Walk This Way
Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever
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Walk This Way
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Narrated by:
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Geoff Edgers
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Written by:
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Geoff Edgers
About this listen
Washington Post national arts reporter 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 art form 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-hear for fans of hip-hop, rock, and everything in between.
©2019 Geoff Edgers (P)2019 Penguin AudioCritic Reviews
“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 best-selling 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)
“You know when you love a song but have no idea what it means until your buddy explains it to you? Well, in this case the song is ‘Walk This Way,’ and your buddy is Geoff Edgers, who tells a story of how a single track became a single moment that changed music forever. Rick Rubin will be proud.” (Norm Macdonald, comedian and New York Times best-selling author of Based on a True Story)
“An exhaustively sourced, briskly entertaining read.” (The Washington Post)