Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler was born on March 26th, 1948 making him 72 today. The song “Dream On” was transformed a classical piano song into the classic rock ballad. It peaked at number-59 on the Billboard Hot 100 when first issued as a single in an edited version in 1973. When the full album version was released as a single in 1976, it went all the way to number-six.
In 1972, the five members of Aerosmith moved into a house together outside Boston to work on some new material for their debut album. It was then that Steven Tyler remembered a classically based piece called “Dream On” he’d written about five years earlier on the piano at his parents’ home in New Hampshire. Here is Steven to tell how he got the band to record his classical piece.
”There was a piano downstairs and sure enough I started playing it. And the guys said, ‘What is that?,’because in their musical repertoire there was no classical. So I thought, ‘Well, if I can transpose this piano stuff to guitar, well, we be cookin’’ And so I did. I got Joe to play the right hand and Brad to play the left hand and Tom to do a couple of classic moves on it. And I remember like it was yesterday, arranging it in that basement. It was so beautiful.”
