Aerosmith dude looks like a lady
Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx, in his book, The Heroin Diaries, claims that the song was specifically inspired by Neil. This, according to Neil, prompted Tyler to comment: "Dude looks like a lady!". 'Dude (Looks Like a Lady)' came out of that session."Īccording to an interview with Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe conducted for Swedish television, the title of the song originated from a New York bar crawl where Tyler and Neil had drinks at a gay bar where the waiters were dressed in women's clothes. Steven Tyler states in the book Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith: "One day we met Mötley Crüe, and they're all going, 'Dude!' Dude this and Dude that, everything was Dude. He knows that he's the one that was paid homage to in "Dude Looks Like a Lady.The song, which originally started out as "Cruisin' for a Lady", talks about a male with an effeminate appearance, who is mistaken for a female. Songfacts: Have you ever talked to Vince Neil about this song?ĭesmond: Oh yeah, I told him the story. (Laughs) I don't know if anyone has looked deep enough into the song, but it's a very accepting song, and it has a moral that says never judge a book by its cover, or who you're going to love by your lover. So they accepted the lyric, and not only that, went for it. It's not like the polarized society we have now, because that was before gay people really started fighting for their rights and nobody cared about it and everyone thought that they could make fun of us. If you think about how far back that was, it was a very daring song to sing, and everyone went with it.
It was like do you realize this is about a tranny? (Laughing). Doubtfire, and then it was like every four or five year old child in America was able to sing that song. It's funny, because they used that song in Mrs. He says, "My funky lady, I like it, like it, like it like that." And so he doesn't run out of there, he stays. Let's write this song." So I talked them into the whole scenario of a guy that walks into a strip joint and falls in love with the stripper on stage, goes backstage and finds out it's a guy. So I grabbed onto that and I said, "No, that's the title of the song." And they looked at me like, "Are you kidding me?" And then Joe (Perry) stepped in and said, "I don't want to insult the gay community." I said, "Okay, I'm gay, and I'm not insulted. That's the true story of how that was born. So then they started making fun of him and started saying, "That dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady." So that's how that was born. He got the idea because they had gone to a bar and had seen a girl at the end of the bar with ginormous blonde rock hair, and the girl turned around and it ended up being Vince Neil from Motley Crue. Steven (Tyler) was much more friendly, as he is, and was very generous, really, and showed me a song that they had started called "Cruisin' for the Ladies." I listened to that lyric, and I said, "You know what, that's a very boring title." And they looked at me like, "How dare you?" And then Steven volunteered, sheepishly, and said that when he first wrote the melody he was singing "Dude Looks like a Lady." It was kind of a tongue twister that sounded more like scatting. They were going along with it to please John Kalodner, but they were not that happy about it.
They had never written with an outside writer, and they were not happy to see me. Because of my success with Bon Jovi, John Kalodner - the famous John Kalodner, legendary A&R man - asked me if I would go up to Boston and meet Aerosmith.