Aerosmith ‘Nine Lives’

Visual Analysis

Inviting curious readers a glimpse along with the road-map of an endangered species. Aerosmith sealed their reputation as the “Bad Boys of Rock and Roll”, with the classic LPs Toys in the Attic (1975), Rocks (1976), and Pump (1989).

Ten years after Aerosmith’s successful comeback, its anticipated twelfth studio release Nine Lives slinked into record stores around the globe in the spring of 1997.

Amped up with their first collection of new material for Columbia since Rock in a Hard Place, during the band’s early-eighties transitional era. The album’s original cover (designed by Stefan Sagmeister) depicted a Lord Krishna figure with the head of a cat in place of his own, dancing on the thousand-headed snake demon, Kaliya.

The Hindu community found the artwork offensive, so the band and its label apologized and chose an image inside the cd’s booklet to replace the disputed Krishna cover. Aerosmith had caused a ripple without even trying. The updated design made no less of an effort to direct our attention to the Toxic Twins*, et al. affinity for mischief.

Nine Lives’ altered cover-art unveiled a masculine, grayish-white figure with the head of a sphynx cat, strapped across a knife thrower’s wheel in spread-eagle fashion. Set against a most impressive haze of ganja, the cat’s yellow eyes peer at the unseen knife-thrower in a steady gaze that implies, “hit me with everything you’ve got”.

You’ll notice the title of the album, Nine Lives, set in distinctive lettering across the wheel’s radiant surface in a blueish hue, accentuating the hazy backdrop. Six jeweled daggers are embedded in the wheel’s surface around the immobilized cat, with number seven entering the frame and headed right for the feline’s nether-region.

The song “Taste of India” inspired an exotic touch (as illustrated in Aerosmith’s trademark “wings” logo (hovering in mid-flight, near the upper right-hand corner of the frame)and the matte’s scroll-art.

Our feline captive sports a wife ­beater, purple duds, and steel-tipped boots (is it possible that Aerosmith’s road manager discovered the cat raiding Steven Tyler’s stage wardrobe, and strapped the cat onto the knife thrower’s wheel?).

At a closer look, the cat’s shirt reveals a graphic image of the band in a torturous state by the aftermath of drummer Joey Kramer’s “blue funk”, which sidelined his involvement during the early stages of Nine Lives creative conception.

Suspended in the dense, wafting haze at the outer reaches of the knife thrower's wheel; a courageous lion marches proudly across an invisible tightrope and a crazed devil casts a menacing glance at the out-of-view knife thrower.

There is something off-kilter about the dancing ballerina on the upper-right side of the frame that I cannot put my finger on — a giraffe extends its long neck into the lower reaches of the setting — anticipating its moment to elate the crowd with its towering presence; while the trained elephant waits patiently to perform its next set of tricks on command.

I have been an Aerosmith fanatic for many years — and, between the original cover (Krishna w/snake demon) and the alternate/official cover (Knife thrower’s wheel), I prefer the former (which I took at face value).

The detail of the sphynx cat’s wrinkled head atop an exotic belly dancer cavorting amongst a multitude of hooded, hissing cobras looks dark, daring, and dangerous. There is a mystique to the visual, with the hazy background engulfed in foreboding darkness.

(*The Toxic Twins is a nickname given to Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, back in the 1970s, due to their excessive drug use.)