the seventies. It was a mad rush to get tickets for a Led Zeppelin concert. The first time I saw Aerosmith in 1975, they were playing in Lakeland, FL as the opening act for Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart/Faces. This was right after "Toys In The Attic" was released. Three years later, they were still playing Lakeland which is a small venue. That being said, "Rocks" is still one of my desert island discs.

The Rolling Stones were still huge but were like elder statesmen in the late seventies. They still were much bigger than Aerosmith and were a concert draw. By the time I graduated High School (77) most of my classmates were into Led Zeppelin or newer bands unless they had older siblings who were into the Stones.

 

Yes, I agree. They were second tier in the '70s but still pretty popular. Some friemds and I went to see them on the Rocks tour because we didn't have anything better to do. They were freakin' loud! We were in the back of the hall since we bought tickets the day of the show but it was still the loudest show I had ever attended. After that they started losing steam imo.

 

How popular were they in the UK in the 70s? Led Zep was big everywhere.

 

If you lived in the Midwest or upper east coast Aerosmith were a big deal beginning in 1973. The first album started to get some underground cred with the post hippie/stoner, blue collar set and that increased significantly when Get Your Wings hit the racks. I worked in "underground" stores at the time and those two albums just kept selling, increasingly so every month. They didn't really sell in mainstream stores at that point. It didn't hurt that Aerosmith would come around and play the Toledos and Daytons and South Bends of the world on a pretty consistent basis. The younger baby-boomer contingent (a huge concentration of folks including a plethora of factory workers) finally had a band they could call their own. Stones and Zep skewed older. The Eagles and CSNY skewed too upscale. Aerosmith just sounded right blasting out of a '69 Chevy passing a grungy factory and smoke stacks. On 8 track no less. We sold about as many on 8T as we did LP.

When it came time for "Toys'" the band and Columbia knew they were on the cusp of the next big step. The release of that album was treated like The Second Coming. The band was in my town for two shows (one sold out and once close, 7,000 each) when "Toys'" dropped. For two days various members would put aside their straws and good time girls for a couple of hours and come to our shop to watch (through seams in the backroom paneling) their new album flying out of the boxes. The previous albums had to pick up steam so this was new to them and they were thrilled. Except Tyler he never came to watch. I met him the next next night but that's a different story.

"ROCKS" came out about a year later to much less fanfare. I don't think we sold quite as many because by then Aerosmith was selling well at KMart and shopping mall stores. Nonetheless I think "ROCKS" is their masterpiece. "Draw the Line" is vital too if only to ascertain how quickly the mighty can fall.

 

Areosmith weren't big in the U.K.

 

Their fame and popularity in the UK and Europe in the mid-1970s was very niche, compared to the success that the MTV juggernaut version of the band had from 1987 onwards. Outside the US, there is no comparison between seventies Aerosmith and the Permanent Vacation/Pump/Get A Grip era, in terms of popularity. They're poles apart.

A cursory glance at the sales figures and chart success shows that they were popular in the US and Canada in the seventies, but were not replicating that elsewhere. They did not have an equal profile in any other territory until the release of Permanent Vacation, later cemented by Pump.

None of the seventies albums charted in the UK or Europe. Modest sales in Australia. No single cracked the top 75 in the UK until Dude (Looks Like a Lady), which almost made the top forty. Permanent Vacation made a dent in the album charts on the back of the singles being modestly successful and possibly also due to being the first album they released after the Run DMC cover of Walk This Way.

Pump was massive, and that set them up for healthy sales and tours from that point on. But their seventies career was very much under the radar on this side of the Atlantic.

 

They weren't that big in the 70's, but they were quite big in the 80's.


In the US, they were huge. They were pretty big right from the start, and only got bigger and bigger.

 

Not in the UK. They managed Gold or Silver albums in the 80s, but no more than that.