April 8th, 1975, approximately 10 AM. I remember it being a sunny day but cool. I was slouched in a long line, dressed in the usual ’70s dude attire of jeans, black engineer boots, black t-shirt, and denim jacket, wearing a blue cap with the Ford logo on it. I was standing in that line with a bunch of people waiting for a record store in Waterloo, Iowa, to open. Why?
Because Aerosmith’s third album, “Toys in the Attic,” was on sale that day, and we were lined up to buy LPs and 8-track tapes. In fact, I still have the LP I bought that day around someplace, although I have no means to play it. But that, hard as it is to believe, was 50 years ago.
To mark that anniversary, Aerosmith’s producer, Jack Douglas, has told the story behind that album’s top-selling hit, “Walk This Way.”
In the final stretch of making its iconic 1975 album “Toys in the Attic,”
