Remember (Walking in the Sand)

The Zoo Crew has got the needle down on a strange little chapter from the bad boys of Boston, and if you are a Zoo Freak who only knows Aerosmith from the scarves, the lips, and the stadium screamers, this one will sneak up on you. "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" is spinning off Night in the Ruts, the sixth studio album, and it is a cover, not one of Steven Tyler's own fever-dream lyrics. The original belonged to the Shangri-Las, the Queens girl group who turned teenage heartbreak into something that sounded like a movie. Their 1964 single, written by George "Shadow" Morton, climbed into the top five and kicked the door open for the rest of their run. Columbia put the Aerosmith version out as a single on December 11, 1979, with "Bone to Bone" on the flip, a few weeks after the album landed on November 16. It parked at number 67 on the Billboard Hot 100 and did a little better up north, hitting number 29 on the Canadian RPM chart in March 1980. It later rode along on the Greatest Hits set, which is how a lot of folks first bumped into it.

The song's birth is a better yarn than half the records that followed it. Morton had talked his way into the Brill Building and run into Ellie Greenwich, who pointed him toward her husband, Jeff Barry. Barry basically dared the unknown kid to come back with a song. Morton did not have one. The story he told, and the one the old hands still pass around, is that he drove out to a Long Island beach, sat in the dark in his car, and wrote most of "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" right there, finishing the rest later at home. He cut a demo with the Shangri-Las, and he always claimed a teenage Billy Joel, still nobody's piano star, played the opening chords on that session. The seagulls and the surf that haunt the original were not taped on a shoreline. Morton later shrugged and said they came off a sound effects record. Red Bird picked it up, the single hit, and a guy with an empty notebook became one of the architects of the girl-group melodramas people still call death discs.

That is the record Aerosmith walked into while the band was coming apart. Night in the Ruts was cut in New York, at places like Media Sound and the Record Plant, with the bank account thin and the habits thick. Jack Douglas, the producer who had built the wall of sound on the big '70s albums, was out of the chair, and Gary Lyons came in to co-produce with the band. Joe Perry quit before the record was finished, after a blowup around the 1979 World Series of Rock in Cleveland, and Jimmy Crespo had to finish some of the guitar work. Perry is still on this track, which makes it one of the last Toxic Twins moments on a record that otherwise sounds like a farewell. The band reached back to a 1964 girl-group song because Tyler's voice was built for theater, and the Shangri-Las had always carried a little menace under the mascara. Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the original group, came in and sang uncredited backups behind him. Hearing the woman who owned the song in 1964 ghosting under that 1979 scream is the whole trick of the cut. The single did not set the charts on fire, but the album still went gold and climbed to number 14, and the band has kept the record in the family story. Their own site still runs an AeroHistory note on Night in the Ruts that lists "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" right there in the track order, between "Chiquita" and "Cheese Cake."

Before any of that, they were a bunch of New England kids trying to get loud enough to matter. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry first crossed paths in the summer of 1966 up in Sunapee, New Hampshire, while Perry was working a part-time shift at a hamburger joint on the harbor. Tyler rolled in with a band, made a mess of the table, and left Perry to clean it up. They were not friends yet. Tyler was already a working drummer in the Chain Reaction, a British Invasion-leaning outfit that had opened for the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and the Yardbirds. Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton were woodshedding in the Jam Band. In the summer of 1970 the circles closed. Tyler, fed up with a band that was going nowhere, packed a suitcase and headed for New Hampshire, and a shared bill gave the two of them a chance to jam. Perry has said he heard something in that band he was not getting from the Boston club circuit, and Tyler heard a guitar player who could match the noise in his head. The deal was simple. Tyler would sing, not sit behind the kit, or he was out. Everybody agreed.

The first gig under the Aerosmith name came on November 6, 1970, in the gym at Nipmuc Regional High School in Mendon, Massachusetts, about an hour outside Boston. Perry's mother worked at a nearby school and helped book it. Ray Tabano was still on rhythm guitar, Joey Kramer was on the drums, and the set was mostly covers. School folks charged pocket change at the door. The band got fifty dollars, and that fifty dollars, they have said, covered the rent on the apartment. Tyler swiped a school T-shirt out of the locker room and wore it onstage. He and Perry argued about the volume before the night was over, which tells you the Toxic Twins routine was already installed. They holed up at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, writing, rehearsing, and wearing out Three Stooges reruns. Tabano gave way to Brad Whitford in 1971, and the five-piece that the world knows locked in. Two years of clubs in Massachusetts and New York got them in front of Clive Davis, who signed the bar band to Columbia in 1972. The first album arrived in 1973 and barely cracked the chart. "Dream On" was the slow burn. Toys in the Attic and Rocks made them the biggest hard rock draw in the country, and the Blue Army, the denim congregation that filled those halls, grew up around the wings logo and a fan club Ray Tabano helped start out of T-shirt sales.

By the time Night in the Ruts showed up, that climb had turned into a slide. The money was gone, Perry was gone, and Whitford would follow in early 1980. The cover of a Shangri-Las single was a strange flag to plant on the way down, but it fits the band that started in a high school gym and a Sunapee hamburger stand. Tyler has called Perry the brother he went looking for. Perry has called those early days a boot camp. Both things can be true, and you can hear both of them in the way this old beach song gets dragged through a Boston amp stack. The Zoo Crew will keep it spinning for the Zoo Freaks over on THE ZOO, commercial-free and deep in the crates, the way a freeform rock station ought to be.

The band keeps the porch light on at the official Aerosmith site, where that Night in the Ruts history page still names the song. They post as themselves on Facebook, on Instagram, and on X. The old fan club spirit lives on in groups like Aero Force One and Aerosmith's Blue Army, where the denim congregation still trades stories, set lists, and the records that held the line when the band was in the ditch. Put the Shangri-Las on after this one if you want to hear where the seagulls came from. Then come back to the ruts. That is the long walk this song was always about.