Famed songwriter Desmond Child revealed that his collaboration with Aerosmith on the 1987 classic, “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” was inspired by Motley Crue's Vince Neil. Child, who's renowned for his work with Kiss and Bon Jovi, spoke to Celebrity Access and recalled how the song came to be: “It was Steven (Tyler) who came up with the title ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady).' But he had turned it into 'Cruisin' For The Ladies' because they thought that 'Dude (Looks Like A Lady)' would be offensive to the gay community. I said, 'I’m gay. It’s not offensive. It’s great.' And I convinced them to go down that path.”
Child went on to say, “We basically told the story that he had told me. . . He had gone into a club and saw this gorgeous creature at the end of the bar with teased-up platinum mullet and black nails and porcelain skin and jewelry and with a curvy waist. Then the creature turns around, and it’s Vince Neil of Motley Crue. Then they were like, 'My God, that dude looks like a lady.'”
A while back Steven Tyler told us that he and lead guitarist Joe Perry have a pretty simple method for picking which tracks to work on during the band's recording sessions: “The songs we pick out of the 20 or 30 songs we write for an album, we pick because I look at Joe and say, 'Hey, man, could you play that to the audience?' 'No.' 'Well, then let's not put it on the record.'”