Last week on this blog we were discussing Aerosmith and their use of outside writers, and Scott wondered why bands ran out of ideas and suggested it might be a good topic. This is something I've given some thought to, and here are my conclusions.

Even as the Police were riding high, Sting said he planned to break the band up after five albums. He said this was because he didn't believe any band had more than five good albums in it. If you look at history, Sting's observation is very savvy. Aerosmith is best known for the four albums between their debut and Rocks. The Rolling Stones are primarily known for the four albums between Beggars Banquet and Exile on Main Street. Van Halen's reputation is made on the six Roth records, and one of them, Diver Down, had lots of covers and instrumentals. Led Zeppelin made six prime albums but a lot of the songs on the sixth were recorded during sessions for the fourth and fifth. So it looks like Sting was pretty accurate.

So why is this? The first reason is that there's only so much you can do with any instrumental lineup. How far can you go with guitar, bass and drums? It's like a TV sitcom. Family Ties: a mom, dad, two daughters and a son sitting on a living room couch. How many plots and dialogues can you create out of that? Cheers: a few drunks and three bartenders sitting around a bar. How many plots and dialogues?

But with today's technology, a three-man band can be 10 symphonies. Give Aerosmith two Variaxes and they can be a bluegrass band, an Indian classical group or a jazz quartet. So what's the problem? Reason two is audience expectation. The audience will only let a performer deviate so far from their original sound. Eddie Van Halen wanted to show he could play keyboards, too, and David Lee Roth flipped out because he knew what a taboo that was with their hard rock audience, and indeed many of their fans hate everything from "Jump" on. Then Eddie wanted to lose their party image and write more U2-ish lyrics, and they fell even further. Metallica changed producers, slowed their tempo and shortened their songs on the black album, and they've been struggling to regain credibility with their fans ever since. Aerosmith got some outside writers and did some ballads and watched their fortunes decline.

AC/DC, on the other hand, hasn't changed the formula since 1974, and they continue to do well. (Angus once said, "People say we've just recorded the same album for the tenth time. They're wrong. It's the eleventh.") Of course when a band sticks to their guns like this the new complaint is "they just keep doing the same old thing," "they sound tired," "these songs remind me of stuff they did on earlier albums."

In Aerosmith's case I picked up their discography from Draw the Line to Done with Mirrors awhile back, and with each album you more and more get the impression they were slapping things together in the studio. "Reefer Headed Woman" from Night in the Ruts sounds like they turned on the tape recorders and whatever happened was what went out. Their intended comeback album, Done with Mirrors, has one memorable song and the rest goes by like a EMS signal. I think they realized there might be some life left in their sound, but they needed some fresh ears to bring it out, so I don't mind that they got Desmond Child and Jim Vallance to help them write two more great records.

Old Aero fans were particularly disappointed that they let Diane Warren write the ballad "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from Armageddon for them. This is marked as THE sellout. Yet last night I thumbed through Aerosmith's autobiography Walk This Way, and Joe Perry said he had never liked "Dream On," but for a hard rock band to get on the radio in 1973 you had to do a ballad, and they were playing the same game today. So if you ask Joe Perry, the sellout began in 1973, not 1987!

So why do bands run out of ideas? They don't really, but one set of instrumentalists given a limited territory to mine is going to have mined it for all they can at some point. The trick is how long can you keep the public interested and the cash registers ringing as you pump out the same sound year after year.