Song Information
The song was inspired from an oft-spoken line and gag ("Walk this way") from the Mel Brooks movie, Young Frankenstein, which the band saw during a late-night showing while taking a break and trying to record a song for their third album, Toys in the Attic. The song, at the time, had music but no lyrics thus far.
The song starts out with the famous two measure drum beat intro by Joey Kramer, followed by the equally famous guitar riff by Joe Perry. The song proceeds with the main riff, played by Perry and Brad Whitford on guitar with Tom Hamilton on bass.
The lyrics, which tell the story of a high school boy losing his virginity, are sung quite fast by Steven Tyler, with heavy emphasis being placed on the rhyming lyrics (e.g., "so I took a big chance at the high school dance"). This rap-style delivery may explain why the song worked so well as a rap song when it was covered 11 years later.
Between the elaborately detailed verses, the chorus primarily consists of a repetition of "Walk this way, talk this way". In collaborations, the other singer often says "talk this way" every alternate line of the chorus. Live in concert, Steven Tyler often has the audience, combined with members of the band, sing "talk this way". There is also a lengthy guitar solo at the end of the song, and in concert, Steven Tyler will often harmonize his voice to mimic the sounds of the guitar.
In the Run–D.M.C. cover, the turntable is added in to reflect the additional hip hop influence on the record. Both the original Aerosmith version and the Run–D.M.C. cover (featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry) appear on various Aerosmith compilations as well as Run-DMC albums.
While the Run–D.M.C. cover is nearly identical to the original version, the Girls Aloud/Sugababes cover has a few changes tweaked into the song; the additional line "Walk this way, you wanna talk this way" is added, the vocoder is added, the lyrics are moved around, and the beat is slightly sped up to add a further dance-pop influence to the song.
Read more about this topic: Walk This Way
Famous quotes containing the words song and/or information:
“thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing”
—Frank O’Hara (1926–1966)
“English literature is a kind of training in social ethics.... English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action.”
—Marilyn Butler (b. 1937)