This is an unauthorized biography of Aerosmith. In 1993, Aerosmith signed an unprecedented multi-million dollar long-term contract with Sony Music. A few years earlier, however, few observers would have predicted that the band would still be around, let alone prospering, in the 1990s. Aerosmith emerged in the mid-1970s from the local bar scene to become one of that era's most successful and influential American hard-rock bands, selling multiplatinum records before publicly self-destructing in a drug-clouded haze. In the 1980s and 1990s the band pulled itself out of a "seven-year lost weekend" to produce music as good as they ever did in the 1970s. They are known to have influenced bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, as well as hard rock and heavy metal bands. Their participation in Run-DMC's hip-hop re-working of "Walk This Way", helped launch a rock-rap-fusion trend in contemporary music.