Rocktrospectiva: The Mainstream Massive "Pump" Turns 35

 

Released on 12 September 1989, "Pump" was Aerosmith tenth studio album, peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, the album spawned four singles all of them hit singles "Love In An Elevator", "Janie's Got A Gun", "What It Takes" & "The Other Side", all of them entered the top 40 and helped the album to certified sales of seven millions copies in the United States alone.

 

The album was the second of three sequentially recorded Aerosmith albums to feature producer Bruce Fairbairn and engineers Mike Fraser and Ken Lomas at Little Mountain Sound Studios, the recordings started in December 1988, Aerosmith got together at Rik Tinory Productions in Cohasset, Massachusetts to rehearse and compose new songs, as the band members thought the isolated nature of the studio would help their creativity. Over 19 songs were written, split between an "A-list" with songs considered possible hits, such as "Love in an Elevator" and "What It Takes", and the "B-list" having songs yet to be developed such as "Voodoo Medicine Man"

 

In January 1989, the band went to Vancouver to again record at Fairbairn's Little Mountain Sound, Aerosmith were at Little Mountain Sound at the same time that Mötley Crüe were recording their album Dr. Feelgood. As a result, Steven Tyler and the Margarita Horns (Aerosmith's horn section) contributed backing vocals and instrumentation to several tracks on that album. The original intention with the album was exploring a rawness that had been glossed over for a commercial sound in Permanent Vacation. Many of the lyrics employ sexual themes, which Tyler attributed to having "making up for the lost time" he spent using drugs instead of having sex in the 1970s.

 

The most common reference with this album sound is basically Led Zeppelin, you can notice that on the main riffs of tracks such as "Love In A Elevator" and "Voodoo Medicine", also smooth and delicious sounds in "Dulcime Stomp"/"The Other Side", and of course the sinister but fantastic "Janie's Got A Gun", whose video a mini-movie directed by David Fincher aided the band to recover its status. 

 

The album received a positive reception, considered a high-water mark of glam metal era, with a more hard rock sound that the pop metal of "Permanent Vacation", and album full of ambition and succesful music eclecticism. 

 

Pump Track List: 

1. Young Lust

2. F.I.N.E.

3. Going Down/Love In An Elevator

4. Monkey On My Back

5. Water Song/Janie's Got A Gun

6. Dulcimer Stomp/The Other Side

7. My Girl

8. Don't Get Mad, Get Even

9. Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man

10. What It Takes.