Permanent Vacation

Album: Permanent Vacation (1987)
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Songfacts®:

  • Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler wrote this song with guitarist Brad Whitford. The song is about retiring to the tropics, but it also deals with the band getting sober from drugs ("My nose is clean and lordy, don't need no sedation..."), which was no small feat considering their copious cocaine habits in the '70s and early '80s.

    The song was never a hit, but was a live staple on Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation and Pump tours.
  • Permanent Vacation was Aerosmith's comeback album, and the first one they recorded sober. It was also the first album they recorded with Bruce Fairbairn, who worked with the band at his studios in Vancouver - a great place for the recovering addicts to focus on their craft. This song was one of the last ones written for the album, and it provided the title for the disk.

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