On the other hand, Tyler credited drugs with helping him to become more creative. He was working mainly in a spontaneous way, responding to a sound and finding inspiration flowing forth. When recording got under way at Record Plant Studios in New York, with producer Jack Douglas, Tyler would again vanish to the cold stairwell and furiously scribble lyrics, sometimes by the ream. Writing while stoned was one thing, but being high also made recording an arduous process; often dozens of takes were required to get a single song down properly. Yet when Aerosmith did pull it together, their development, honed by constant touring, shone through. The burden was made even greater because while they recorded this new album, they also gigged, so subjecting themselves to tiring shuttle flights back and forth between cities and the studio. It could be argued that without chemical assistance they would never have managed to sustain such a gruelling schedule. That and the resilience of youth kept them going. Tyler found sufficient reserves to maintain his live wire presence in rehearsals and could not resist leaping behind the drums, picking up the sticks and letting rip. His exuberant energy on the skins jolted Joe and Brad to ginger up their guitar action. Likewise, Steven happily slipped into backing vocals when Perry sang lead when recording his song, ‘Combination’.
With recording completed, Aerosmith had begun preparations for a summer tour when they quit Boston for a special trip to New York. The British hard rock band Black Sabbath, fronted by Ozzy Osbourne, was touring America to promote its new album, We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll; on 10 May 1976 they were to headline at Madison Square Garden, supported by Aerosmith - their first appearance at this hallowed venue. A bundle of excitement and nerves, on the day Steven became alarmed when with early evening approaching Joe Perry had not shown up. He made it at the last moment, but only after he had been roused back home from a drug-induced stupor and rushed to New York to take the stage. For Steven, that night still proved to be special. Apart from performing on this famous stage where so many of his music idols had appeared, his parents, Victor and Susan Tallarico, were sitting in the front row, lapping up this first-hand proof of just how far their go-getter son had come.
That month, Columbia Records released Rocks, a classic hard rock album that uncompromisingly defined Aerosmith’s identity. It shipped platinum, meaning that it had a million copies on order before it hit the record shops. Dubbed Aerosmith’s most sophisticated effort yet, Rocks was voted the number one favourite album by Creem magazine readers, ultimately reaching number three on the US album chart, and remaining on this chart for a year. To back the new album, the band launched a 58-gig tour of the US, kicking off in St Louis in May.
Sheathed in sleek black satin, with his long, dark hair hanging about his face and his tongue lolling out lasciviously, Steven made his most pronounced effect yet on audiences across the country. Experience and confidence combined to elevate his vocal delivery and stage presence to new levels. Tyler’s natural charisma extended well beyond the first few rows, commanding the attention of every kid crammed into the increasingly bigger arenas. Steven had no truck with the by now popular stage effects such as smoke bombs, or with staging spectacular stunts. Apart from believing that such flashy capers detracted from the music, he recognised that with each new tour it would become absurd trying to outdo previous antics.
Of the three singles released from Rocks over the coming months, ‘Last Child’ fared best, reaching number twenty-one in America in summer. ‘Home Tonight’ dropped anchor later at number seventy-one, with ‘Back in the Saddle’ ultimately making it into the US Top 40. The band that had initially struggled to get noticed by the media, now had journalists hard on the trail of exclusive interviews. The combination of dope, drink, adrenalin, lust and fatigue could make Tyler wildly indiscreet during such sessions. At the mercy of his own irreverent sense of humour, he would shoot his mouth off, only to cringe when he opened the rock magazine to discover just how unguarded he had been.
Backstage at gigs, Tyler was snorting lines of cocaine from mirrors that must have reflected the visible ravages of what he was doing to himself. Whether Aerosmith was headlining at the LA Forum or the RFK Stadium in Washington, it was becoming patently obvious that Tyler was in trouble, but he took years to confess that he was in a mess. Before stepping on stage his stomach would be churning with nausea, and his heart hammering with adrenalin and drugs. On stage, mid-flight, his head would be so all over the place that there were moments in the middle of the whirlwind when he would grind to an unsteady halt and find himself spooked and bemused. Coming off stage, usually with helping hands ready to drape a towel around his sweat-soaked shoulders, he would be so drained that it was a struggle to walk. Dehydration must have been a major concern, too; all of this was taking a relentless toll on his system. He was exhausted much of the time and felt a great deal older than his twenty-eight years.
Aerosmith headlined their first stadium gig in June 1976 when they performed before eighty thousand fans at the Detroit Lions’ stadium in Pontiac, Michigan. Boston newspapers now hailed Aerosmith as ‘Boston’s Biggest Export’ and the event had a decisive impact on the band. Joe Perry later stressed: ‘We were America’s band. We were the garage band that made it really big - the ultimate party band.’ Playing in a venue of this size was an odd experience, however. Tyler had become accustomed to avoiding getting too close to overwrought fans, when a split second’s mistiming could see him hauled into the seething, hysterical mass. In this massive arena the fans seemed so distant and there was a wall of helmeted security guards in between.
Acclimatising to Aerosmith’s rising status was not exactly a chore to Steven, but the road was becoming bumpier in other ways. When Rolling Stone wanted to feature Aerosmith with a six-page spread, the news came through that for the magazine cover they preferred to picture just Steven. From the Rolling Stones to Bon Jovi, this kind of situation was guaranteed to create strain within a band. Although Tyler was the lightning rod in Aerosmith, Steven did not class himself as the boss - all major decisions were made jointly by the five members. The issue of this cover photo caused problems. Influential publications inevitably win out, and Rolling Stone ran its cover story featuring Tyler with the title ‘Aerosmith’s Wrench Rock: Music for the New Stone Age’.
Aerosmith induced pandemonium at gigs, and the key to their success, according to Steven, was that the band did not try to be clever, did not attempt to philosophise. They went all out to rock the fans clean out of their seats. It was a mutual admiration society, because just as Aerosmith’s guts and passion bled straight off the stage into the crowd, the fans’ wild enthusiasm energised the band as strongly as any stimulant. Steven definitely took time to accept the need for security guards forming a ring around the massively high stages at stadium gigs - sometimes he felt he was singing to the helmets. The pace of life had so quickened that whole chunks of the year just seemed to have evaporated. The strain that the Demon of Screamin’ put on his vocal cords also threatened to be a problem, but Tyler’s periodic need to rest his voice was a luxury the band could not afford; there was no longer time even to fit rehearsals into their hectic schedule.
Come September 1976, after four months on the road, Steven was ready to run to Lake Sunapee, where he rented accommodation while a property he had recently purchased was renovated to his specific design. It was the old yacht club, and he spared no expense in getting it just as he wanted. He had special stone transported to New Hampshire from Belgium, and his plans included having a rope bridge erected to join his property to an islet on the lake, while a solarium was to be built on the roof. At his rented house he kept his collection of guns; they ranged from hunting guns to guns used in Vietnam and, closer to home, guns that had been used (not by Steven) on the dodgy streets of New York. Used to the lake, Steven enjoyed taking a powerful speed-boat out for a spin on the shimmering water. Though lapping up Lake Sunapee’s tranquillity, Tyler continued to indulge in coke-fuelled evenings.
The sex, drugs and rock and roll trip was hardly wearing thin
, but Tom Hamilton confessed: ‘It’s getting to the point where it is not cool to go running around getting laid because you wind up with your shlong falling off. The whole novelty of the pull is kinda fading away.’ Certainly, in his personal life, Steven lately had had much to think about.
A woman Steven had been involved with had become pregnant but it was not the right time for either of them to contemplate bringing a baby into the world - both of them were young and Tyler’s drug addiction had to be a consideration. They had, therefore, mutually decided to abort the pregnancy. It was not a decision taken lightly and, for Tyler’s part, not one that proved particularly easy to live with afterwards. By late summer 1976, Tyler had become involved with another woman who would subsequently have his child - she was fashion model Bebe Buell.
Born Beverle Lorence Buell on 14 July 1953 in Portsmouth, Virginia, 5’9” Bebe began modelling, encouraged by her mother Dorothea, when she was seventeen. Two years later, she moved to New York, and while living in a women’s hostel run by the Catholic church, the beautiful blonde was signed to the Ford Modelling Agency. Soon, Bebe also met and became involved with the Philadelphia-born rock star and producer Todd Rundgren. They moved in together but it was, in the spirit of the times, very much an open relationship - both Bebe and Todd dated other people.
In 1974, photographed by Richard Fegley, Bebe posed nude for Playboy and was that November’s centrefold Playmate of the Month. She was one of the first top fashion models to do this, and it is said to have cost her her association with the renowned Ford Modelling Agency. Although she soon signed to other modelling agencies in America and Britain and continued to carry out assignments for top glossy fashion magazines, as a Playboy Playmate Bebe Buell became more known as the 1970s progressed for her rock star lovers - including David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Iggy Pop and Mick Jagger.
By 1976, Bebe had cast her eye in Steven Tyler’s direction. In August, she had accompanied Todd Rundgren to England, where he was one of the support acts at Knebworth where the Rolling Stones were headlining. At Knebworth, Jagger is said to have teased Buell: ‘Why go for Steven Tyler, when you can have the real thing?’
Bebe had briefly encountered Steven years earlier, but their paths crossed again in 1976 at a record convention in Los Angeles. Tyler had not missed her Playboy centrefold spread and was immediately taken with the busty blonde, who seemed to have taken a shine to him. Exchanging phone calls first while Aerosmith was on the road, the pair finally got together in New York and she subsequently accompanied Tyler to Lake Sunapee in September. Their time together may not have proved to be that long, but it was extremely passionate from the outset.
The arrival of another foxy lady in the Aerosmith camp cranked up the existing tension; according to Buell, she and Elyssa Perry did not get along from day one. Interestingly, Steven had battled with deep hurt at the thought that Joe did not care about being his buddy because he had Elyssa. Yet Bebe has maintained that Joe had quickly made it plain to her in private that he was concerned that she not hurt Steven emotionally. At any rate, it was a stifling environment for the young and free-spirited Bebe, but she still opted to accompany Steven when Aerosmith now left America to embark on their first European tour.
Aerosmith’s confidence was entitled to be high since, by mid-October, Rocks had gone double platinum. In advance of the band hitting British shores, Steven had been asking around, and his information was that not many rock bands were holding sway in the UK right then. On the back of the success of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Queen had been catapulted to new heights but otherwise the UK charts read: number one single, ‘Mississippi’ by a Dutch outfit called Pussycat, and the top UK album was currently Abba’s Greatest Hits. Tyler could have been forgiven for thinking that when Aerosmith came to kick off their first European tour at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool, Merseyside, they would be welcomed with open arms by hard rock lovers and the music media. In truth, Aerosmith came in for a rough ride.
The UK rock press annihilated Aerosmith. Tom Hamilton recalled how tough it was performing live: ‘Playing England was a lot like when we first started in New York, because both places had been hearing the best for years and they were not easily impressed. A lot of our style is patterned after English bands but we felt resistance from the audiences and the press.’ Tyler called the entire tour hell, and later declared of these first UK dates: ‘All we were worried about was finding the best bottle of wine and the best cocaine. I did no sightseeing, no shopping and it was fuck the music - let’s get high!’
Despite that remark, it still gave Steven a massive rush to go on stage. He adored the whole ritual of when, pumped up and poised, he and the band were escorted by bodyguards from the dressing room along corridors, up a ramp and let loose on a stage before tens of thousands of people. No matter how often it happened, for the first few minutes he always felt in a state of shock. The other side of the coin was his heightened awareness of how vulnerable any rock star was to the unhinged mind in the audience. It would be another four years before the world was stunned by John Lennon’s callous murder, and while Lennon was not gunned down in concert, Tyler knew of performers who had been faced with some wild-eyed teenager at a gig brandishing a loaded weapon. His reasoning was that in a world full of people with problems, people high on dope and in a country with a gun culture like America, there was a worringly high possibility that a rock star would one day be shot dead on stage. In late 1976, he made no bones that since a moving target is harder to hit, this inner fear contributed to his manic darting about in concert.
He was conscious, too, that the band’s crazed fans were becoming increasingly difficult to corral safely. At Aerosmith gigs now a special barrier was erected six feet away from the stage and designed so that teenagers could not scale it. To reduce the risk of restiveness and because Tyler preferred to keep shows running like a racehorse there was not much in the way of conversation either between band and audience.
Off stage, between drink and drugs, Tyler’s temper still erupted at times, when he continued to cause localised carnage. In England in 1976, he later revealed, he trashed the band’s tour bus because of another drug-fuelled fit of rage. He and Bebe also rowed, sometimes publicly. When asked about the ructions among Aerosmith, Tyler confessed that these invariably stemmed from Joe Perry playing guitar so loud that it threw his singing clean off. He balanced this criticism by praising his bandmates as ‘beautiful people’.
The true extent of Tyler’s drug taking really only came to light many years later, and Tyler has laid a portion of the blame for this serious substance abuse at the record industry’s door. Speaking in broad terms, he explained that industry figures knew well what rock stars were shoving up their noses or injecting into their veins, but that it did not matter so long as the tour-album cycle remained in force. Tyler does not deny that taking drugs is the individual’s own responsibility, but perhaps it exposed a hint of bitterness when he maintained that if he had had a heart attack induced by dope there were those who would have falsely claimed that they had no idea he was an addict.
Bebe Buell was an uncomfortably close witness to how scary this side of Tyler’s life had become. He also had no peace of mind, and was continually pushed to keep to a debilitating schedule. At times he felt like climbing the walls. None of this made it the best time for Buell to break some sensitive news to Steven.
By early October, she knew that she was pregnant, and had started to suffer from morning sickness on Aerosmith’s European tour. About a year before, on the subject of possible domesticity, Tyler had stated that he had no wish to get married and start a family because he knew that his lifestyle was too wild and it would not be fair on any children, but he did add the rider that before he completely screwed up his life he would like to father a child. Come autumn 1976, however, what Bebe saw made her take a hike.
The European tour was over and Steven and Bebe were back at Lake Sunapee when one day he had a drug-induced seizure. She tried her best to help him thro
ugh it but it was the catalyst to her deciding to pack her belongings and leave. Bebe went to Todd Rundgren in New York and told him that she was carrying Steven Tyler’s child. They agreed to resume their relationship, nonetheless.
For Steven it was extremely confusing. He and Bebe had not been together for very long. When it became known that Buell was pregnant, poison was dripped in his ears from here and there suggesting very clearly that he was not the father of Bebe’s child, and when she and Todd Rundgren resumed their life together, Steven did not know what to believe. In any case, he knew that his drug taking and drinking meant that he was in no shape even to consider fatherhood, and so it was left at that - for now.
Aerosmith business carried on regardless. ‘Walk This Way’ reached number ten in the US singles chart a year and a half after its original release. Then, when Aerosmith headlined a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden that December, they were the toast of New York. Rocks was acclaimed as capturing Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking, and the band’s star was at its highest point to date. Privately, however, Steven was about to drop to one of his darkest, most dangerous levels yet.
CHAPTER 6
The Toxic Time Bomb Ticks
IT IS fair to say that the last place on earth you would think to stumble across Steven Tyler is a convent, but after Aerosmith completed their first tour of the Far East in early 1977, he joined his bandmates at the Cenacle in Armonk, upstate New York. The impressive former nunnery nestles isolated in one hundred leafy acres; it was built on a huge scale, with endlessly long corridors connecting all its three hundred rooms. Its serenity and solitude offered Aerosmith an ideal situation in which to work on material for their next album, but this would be squandered, for by now their drug consumption was unleashing new demons. When Tyler arrived in the massive hall with its grand staircase he could have been forgiven for thinking that he had entered a lunatic asylum - the sound of gunfire reverberated in his ears. Along with a mountain of luggage, a fleet of flash cars and motorcycles, an arsenal of more than two dozen weapons had been brought to the retreat, including handguns, rifles, even a semi-automatic sub-machine gun and live rounds. Joe Perry had already rigged up a makeshift firing range in the long attic and was busy blasting away, intent on turning suspended targets into sieves.
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