Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song that Changed American Music Forever - Hardcover

Geoff Edgers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0735212236 ISBN 13: 9780735212237

Publisher: Blue Rider Press, 2019

Synopsis

Washington Post staff writer Geoff Edgers takes a deep dive into the story behind "Walk This Way," Aerosmith and Run-DMC's legendary, groundbreaking mashup that forever changed music.

The early 1980s were an exciting time for music. Hair metal bands were selling out stadiums, while clubs and house parties in New York City had spawned a new genre of music. At the time, though, hip hop's reach was limited, an artform largely ignored by mainstream radio deejays and the rock-obsessed MTV network.

But in 1986, the music world was irrevocably changed when Run-DMC covered Aerosmith's hit "Walk This Way" in the first rock-hip hop collaboration. Others had tried melding styles. This was different, as a pair of iconic arena rockers and the young kings of hip hop shared a studio and started a revolution. The result: Something totally new and instantly popular. Most importantly, "Walk This Way" would be the first rap song to be played on mainstream rock radio.

In Walk This Way, Geoff Edgers sets the scene for this unlikely union of rockers and MCs, a mashup that both revived Aerosmith and catapulted hip hop into the mainstream. He tracks the paths of the main artists--Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Joseph "Run" Simmons, and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels--along with other major players on the scene across their lives and careers, illustrating the long road to the revolutionary marriage of rock and hip hop. Deeply researched and written in cinematic style, this music history is a must-read for fans of hip hop, rock, and everything in between.

About this title

Review

"American music--and America itself--has always been a hybrid creation, different cultures and traditions colliding and cross-pollinating, becoming something new in the process. Walk This Way captures one such moment, a happy accident that marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. Geoff Edgers has written an engaging and unusually revealing account of an unlikely song (and an even unlikelier collaboration) that became a chapter in American musical history."
--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher

"Walk This Way spans from hip hop's blazing birth to classic rock's last gasps, from dorks in New York dorm room to the Sunset Strip at the height of hair metal. Geoff Edgers takes a pop phenomenon and cracks it open to reveal a rollicking, curious and unlikely musical history."
--Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

"Hip hop is a descendant of the declarative storytelling that has sustained black people from the shores of their homelands to the strange new countries of their captors. Hip hop music is both battle cry and survival song wrapped up in the swagger and majesty of a mighty people. But when Run DMC instructed that we should 'Walk This Way, ' their words elevated beyond the confines of song and story to an actual manifesto that revolutionized an industry and a culture. Journalist Geoff Edgers chronicles the fascinating life of a song that changed the story forever."
--Ava DuVernay, director of 13th and A Wrinkle in Time

About the Author

Geoff Edgers is a journalist and author. He is the national arts reporter for The Washington Post, hosts the Edge of Fame podcast, and his work has appeared in GQ, Spin, and The Boston Globe, among others. He also produced and starred in the 2010 documentary Do It Again, and he is the author of multiple children's books about The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Stan Lee, and Julia Child. He lives in Concord, MA. with his family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Blue Rider Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0735212236
• ISBN 13: 9780735212237
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288