Aerosmith released Night In The Ruts on November 16, 1979, through Columbia Records. Their sixth studio album arrived after Joe Perry had left during recording, but his guitar remained on songs including “No Surprize” and “Chiquita.” The finished record also featured his replacement, Jimmy Crespo, whose solo on “Three Mile Smile” put both guitarists on the same album.
Getting there had been difficult. Sessions began with Jack Douglas, who had produced the band's previous four studio albums, before Gary Lyons took over; the finished album credited Lyons and Aerosmith as producers. Lyrics and vocals remained unfinished when the band returned to touring. In Aerosmith's 1997 memoir, Walk This Way, Steven Tyler recalled finding a way through his block on “No Surprize” by writing about the band's beginnings. The album opened with their shared history just as the lineup that had made it was breaking apart.
Crespo came into that situation through manager David Krebs. In an interview with Tom Guerra, he recalled that Krebs had seen him playing and approached him about joining Aerosmith while Night In The Ruts was being finished. Crespo had been doing session work in New York after his previous band broke up. He admired Brad Whitford's playing and remembered their audition together as musically solid. Once he joined in October 1979, his contribution to “Three Mile Smile” became an early example of what he could add. Whitford also recorded a solo for the song; in the notes to the 1991 box set Pandora's Box, he recalled that Tyler chose Crespo's version.
His equipment changed as the work moved from the studio to the stage. Crespo told Guerra that he used a 1969 100-watt Marshall on Night In The Ruts, with a modified preamp. For the live shows, Tyler wanted more gain, so Crespo switched to the band's 130-watt Music Man amplifiers. It wasn't his preferred sound, but it supplied the guitar crunch Tyler wanted. Crespo described his broader experience with the band as “wonderful and horrific at the same time,” recalling both his excitement about the music and the internal problems that made it difficult to deliver.
The songs themselves reached beyond the Tyler-Perry writing partnership. Three of the album's nine tracks were covers, including The Shangri-Las' “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” and The Yardbirds' “Think About It.” “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” was also released as a single. Meanwhile, “No Surprize,” “Chiquita” and “Three Mile Smile” retained Tyler-Perry songwriting credits despite the separation.
Tyler took the closing track somewhere more personal. “Mia” was a piano lullaby for his daughter, and he was its sole credited songwriter. As Classic Rock recounted, Tyler later connected the song's closing bell-like notes with the possibility that Aerosmith were coming to an end. A song written for his child had acquired another meaning against the band's troubles.
Aerosmith continued with Crespo, who co-wrote much of the next studio album, Rock In A Hard Place, released in 1982. Whitford left in 1981, extending the personnel changes that had begun during Night In The Ruts. Perry and Whitford returned to the band in 1984, and both appeared on Done With Mirrors in 1985, their first Aerosmith studio album together since Night In The Ruts.
