The album was finally shaping up when, on 10 October 1979, a band press release officially announced Joe Perry’s departure from Aerosmith. It spoke of the guitarist’s plans to branch out into a solo career in the new year, and maintained that his leaving was an amicable arrangement, driven by his desire to seek a new musical direction. Joe soon stated: ‘Considering what kind of progress I was makin’ with Aerosmith, the decision [to leave] was easy to make. I’m a rock musician who likes to play and I always enjoyed playin’ clubs the most. Aerosmith had become such a big cumbersome project. It was just so stifling and it wasn’t movin’ into the eighties.’
The notion that anyone could happily regress to playing small clubs after having hit the big time was completely alien to Tyler, and he was aggrieved when he read in the music press that Joe had complaints about some of the mixes on the forthcoming Aerosmith album, which had been such an incredibly hard slog to put together. Tyler’s argument was that Perry might have been happier with the final product if he had attended the recording studio when he had repeatedly urged him to. Steven revealed: ‘There were things going on that, as far as we were all concerned, had nothing to do with the band as a unit. Certain outside aggravations you don’t need. When the split came, there was quite a bad taste in all of our mouths.’ Steven later reflected that he had felt a fair degree of anger about the whole situation, but the underlying emotion was intense sorrow that the partnership he valued very much was broken.
Joe Perry knew that the bond between himself and Steven Tyler pivoted on their love-hate professional relationship and friendship. The wives being at war was not the issue for the guitarist. He acknowledged almost immediately that the blame lay with him and Steven for having let matters run way out of control. Even so, he had no compunction about walking away. He needed space and the freedom to try new challenges. He also felt strongly that Aerosmith had been pushing the fans’ patience too much. Considering the state of some of their live performances he believed that the Blue Army’s loyalty was more than the band deserved at that time. Steven could not believe that the dream was over, but in late October he welcomed in Joe Perry’s replacement - lead guitarist Jimmy Crespo.
James Crespo was born on 5 July 1954 in Brooklyn, New York, into a musical family. He recalled: ‘My father was a guitar player and singer. We are Puerto Rican, so we always had a Spanish guitar around. My grandfather was a violinist and I was supposed to become a violinist but I couldn’t stand the way you had to hold it.’ The Rolling Stones kindled the flame in the teenager to become a rock star, and his attraction to learn lead guitar was fanned by listening to Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Crespo’s first guitar was a second-hand instrument with rusty strings, but his natural aptitude overcame this obstacle and throughout the 1960s he diligently honed his talent. His first band was called the Knoms and he made his debut public appearance at a school dance. By the early 1970s, Jimmy had formed Anaconda and gigged around the New York clubs, at the same time securing studio session work with artists including Meat Loaf. At that time he found the club scene tawdry, depressing and unlikely to be his springboard to recording stardom. He then auditioned for and landed a place in a band called Flame, which struck a deal with RCA Records and subsequently released two albums. Flame quickly burned down, though. ‘It fell apart, as groups do when there is no money coming in,’ explained Jimmy, who concentrated his energies on session work. ‘I was playing music with whomever I could.’
In autumn 1979, David Krebs spotted Jimmy Crespo in performance, liked his hard rock style and sounded Crespo out about possibly playing lead guitar with Aerosmith. Unaware that Joe Perry was leaving, Jimmy considered it an academic, though tantalising, query and said that that would appeal to him very much. At this point, Aerosmith was still finishing the new album. When the call came in October, Crespo eagerly auditioned for the vacancy. Steven thought Jimmy fitted the bill both in terms of his strong musical abilities and his look - so he was in.
Night in the Ruts - said to be a spoonerism for ‘right in the nuts’ - was released in November. It peaked at number fourteen in the US album chart, went gold and drew polarised reviews. Malcolm Dome for Record Mirror at the time hailed: ‘This is a raw hunk of macho venom that decimates the old grey matter like an overdose of neat vodka. Steven Tyler has obviously been sand-papering his larynx with great zeal.’ More than twenty-five years on, Mojo pinpointed: ‘Night in the Ruts is the sound of the band on the brink.’ The only single to be released ‘Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)’, stalled at number sixty-seven, by which time the album had sunk from view. Steven, meantime, was keeping an eye on Joe Perry’s progress.
Since storming away from the band after that July Cleveland gig, Perry had not let the grass grow beneath his feet and by autumn he had recruited three musicians to enable him to form his solo band, the Joe Perry Project - vocalist Ralph Mormon, bass player David Hull and drummer Ronnie Stewart. After intensive rehearsals this new outfit played its first gig at an old Aerosmith stomping ground, Boston College, in mid-November 1979. Despite their fractured friendship, Steven showed up that night in the band’s dressing room to say hello but he did not hang around to watch the Joe Perry Project perform. Perry described this solo band’s style to Rolling Stone as being ‘high-powered rhythm and blues, sort of funk rock’. Reinforcing his stance that he wanted to revert to playing more intimate venues than Aerosmith favoured, Perry maintained: ‘I got disillusioned playing the big halls. I just don’t like it and I don’t need it any more.’
A strange period followed when both Perry and Aerosmith talked the talk about moving on and found new recruits to help that process along. Yet Steven and Joe kept casting a glance at, and a line to, each other. The umbilical cord between the ‘twins’ could not seem to snap irretrievably, and the fans clearly did not want that to happen either.
In preparation for recording his first solo album, Joe and his band rehearsed at the Wherehouse in Waltham, jointly owned by the Aerosmith members. Graffiti on the outer walls of this warehouse left Joe in no doubt that Aerosmith fans wanted him back in the fold, pronto. Indoors, knowing that his ex-bandmates would show up on other days, Joe left handwritten messages lying around for them - provocative messages at times, but still a means of keeping some dialogue going between the two camps. And Joe was not prepared to put up the slightest pretence of being pleased that just as he had moved on, so seemingly had Aerosmith by hiring his replacement. Joe secured a solo recording deal with Columbia Records and set to work with producer Jack Douglas on an album at New York’s Hit Factory studio.
By the end of the year, Aerosmith with Jimmy Crespo had returned to live performance, playing dates around the east coast. Tyler was falling apart. On occasions he was too bombed to read the lyric sheets strewn around the stage, and frequently had to seek some physical support even to stay upright. During one performance he dropped like a bag of bones to the floor, was helped off stage only to return soon after, having been given oxygen backstage. The restless, disappointed fans were barely settling into the restarted show when Tyler again lost the plot mid-song. He then crowned this shambolic display by taking a spectacular header right into the crowd, having blacked out. Although he was clearly not in any condition to be performing live, the shows continued, and in January 1980, Steven collapsed in public again - this time during a gig at the Civic Center in Portland, Maine. Tyler was too drunk to perform that night, but not so pie-eyed that he did not realise that he would not get away with just staggering backstage where there were people ready to push him back out on stage. So he pretended to pass out and stayed prone on the floor despite sustained attempts to rouse him. This looked worse than anything Aerosmith fans were sadly becoming used to seeing, and when Tyler was carted off stage that night it was show over and the disappointed, short-changed horde filed quietly out.
When Aerosmith resumed their gigs, Tyler managed to stay on stage for the entire performances, only to be confronted with agitated fans yelling for Joe Perry.
Jimmy Crespo, who stayed apart from the substance abuse, was playing fine lead guitar work for a band that was struggling to hold it together. He would have been fully entitled to feel aggrieved at these increasingly voluble cries from the crowds for his predecessor’s return.
That spring, Joe released his debut solo album, Let the Music Do the Talking, which peaked at number forty-seven on Billboard just as he launched his first tour with the Joe Perry Project. To all intents and purposes, this looked like living proof that he and Steven had each definitely taken a separate fork in the road. On the promo circuit for Aerosmith, Tyler was frequently quizzed about his feelings on this split. Steven maintained that he could appreciate Joe wanting to explore this solo path, insisting that was okay with him as he had his own thing going. It may have been convincing on radio, but during certain US television interviews Steven’s expressive eyes plainly gave him away. He looked incredibly vulnerable when deflecting questions about Perry, and those close to Steven knew the truth. Jack Douglas once put it that Tyler missed Perry as one would miss a long-lost lover. In truth, all was far from rosy with Joe, too. His foursome was not gelling and personnel changes would soon take place. Plus, Perry was sliding into dire difficulties. He owed money to some serious drug dealers, who did not take kindly to waiting for payment.
Steven’s lifestyle was rapidly disintegrating. He was so financially strapped that he was reduced to living in a sleazy hotel in New York, with his health deteriorating. His wife and daughter had at last moved into Steven’s renovated house up at Lake Sunapee.
These conditions made it tough when the band started work on material for their next album. Brad Whitford confirmed that everyone except Jimmy Crespo was burned out, and that Steven was once more in trouble when it came to conjuring up lyrics. Steven did not have the same chemistry with Joe Perry’s replacement, and his drug intake blurred too much for him, too often. It was obviously doomed to be a long, slow, hard slog and it was further hampered when in late 1980, Steven had a serious road accident in which he could have been killed.
One night, having taken drink and drugs, he climbed aboard his motorbike and took off from a bar. Taking a bend in the road at too steep an angle and too fast, he lost control and came crashing down. As parts of the motorbike flew off, the impact of hitting and being dragged along the ground almost ripped one of Steven’s heels clean off - he had not been wearing protective footwear - and he slammed into a tree. It took several hours of surgery to repair the damage to Steven’s foot, and he spent a long time afterwards laid up in hospital in a leg cast. As he physically recovered, the others carried on rehearsing, creating and sending him audio cassettes to listen to. This did not go down well with patients in the neighbouring beds; in Steven’s words, nurses would order him to ‘turn that shit off!’.
When eventually Steven left care and returned to his crummy hotel room in New York, still being in a leg cast worried him. The dive he was dossing in was not the place to be vulnerable, and as nights felt the dodgiest he would often hardly sleep. When he could make the journey, Steven visited his wife and daughter at Lake Sunapee, but relations between him and Cyrinda had soured. Cyrinda had her own problems, not least that she was battling drug addiction. She later publicly outlined how she was once so far gone on dope that she required resuscitation and that she had almost accidentally overdosed. Tyler heard tales that his wife was seeing someone, which he was unsure whether to believe. It made for a rocky relationship, and Mia was not yet three years old.
Before the end of the year, Aerosmith’s Greatest Hits was released. The ten-song compilation album did not set the heather on fire chartwise in America, but it was destined to go multi-platinum, selling over ten million copies and earning the band a diamond award from the RIAA in 2001.
Twenty years earlier, Steven was being fed yet more stories of his wife’s infidelity, and it was still difficult for him to know if he could trust his informants. Certainly, he knew that his marriage to Cyrinda was not thriving. He had moved into an apartment in New York and commuted to New Hampshire. Rows erupting between the couple, some vicious, were widening the gap. For her part, Cyrinda had no way of knowing if Steven was being unfaithful to her, and up at the lakeside property she often felt sad and lonely. When a fit, healthy, young man hoved on to her horizon in 1981, it did not take long to become physically involved with him. It was not a long-lasting relationship but it became messy and it was brought specifically to Steven’s ears. Cyrinda admitted to having had, in time, more extra-marital liaisons after the dalliance with this Adonis. Being together was no longer an option for Steven and Cyrinda, each for their own reasons, and they stopped living as man and wife. Divorce became inevitable.
In the first quarter of 1981, Tyler, Perry and Aerosmith’s fortunes were pretty shaky. When Joe’s second solo album, I’ve Got the Rock ’n’ Rolls Again, was released that summer, it failed to chart. With a new line-up, the Joe Perry Project was playing support to various bands but, still financially broke, Perry knew that he was going nowhere fast. Aerosmith fans were delighted to learn, though, that Tyler had telephoned Perry that spring, and industry rumours of a rapprochement circulated. The singer, however, was sinking deeper into drug addiction - Steven being in a stupor in the studio was not a rare occurrence. He could not climb out of the rut he had fallen into and everyone was driven up the wall with frustration at the lack of progress on this album. Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer, too, were each abusing their bodies with unhelpful amounts of cocaine, and it was about now that Brad Whitford decided to bail out of Aerosmith.
The rhythm guitarist was numb with boredom. He needed to be performing live, and the insane lifestyle Aerosmith was leading was in danger of cracking him up. As the summer rolled on, the pressure built up to intolerable levels. He had not felt especially comfortable since Joe Perry’s departure. He acknowledged Jimmy Crespo’s musicianship but he did not enjoy the same rapport with Jimmy as he had had with Joe; overall he was thoroughly miserable. He would escape from the studio stalemate and head for Boston to unwind and reclaim his sanity. After one such trip, he just couldn’t stand the thought of returning to the mire awaiting him in New York. The crunch came when he was at the airport; instead of boarding the plane, he called the band from the terminal building to say that he had had it, and was not coming back.
Steven was stunned. He thought Brad ought to have realised that he had it good being in Aerosmith - drugs had dulled Steven’s wits in many ways by this time. The upshot was that Aerosmith lost a second original member. That same year, Brad teamed up with drummer Steve Pace, bass player Dave Hewitt and vocalist/guitarist Derek St Holmes to form the band Whitford/St Holmes, which released an eponymous album. It did not chart, nor did the spin-off single, ‘Shy Away’.
Brad Whitford’s departure served as a wake-up call to Tyler that he had to try harder to get his act together; in the new year he tried to create some studio magic, concentrating on working with Jimmy Crespo. Tyler stated: ‘Spending such a long time in the studio really gave us a good chance to get to know each other’s ways and I really like Jimmy’s attitude. He is constantly putting things out. He never stops, whether or not the machines are running. The way he slotted into the band was incredible.’
Tyler and Crespo came up with four numbers: ‘Bitch’s Brew’; ‘Bolivian Ragamuffin’; ‘Jig Is Up’, and ‘Jailbait’. The latter particularly excited the band. Joe Perry, keeping track of Aerosmith’s development without him, later admitted that he was rather jealous of the Jimmy Crespo riff on ‘Jailbait’. Tyler and Crespo teamed up with Jack Douglas to create ‘Joannie’s Butterfly’ and ‘Rock in a Hard Place’. Steven’s solo contributions were ‘Push Comes to Shove’ and ‘Prelude to Joannie’, and they recorded a cover version of ‘Cry Me a River’; written by Arthur Hamilton, it had been a 1957 hit for the American singer, Julie London.
From winter into spring 1982, Aerosmith focused on pulling this album together. Initially, they worked with producer Tony Bongiovi (Jon Bon Jovi’s s
econd cousin) at the Power Station studio in downtown Manhattan. Work later switched to Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, and Bongiovi relinquished the helm to Jack Douglas. Jimmy Crespo opined that Tony’s approach was ‘too structured for Steven’s freeform style’. Tyler explained: ‘It’s not that we weren’t happy with what Tony Bongiovi was doing but we felt it would be real good to have Jack Douglas involved again. We kind of missed the feeling we’d always got with Jack and I felt that he could capture some of those elements on this album.’
Jimmy Crespo took on the extra guitar duties until Brad Whitford’s replacement was found in Rick Dufay. Born Richard Marc Dufay on 19 February 1952 in Paris, France, the rhythm guitarist had been recommended to Steven by Jack Douglas, who had produced Dufay’s album, Tender Loving Abuse.
The abuse that was rife within Aerosmith ranks was now painfully evident to both newcomers to the fold, who had their eyes well and truly opened. Rick Dufay called the situation horrendous and was frankly appalled at Steven Tyler’s rapidly deteriorating state. Jimmy Crespo confessed: ‘When I joined, I was full on but after I worked with the group for a while, it just took the fire out of me.’ It was not hard to understand why.
Steven Tyler: The Biography Page 10
