LAME-DUCK WALK: Petty and John may want...

LAME-DUCK WALK: Petty and John may want to keep an eye on Aerosmith to get some tips on how to survive as a lame duck on a record label. The Beantown Bad Boys are still recording for one company (they owe Geffen two albums) after signing a $37-million deal last August with another (Sony).

That leaves plenty of questions about how much effort Geffen will put into promoting the next two albums of a band it’s going to lose anyway, as well as whether the group might just deliver a couple of quickie albums and move on to its greener pastures.

But the group’s manager, Tim Collins, and Geffen executive John David Kalodner both say it’s been business as usual so far as Aerosmith is at work on its next release.

Collins says that no one at Geffen has treated the band any differently since the Sony deal was signed, and both he and Kalodner say that any pressure comes not from the contract situation, but from having to deliver another hit on the order of the band’s last two albums, 1987’s 3.5-million-selling “Permanent Vacation” and 1989’s 5-million-selling “Pump.”

“Huge pressure,” says Kalodner.

There have been some differences of opinion over the new recordings, and singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry have gone to Vancouver to write more songs that will be recorded soon. But that, too, Kalodner says, is part of the normal process.

“What happens is when we do these records there’s always a period of time when songs are adjusted and more written,” Kalodner says. “There’s always turmoil in the middle of records. That’s normal.”

But the biggest question surrounding the eventual move concerns chemistry: Kalodner is generally credited with midwifing Aerosmith’s recent success. The band, a huge hit in the ‘70s, was basically a dead issue before he started working with it in the mid-’80s.

“He’s a crucial part of the team,” says Collins.

Will Kalodner be able to keep working with the band when it leaves Geffen?

“It’s pretty much up to Geffen,” Kalodner says of his future relationship with Aerosmith. “But we’re so focused on this record that it’s never really crossed my mind. And in the life cycle of a rock band, two albums is a long time.”