"Our first two albums were basically comprised of songs we'd been playing for years live in the clubs," writers Joe Perry, in his book, "Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith." With Toys, we started from scratch. It was our first album that was written from the ground up. Making this record, we learned to be recording artists and write songs on a deadline. In the process, we began to see just what Aerosmith could accomplish."

The group began recording the album at the beginning of 1975, working at the Record Plant in New York City with producer Jack Douglas, who had also manned the boards for 1974's Get Your Wings. Much of the previous year had been spent doing live shows-as a result, both Perry and fellow guitarist Brad Whitford had evolved into riff maestros.

"Aerosmith was a different band when we started [Toys]," observes Douglas. "They had become better players-different. It showed in the riffs that Joe and Brad brought back from the road. Toys in the Attic was a much more sophisticated record than the other stuff they had done."

The proof of that assessment lies in the way many high points on Toys came to fruition. The interaction between Whitford, a Berklee-trained player with impeccable technique, and Perry, a more instinctive player, began to coalesce into a magical chemistry. [Note: In Rocks, Perry writes that it was during this period that he bought his first '59 Les Paul. Around this same time, Whitford, already a Les Paul devotee, acquired a '57 Goldtop with a Bigsby tailpiece.] Similarly, the creative dynamic between Perry and Steven Tyler reached monumental proportions. At the end of one session, Douglas voiced the need for a strong, uptempo rocker, and began tapping out a beat on his thigh.

Perry picks up the story: "I picked up my '55 Les Paul Junior that I'd just gotten from Johnny Thunders and, without thinking, picked up on Jack's groove and played the riffs of a song that would eventually be called 'Toys in the Attic,'" he writes. "'Don't know where this is coming from,' I said to Steven, 'but is this something you can sing to?' 'I think so,' he said. 'I can use the melody from the riff. Just try and throw in a few more chords.'" Jack helped arranged it and, within minutes, the song was written."

Likewise, the manner in which "Walk This Way" evolved testifies to the band's newfound confidence and creativity. During the "Get Your Wings" tour, Perry had been listening to the Meters, the legendary New Orleans funk band. During a soundcheck in Honolulu, he asked drummer Joey Kramer to lay down a groove-based R&B pattern. Suddenly, says Perry, the central riff for "Walk This Way" just "flew out," and the rest of the music pretty much "wrote itself." Months later, thanks in part to a famous line from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, Tyler himself "let it fly" with the lyrics and vocal melody.

"That was just verbal diarrhea," Tyler told Gibson.com, in 2007. "That was me dancing with my muse, getting right up off the dance floor, not caring about how good or bad the band was, and just throwing my hands in the air and screaming, 'Hallelujah!'"