Songfacts®:

• This was released as the first single from Aerosmith's fifteenth studio album, Music From Another Dimension. An unfinished piece originally put together in 1991 during the initial sessions for the Get a Grip album, the song was debuted live by the band on the finale of the eleventh series of American Idol on May 23, 2012.
• The song also features on the soundtrack for the movie GI Joe: Retaliation.
• This was the first new song to be dropped by Aerosmith in nearly six years. The previous one was "Devil's Got a New Disguise," the title track of a compilation album, which was released as a promotional single in October 2006.
• The band wrote the song with Canadian songsmith Jim Vallance, who is best known as the former songwriting partner of Bryan Adams. Other songs Vallance helped Aerosmith write include "Rag Doll" (1987), "Hangman Jury" (1987) and "Eat The Rich" (1993).
• Casey Patrick Tebo directed the Wild, Wild West-inspired video. The clip stars actress Alexa Vega, who is best known for her role as Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids film series. It shows her trying to escape on roller skates from some menacing females whilst Aerosmith perform the track in a warehouse.
• Joe Perry's riff was played on a newly purchased guitar synth. He recalled to Artist Direct: "I'm always looking for the newest guitar synthesizer or foot pedal—basically anything that can change the sound of the guitar for inspiration. Sometimes, I'll even try to write a song on a different instrument. That can spark a new riff. For 'Legendary Child,' I'd gotten a new guitar synth almost 20 years ago. That main riff was one of the first things I played when I plugged this thing in. At the time, it was the latest one. We pulled it out of the box, plugged it in, and started fooling it. This riff started coming out."
• Perry's riff actually makes two appearances on Music From Another Dimension. " We couldn't really figure out where to put it," he told Artist Direct. "After all these years, there was something about it that was really catchy, but we never found a place for it. It found its way into 'Legendary Child", but we also placed it in another track. It's funny because when we started going through some of the tunes we had stockpiled, we realized that riff had made two appearances [Laughs]. Rather than say, 'We used it once so we can't use it again,' we said, 'It sounds good in that song as well.' There it is. That particular riff stuck in my head, and it ended up on the record twice. We'd identify these songs by singing the riffs to each other."