What do cowboys and rock stars have in common? If you ask Steven Tyler, quite a bit. The parallels between riding the open range and touring the world playing rock n’ roll are what inspired one of Aerosmith’s all-time classic hits, “Back in the Saddle.”
Written by Tyler and Joe Perry, “Back in the Saddle” was the opening track on Aerosmith’s 1976 album, Rocks (later released as a single in March 1977). It was designed to kick off the record with a bang…and that’s exactly what it did.
In Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith, Rocks producer Jack Douglas explained that “Back in The Saddle” was recorded “to have this larger-than-life vibe, to bring the band right into the middle of the kid’s head when he put on his phones in his bedroom late at night.”
According to Douglas, the lyrics for “Back in the Saddle” were born when he said to Tyler, “I wish we could use this saddle image as a way of saying, ‘Here’s another album, folks, and we’re gonna rock out and I’ve really got my spurs on.’ Steven went into the stairwell for two hours and came back with reams of paper with ideas on them, and we cut the vocals.”
In his memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, Tyler recalled drawing inspiration from classic Western movies while coming up with the words:
Riding into town alone by the light of the moon
I’m looking for old Sukie Jones, she crazy horse saloon
Barkeep give me a drink, that’s when she caught my eye
She turned to give me a wink that’d make a grown man cry
“‘Back in the Saddle’ I hoped would be nostalgic, harkening to the spirit of every Spaghetti Western I ever saw,” Tyler wrote. “The band played like the gods they were.”
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In his own memoir, Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith, Perry said “Back in the Saddle” “had us riding back out there on the rock ‘n’ roll range.”
The guitarist went on to note that when he wrote the music for the song, he “was in my bedroom, flat on my back, f—d up on heroin, playing my six-string bass. The music flew out of me — all the parts, all the riffs. It came in one special-delivery package. I was still in the stage when the drugs were opening doors to my imagination. And I was lucky enough to have a connection that got me heroin as close to pure as I would ever see.”
The cowboy themes in the lyrics extended to the sound of “Back in the Saddle.” During the recording, Tyler gaffer-taped tambourines to his cowboy boots (with the help of New York Dolls singer David Johansen) and stomped up and down on a piece of plywood. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, Tyler clapped a pair of coconuts together to make the galloping horse sound —and while he tried to use a real bullwhip to produce the cracking whip noise, he ended up faking it by snapping an instrument cable after band members hurt themselves with the real thing.
“Back in the Saddle” was a modest success on the charts, peaking at #38 on the Billboard Hot 100, but went on to become one of the band’s signature hits. Rolling Stone ranked it #4 on a list of Aerosmith’s “50 Best Songs,” calling Rocks the “best American hard-rock album of the 1970s.”
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