Editing Done with Mirrors (section)

==Background==
[[Brad Whitford]] revealed that producer [[Ted Templeman]] wanted to capture the band's aggressive, "out of control freight train" sound by removing the red light indicating that recording was underway (a technique he had used to capture [[Van Halen]]'s sound). Templeman told the band to run through the songs in the studio and recorded them without their knowledge. Whitford referred to the nerves generated when knowingly recording songs as "the red light blues".

"I had a great time making that record," Templeman told ''[[The Washington Post]]'''s [[Geoff Edgers]], "and Steven was one of the most amazing guys. But we had to do that record in Berkeley because they didn't want those guys to score (drugs). They didn't want them to be in L.A. or San Francisco. I wasn't familiar with the board. As a producer, if you know your room and the mic [[preamplifier|preamps]], you know how things are going to sound. I don't think I made Joey's drums sound as good as they could have or Joe's guitar."<ref name="WashPost">{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/lifestyle/walk-this-way/??noredirect=on |title=The inside story of when Run‑DMC met Aerosmith and changed music forever |last=Edgers |first=Geoff |author-link=Geoff Edgers |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=May 18, 2016 |access-date=2018-08-26}}</ref>

Joe Perry recalled recording in a 2022 interview: "[...] with the rest of the songs, there was a vibe to them where they were just raw and dirty. I still wish I could have maybe polished a few more things or maybe put a couple more overdubs on it, but all in all, I think it did what it was supposed to do. I think it kind of showed me what we needed to do, what we were, and where we needed to be for the next one. I think we had to do that record to get to the next step and really take ourselves out of the usual way we were writing and recording."<ref>Daly, Andrew. An Interview with Joe Perry of Aerosmith. July 2, 2022. VWMusic. July 2, 2022. https://vwmusicrocks.com/2022/07/02/an-interview-with-joe-perry-of-aerosmith/.</ref>

"Let the Music Do the Talking" was a rerecording of the title track from the [[Let the Music Do the Talking|first album]] by [[the Joe Perry Project]], with altered lyrics and melody. According to [[Chuck Eddy]], Aerosmith's version is tougher than the original, "while still appropriately letting Joe's guitar talk–like an elephant, no less-–while Tyler discussed somebody being his 'brand-new drug'."<ref name="Eddy" /> The music of "The Reason a Dog" have been compared to [[the Police]]'s "[[Invisible Sun]]" (1981), while its lyrics espouse "tail-wagging canines teaching male-nagging spouses life lessons". Elsewhere, "Shela" is a syncopated song which, according to Eddy, "almost goes [[disco]], at least in the mid-1980s, [[ZZ Top]] sense of the word", while "Gypsy Boots" rides an [[AC/DC]]-esque riff until a switch to bass [[vamp (music)|vamps]] near its conclusion.<ref name="Eddy" /> The final songs on the vinyl edition are the [[blues]] song "She's on Fire" and the fast, straightforward [[rhythm and blues|R&B]] song "The Hop", featuring blues harp, whereas cassette and CD versions conclude with "Darkness", a dirge that Eddy says connects "foreboding old Aerosmith alley crawls like '[[Seasons of Wither]]' with more lucrative [[Tin Pan Alley]] moves to come."<ref name="Eddy" />

[[Viacom (2005–present)|Viacom]] (MTV & VH1) executive [[Doug Herzog]] recalled that, after this album, "Aerosmith was done… They were a little bit of a joke."<ref name="WashPost"/> Eddy speculated that the album's failure may have been due to the "kick-the-[[cocaine addiction|coke-habit]] pun" of the title, or the lead single and first song being a remake of a five-year-old Joe Perry Project song.<ref name="Eddy" /> However, they would revive their career in 1986 with a landmark remake of 1975's "[[Walk This Way]]" with hip-hop group [[Run DMC]], followed by an album that would eventually go 5× Platinum – ''[[Permanent Vacation (Aerosmith album)|Permanent Vacation]]'' – in 1987.

''Done with Mirrors'' is the last Aerosmith record written without the aid of outside songwriters, as of ''[[Music from Another Dimension!]]''