Here's the music playboy readers can't get out of their heads-or their cd players
Hall of Fame
Run-DMC's influence on music is as profound as Elvis' or the Beatles'. As the Seventies unfolded into the Eighties the airwaves were, with limited exception, a vapid wasteland of postdisco New Wave swill. Around this time I was licking my wounds in a hospital bed, recovering from a motorcycle accident and a badly bruised ego from sagging record sales and the looming breakup of our band. I seriously questioned where Aerosmith's down-and-dirty swagger was going to fit into this frighteningly trite fashion-driven music scene.
While we were dragging our asses out of the ashes of our stratospheric over-indulgences, they appeared in our lives. They were the slap from the muse doctor's hand on the ass of a newborn sound! The transition was as dramatic as the switch from the bleak black-and-white gloom of Kansas to the Technicolor majesty of Oz. It was the music of the streets, the music of the people. Our collaboration on Walk This Way was the first true marriage of rap and rock, reelin' and rollin', hippin' and hoppin'. It introduced our music and rhythms to completely new listeners and brought two audiences together.
Run-DMC were New Age preachers, spoken-word subway prophets, always making it relevant and always keeping it real. Jam Master Jay, you'll be missed, brother.
--Steven Tyler, Aerosmith
