Music / Pump

Janie got a gun. Janie got a gun.
Dog day just begun, now everybody is on the run

There goes my old girlfriend, there's another diamond ring
And, uh, all those late night promises I guess they don't mean a thing
So baby, what's the story?
Did you find another man?

Is it easy to sleep in the bed that we made?
When you don't look back I guess the feelings start to fade away
I used to feel your fire
But now it's cold inside

—"What It Takes"

Pump is the tenth studio album recorded by American hard rock band Aerosmith. It was released through Geffen Records on September 12, 1989.

The Boston band was riding high on a new wave of popularity, primed with a 1986 tag-team release with Run–D.M.C. on a cover of "Walk This Way", and solidified with the 1987 album Permanent Vacation, which spawned three hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

For this album, they didn't mess with a good thing too much. They recorded again at Little Mountain Sound in Vancouver, with Bruce Fairbairn producing. They wrote 19 different songs over the first half of 1989, and were able to distill it down to ten.

For its sound, they wanted something less refined than Permanent Vacation had ended up. As a result of this desire to emphasize that they had no rules, there was plenty of sexuality to go around. And with all sorts of implications, both good and bad. The drug references definitely leaned far more on the side of "bad", as they sought to emphasize that they had finally gotten clean after the drug abuse that nearly derailed their careers in the late 70s and early 80s.

It would end up being an astounding success. Pump would reach #5 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and #3 on the Official Charts Company album chart. It would reach #4 on the year-end Billboard 200 album chart for 1990, and #73 for the decade-end Billboard 200 album chart for The '90s. It would go seven-times Platinum in the both the United States and Canada, and Gold in the United Kingdom.

Six singles were spawned from the album: "Love in an Elevator", "F.I.N.E.", "Janie's Got a Gun", "What It Takes", "The Other Side", and "Monkey on My Back". Four of those songs would be hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (three of them in the Top 10), and three #1's on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.

"Janie's Got a Gun" would win Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 33rd Grammy Awards.

Tracklist

Side One

1. "Young Lust" (4:18)
2. "F.I.N.E." (4:09)
3. "Going Down/Love in an Elevator" (5:39)
4. "Monkey on My Back" (3:57)
5. "Water Song/Janie's Got a Gun" (5:38)

Side Two

6. "Dulcimer Stomp/The Other Side" (4:56)
7. "My Girl" (3:10)
8. "Don't Get Mad, Get Even" (4:48)
9. "Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man" (4:39)
10. "What It Takes" (5:11) - Includes a Hidden Track instrumental outro composed/performed by Randy Raine-Reusch

Personnel

• Steven Tyler – lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica
• Joe Perry – guitar: second solo on "Love in an Elevator", slide guitar on "Monkey on My Back", backing vocals
• Brad Whitford – guitar: lead guitar on "Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man" and first solo on "Love in an Elevator"
• Tom Hamilton – bass guitar, backing vocals on "Love in an Elevator"
• Joey Kramer – drums

"I'm hopin' that we get troped":

• All There in the Manual: The initial brief instrumental interludes to some of the songs are included on their album titles. "Going Down" for "Love in an Elevator", "Water Song" for "Janie's Got a Gun", "Dulcimer Stomp" for "The Other Side", and "Hoodoo" for "Voodoo Medicine Man".
• Archnemesis Dad: "Janie's Got a Gun" is about a woman killing her Abusive Parent, ditching his body under the train, and being arrested.
• Bowdlerize: For "Janie's Got a Gun", in addition to changing the second bridge (see Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil below) to "He jacked a little bitty baby", the last bridge changes the lyric "She had to take him down easy/And put a bullet in his brain" to "She had to take him down easy/She left him in the pouring rain".
• Call-Back: "What It Takes" has the line "my heart's been doing time", reference to their earlier song "Heart's Done Time".
• Cement Shoes: Among the advice in "Don't Get Mad Get Even" is "And you hate to be a wise guy when your feet are in concrete".
• Dare to Be Badass: "Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man" is about how things are not going well, so you need to take a stance to fix them.
• Elevator Floor Announcement: In the "Going Down" intro to "Love in an Elevator".
  Second floor. Hardware, children's wear, ladies' lingerie. Oh! Good morning, Mr. Tyler. Going...down?
• Elevator Going Down: "Going Down/Love in an Elevator".
• Fun with Acronyms: "F.I.N.E." stands for "Fucked Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional". In addition to a song with that title, it also appears in "What It Takes".
• Intercourse with You: As expected from Aerosmith, starting with the first two songs ("F.I.N.E." is particularly rife with Double Entendres).
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: In the second verse of "Love in an Elevator", the singer expresses his hope that the elevator he is in with "Jackie" gets stuck. Jackie had already made overtures toward him in that verse, implying coming shenanigans in the mailroom.
• Ode to Sobriety: "Monkey on My Back", reflecting the band's own cleaning up.
• Office Romance: Many of the lines in "Love in an Elevator" imply the narrator is doing, or at least dreaming of, sexual escapades at work.
• One-Woman Song: "My Girl".
• Pay Evil unto Evil: "Janie's Got a Gun" is about a girl taking the law into her own hands to stop an abusive father.
• Precision F-Strike: "Feeding that fucking monkey on my back!" In fact, it helped Geffen decide not to release the album with a lyric sheet.
• "Psycho" Strings: The extra orchestration in "Janie's Got a Gun" gives a Psycho feel to the choruses. Though depending on you interpretation, it could be far more triumphant in this case.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The second bridge for "Janie's Got a Gun" is changed in the album and single versions for commercial reasons. But the real version, which Aerosmith uses for concerts, explicitly states that the abuse Janie was suffering was sexual in nature.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: Employed on "The Other Side", but averted elsewhere.
• Singer Name Drop: Well, guitarist, as "F.I.N.E." has the line "And Joe Perry says I'm ALRIGHT!"
• Take That!: Given Tipper Gore's Moral Guardian crusade in the Parents Music Resource Center, "F.I.N.E." sarcastically namedrops her ("Even Tipper thinks I'm\Alright!")
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: How Janie's abusive father met his end in "Janie's Got a Gun". Not only did she blow his brains out, but she threw his body in front of an oncoming train.