Aerosmith And Run DMC Reunited For, Uh, Some Kind Of Grammy Performance
When I heard the rockin’ pepaws of Aerosmith were reuniting with Run DMC on the Grammy stage, I figured this would surely get all the middle-aged folks at home in their Ralph Lauren khakis and Eileen Fischer cardigans hot and bothered thinking of the glorious one-night stands they had back in the 80s with someone they most certainly aren’t married to at the moment. Considering Aerosmith’s ongoing drummer boy drama with OG-but-exiled drummer Joey Kramer, I had a feeling this thing might also be messy. Would Joey somehow be allowed to perform or would they just bring in Pasqually E. Pieplate, the drummer of the Chuck E. Cheese band?! Who knows on music’s biggest night?!
While Pasqually was robbed of an opportunity to go mainstream, don’t fret – this Aerosmith and Run DMC performance was still as kinds of…um…creative? Interpretive? OK, fine, it was a hot mess.
Rolling Stone commends Aerosmith for carrying on despite Joey getting replaced with John Douglas at drums. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry started out with “Livin’ On The Edge,” which Lizzo and the rest of the crowd at the Staples Center seemed to love. Those of us watching from the comforts of our couches were living on the edge wondering if Steven or Joe were going to dislocate something.
But the real “treat” came when Run DMC burst through some cardboard bricks that looked like they belonged on the backdrop of a Hells Angels meeting room. The New York Times says Joe fucked up his guitar intro, which I can’t tell apart from some silence and grunting between the bricks falling and then when everything began to unravel:
Living on the edge + Walk this way + AEROSMITH + Run-DMC + Kobe Bryant , Salvan la noche 💥🎸#GRAMMYAwards2020 #GRAMMYs
— 🐯TIGRE ROCK@ERO 🎸🌋 (@fenix7154) January 27, 2020
It’s really hard to tell you what happened from here. I think they were supposed to be singing “Walk This Way,” but it was clear Darryl McDaniels and Joseph Simmons were rapping one thing, Joe and Steven were playing something else entirely, and the entire Staples Center was eating that clusterfuck up! The only person who was pissed was Lana Del Rey, who probably watched this and thought, “I fuck up SNL, and I get skewered. Steven Tyler fucks up the Grammys, and he gets panties thrown at him?!” Oh, yes, then there were two random white girls who Steven – clearly not being introduced to modern #MeToo times – brought on stage before some producer clearly hissed in his earpiece, “Send them back to the McDonald’s play pen mosh pit we provided or else!” Honestly, was the performance a mess? Oh, hell yes. But if it was either that or having to hear Taylor Swift warble out something, I’ll take clueless old white dudes and Run DMC any day!
Pic: Wenn.com