{"id":804152,"date":"2020-02-13T13:35:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T20:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=952519"},"modified":"2020-02-13T13:35:11","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T20:35:11","slug":"flashback-aerosmith-take-a-dark-turn-with-janies-got-a-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-aerosmith-take-a-dark-turn-with-janies-got-a-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Aerosmith Take a Dark Turn With \u2018Janie\u2019s Got a Gun\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thirty years ago this month, Aerosmith<\/a>\u2019s \u201cJanie\u2019s Got a Gun\u201d peaked on the Hot 100, reaching Number Four \u2014 just below Paula Abdul\u2019s \u201cOpposites Attract,\u201d Seduction\u2019s \u201cTwo to Make It Right\u201d and Rod Stewart\u2019s \u201cDowntown Train.\u201d It was an uncharacteristically dark single for the band, with themes of incest, child abuse, and revenge murder.<\/p>\n

This was a period where the band worked a lot with outside songwriters like Desmond Child and Jim Vallance, but Steven Tyler<\/a> and bassist Tom Hamilton wrote the song on their own. Steven Tyler said the lyrics were inspired by a Time<\/em> magazine cover story about gun violence in the United States and a Newsweek<\/em> article about children being abused in affluent suburbs. They caused him to write a story about a young girl, Janie, that murders her father after he sexually abuses her.<\/p>\n

The original version of the song had the line \u201che raped a little bitty baby\/the man has to got to be insane,\u201d but he changed it to \u201che jacked a little bitty baby\/the man has got to be insane\u201d so it could get played on the radio and MTV. There\u2019s also an edited version that replaces the line, \u201cShe had to take him down easy and put a bullet in his brain,\u201d with, \u201cShe had to take him down easy and left him in the pouring rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Even with those edits, the song is a chilling look at child abuse. And to make a video that got the message across, they hired director David Fincher a few years before he broke big with movies like Alien 3<\/em>, Seven<\/em> and The Game<\/em>. It cuts between the band playing, a police officer trying to investigate the homicide, and flashbacks to Janie\u2019s life prior to the murder.<\/p>\n

Their previous single, \u201cLove in an Elevator<\/a>,\u201d is basically about Steven Tyler receiving oral sex in an elevator. That shows how far they went out of their comfort zone for \u201cJanie\u2019s Got a Gun,\u201d which went into heavy rotation on MTV and Top 40 radio. They wouldn\u2019t have a bigger single until \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Miss a Thing\u201d nine years later.<\/p>\n

There hasn\u2019t been a genuine hit for Aerosmith since \u201cJaded\u201d back in 2001, but that has done little to hurt them as a draw on the concert circuit. They recently brought drummer Joey Kramer back after an extremely messy separation that involved the U.S. court system and guards outside of Aerosmith\u2019s rehearsal that refused to let him in. All of that seems to be behind them for now and they are gigging through September in Las Vegas and Europe. Just don\u2019t expect to hear \u201cJanie\u2019s Got a Gun.\u201d For whatever reason, they\u2019ve only busted it out a single time during their entire Las Vegas run.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago this month, Aerosmith\u2019s \u201cJanie\u2019s Got a Gun\u201d peaked on the Hot 100, reaching Number Four \u2014 just below Paula Abdul\u2019s \u201cOpposites Attract,\u201d Seduction\u2019s \u201cTwo to Make It Right\u201d and Rod Stewart\u2019s \u201cDowntown Train.\u201d It was an uncharacteristically dark single for the band, with themes of incest, child abuse, and revenge murder. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-22 19:53:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}