Aerosmith's '80s comeback albums

Will there ever be a Pandora’s Box II? The band’s life, pace F. Scott Fitzgerald, is now in the midst of a second act (on Geffen Records) the likes of which rock & roll has rarely seen. Their first Geffen release, Done With Mirrors (1985), has never been certified as a gold album, but Permanent Vacation (1987) and Pump (1989), by contrast, yielded a major string of giddy Top 40, MTV, and AOR (album-oriented radio) hits: ”Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” ”Angel,” ”Love in an Elevator,” ”Janie’s Got a Gun,” and more. Vacation has sold 3 million albums in the U.S. alone, Pump over 4 million. Some elements of this comeback speak well for Aerosmith’s future. The band can now fall back on the skills of the hired songwriting guns who power both records, and its members’ swaggering good health — not to mention their proud abstemiousness — ought to prevent a replay of the group’s well-publicized heroin-soaked fall from grace. Columbia and its parent conglomerate, Sony, seem to think so: They’ve signed Aerosmith again, in effect betting a reported $25 million that (after releasing three more albums under its contract with Geffen) the band will still be around in the late ’90s to make money for the company again.