Steven Tyler: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  Mentally, Steven was all over the place and he had to draw on untapped reserves to help him survive this gruelling and disturbing experience. There were some saviours. He got back in touch with other aspects of the world. He began to read a lot and Joe Perry’s support was of great importance to him. Perry empathised with Tyler going through this harrowing ordeal, and he extended the kind of compassion Steven needed right then. This was one crucial time that proved the strength of the friendship bond between them. As the guitarist’s visits also gave Steven the promise of a new future for Aerosmith, he worked hard to develop a sense of purpose and to recover a sense of self-worth. ‘Every day, you face a different fight against craving or withdrawal but every day it gets a little better,’ he later stressed.

  After forty-five days of rehab, Steven was classed clean of drugs. He went from this clinic to attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to tackle his drink problems. Teresa watched these developments closely, and her support and understanding throughout also played a vital role in the frontman’s fight back from the brink. Once back in the real world, Steven’s biggest danger was relapsing. To keep up the pressure on him, Joe threatened his friend in no uncertain terms that if he were to fall by the wayside then he (Perry) would take a walk from Aerosmith again. Tyler, though, was all too aware of how precarious his condition was. He knew that just one glass of beer could result in him heading down town in search of a needle or a mirror.

  For all that, he was able to enjoy the obvious upside of being clean of drugs. The world was brighter, had more definition and meaning. His energy levels and mental alertness were coming back up, and for the first time in a long while he was able to appreciate music properly. In the years ahead, the sober Steven Tyler never became evangelical about recovering from addiction; he would not preach to others going the same way he had.

  In November 1986, Joe Perry was next to go into rehab to come off of heroin. He, too, went through a gruelling journey of discovery and later said: ‘It’s amazing how people can be so unaware that they’re fucking other people over and hurting people but that’s how it was with us.’ Joe emerged from rehab clean, and over the next two years Brad Whitford, Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton each found his own method of tackling his individual addictions. Said Brad: ‘We crawled out from under our problems and got in touch with ourselves.’

  Drug-free, sober and feeling like a new man, Steven was looking forward to the future when part of his past came into focus. For the past nine years, Bebe Buell’s daughter Liv had grown up believing that Todd Rundgren was her father. By the end of the 1970s, the girl’s domestic situation had changed. Bebe had become romantically involved with another man, but Liv still lived with her mother and attended school in Portland, Maine. For a period in the early 1980s, Bebe had attempted to launch a career as a rock star, fronting a couple of bands. That had not panned out but she had lost none of her verve, at least around her young daughter. Liv later recalled: ‘My mom was so amazing. She had all these beautiful clothes and in the bathroom all her jewellery was pinned to the wall. It was more than a little girl could ever dream of!’ Whenever her mother went out, Liv enjoyed dressing up in Bebe’s glamorous clothes and experimenting with professional make-up.

  In December 1986, Bebe took Liv along to see Todd Rundgren perform a gig in a Boston club. Backstage afterwards, Todd’s dressing room door opened and Steven walked in. He had come to visit the musician, but his eyes shot at once to the dark-haired little girl beside Bebe. When Steven had learned in 1976 that, after their brief liaison, Bebe was pregnant, he had not known what to believe, particularly since she and Rundgren had instantly resumed their relationship. Over the ensuing years, Todd was widely understood to be Liv’s father. That night, however, Steven was jolted. ‘When Liv was very young, I wasn’t sure whether I was her father,’ he admitted, ‘but by the time she was nine I could see my features in her.’

  Bebe has always maintained that her reason for allowing Liv to be under the misapprehension that Todd Rundgren was her father was to shield her, because Steven had been so mired in drugs and drink. That December night, it was a patently very different Steven Tyler who strode confidently into the dressing room, looking and sounding better than he had done for years. Bebe introduced Liv to Steven simply as an acquaintance, but for the intuitive youngster it was not quite so straightforward. Liv has revealed: ‘I connected with Steven immediately. It was almost like I fell in love with him.’ This innocent love she channelled into idolising Steven Tyler, the rock star. That evening, Steven spent a little time in Todd’s overcrowded dressing room talking generally with Liv, helping her to knock out a tune on a keyboard. Watching this tableau, Bebe was overwhelmed with emotion, and torn over what she should do, but it was obviously not the right moment to say anything.

  In 1977, it had pleased Mick Jagger when speculation had run around that he might be the father of Playboy centrefold Bebe Buell’s daughter. Jagger’s pride might have taken a dent if he knew that in 1986, noting a strong resemblance between Steven Tyler and the Rolling Stone, Liv guilelessly asked her mother if Jagger was Steven’s father!

  Setting aside the question marks that that backstage visit had thrown up, Steven faced the new year determined to further his drive to get well, and he began to work out in a gym. This physical exercise was also good psychologically, since it provided a trouble-free way of expending any pent-up aggression, and it became a way of finding clarity and purpose.

  January 1987 saw Boston blanketed with snow as Aerosmith regrouped to begin rehearsals and to knuckle down to writing material for their next album. Invigoratingly, it became like the old days when Aerosmith was just starting out, with Steven fired up by Joe’s inspirational guitar licks. With a clear head, Tyler’s creative juices got going and output was rewarding in both quality and quantity. Visiting these sessions weeks later, John Kalodner was encouraged by what he found, but believed that an extra element was needed to sharpen the material even further, and he told Steven that he wanted to bring in outside songwriters to work with the band.

  Kalodner first drafted in Desmond Child. The thirty-three-year-old, Florida-born Child had just a year before been recruited to work with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora on Bon Jovi’s third album, also a do-or-die career point. Desmond had driven to the Sambora family home in Woodbridge, New Jersey, where in the basement he had injected fresh blood into the songs Jon and Richie were coming up with. That three-way symbiosis had produced two hits: ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’, and the blue-collar anthem, ‘Livin’ On a Prayer’. Bon Jovi’s album Slippery When Wet, released in August 1986, shot to number one and eventually racked up sales exceeding 20 million worldwide. By bringing Desmond Child’s talent to Steven and Joe, John Kalodner hoped that it would likewise help to create the defining moment in Aerosmith’s career.

  It has been suggested that Tyler was resistant to the idea of outside lyricists coming in; at first, by his own admission, he was not one hundred per cent happy with some of Desmond Child’s suggestions, but perhaps the star was showing a touch of territoriality. This was also something strange to deal with when he was already in a raw state, so inevitably he found it a shade intimidating. However, Steven later maintained that he was amenable to the A & R man’s determination to make him work with professional lyricists and he quickly adapted to the situation, enabling him and Child to complement one another.

  The single three-way collaboration between Tyler, Perry and Child to emerge was ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’. Steven had almost nailed this raucous hard rock number - he just stumbled over coming up with the first line. As he had done when working with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, Desmond first talked with and listened to Steven to get a feel of where he was coming from, then clicked straight in - providing Tyler with an opener for this song that came vividly to life. That kind of clever clarity impressed Steven immensely, and the lingering resistance he harboured to letting a professional songwriter into his creative world evaporated. He and Child s
pent hours bouncing lyrics off one another, creating a hit song and cementing the camaraderie between them in the process. In short order, Steven and Desmond created ‘Angel’, and Child wrote ‘Heart’s Done Time’ with Joe Perry,

  After Desmond Child, John Kalodner enlisted the services of songwriters Jim Vallance and Holly Knight, which added ‘Magic Touch’, ‘Simoriah’ and ‘Rag Doll’ to the haul. One aspect of ‘Rag Doll’ would rankle with Tyler. He had originally titled the number ‘Rag Time’ but Holly Knight was invited to change that lyric. ‘Time’ became ‘Doll’ and Steven was unhappy that someone should get a songwriting credit for changing just a single word. Steven wrote ‘Girl Keeps Coming Apart’ and ‘Permanent Vacation’ with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford respectively, while a number titled ‘St John’ was Tyler’s only solo effort.

  Between March and June 1987, Aerosmith recorded this new material at Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver, Canada, under the eye of producer Bruce Fairbairn, whose most recent success was the Bon Jovi hit album Slippery When Wet. Fairbairn’s way of working was different from the producers the band were used to, and it all helped to maintain a crucial discipline that kept this new Aerosmith on the right track. Gone were the days of drug hazes and people falling asleep on the job, although Tom Hamilton was still smoking marijuana. The bass player took a good deal of stick from his bandmates over this, while Tyler contented himself with pinning Tom with some pretty piercing looks. Eventually Tom quit the weed, which meant that all five were finally totally clean.

  That summer, Steven and the others filmed the video to accompany ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’. It was largely Aerosmith in high-energy performance but incorporated brief cutaway shots showing Geffen A & R man John Kalodner dressed up as a bride and Steven in drag, wearing a pink sequinned dress and looking like a pantomime dame.

  Permanent Vacation was released in August 1987, and exuded confidence, strength and vibrancy through its new musical layers. Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock later recorded: ‘Aerosmith forfeited none of their bad boy image and their live shows are among the best of their career. Even critics liked them better the second time around.’ Permanent Vacation provided the band with their first UK chart success when it ranked number thirty-seven in September. In America it peaked at number eleven, remained on Billboard’s chart for seventy weeks and went multi-platinum.

  Mid-month, Aerosmith performed ‘Walk This Way’ with Run D.M.C. at the MTV Music Awards held at Universal Amphitheatre in Universal City, California, but Tyler was fixed on the October release of ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’. Aided by heavy rotation airplay of its video on MTV, this single climbed to number fourteen in the US and made it to number forty-five in the UK singles chart.

  Success tasted all the sweeter the second time around, and Steven concentrated on positive thinking, but he had not forgotten the past pannings Aerosmith had taken from critics. Proud of their resilience, he said: ‘It is almost like the world was asphalt and we were these fuckin’ weeds. No matter what they put over us, we grew right through it.’ When asked to pinpoint the best revenge he had ever enjoyed, Tyler unhesitatingly stated that it was his band’s comeback. Interestingly, for a man who had gone through hell to claw his way back, Steven had moments when he felt spooked by the thought of the huge success that was now clearly going to be Aerosmith’s. Towards the end of the 1980s, he maintained that it would frighten him to become as big a star as Jon Bon Jovi, whose band followed up Slippery When Wet with New Jersey, another triumph. What Tyler had come through had left him with inner scars, for he feared that in climbing so high any fall would be all the more devastating. That said, his renewed health and the success of Permanent Vacation gave Steven a new strain of confidence and he was once more passionate about his band.

  With his professional life straightening out, in late 1987, aspects of his private life had to be attended to. For Cyrinda and Mia, things had been far from easy. When Steven had visited his daughter, each time the youngster wanted him to stay longer, becoming distressed when he had to leave. To Cyrinda, the lake-front house in New Hampshire was no longer idyllic. It had fallen badly into disrepair and she could not afford to have tradesmen carry out extensive renovation work; at the time Steven had been in no position to help, either. Over time she had relied on help from her circle of friends - local bikers who could turn their hands to plumbing, joinery and decorating. These people were platonic acquaintances and Cyrinda had valued their friendship. She was deeply dismayed when, during the divorce proceedings, some of these friendships were alleged to be something more.

  In November 1987, just short of Mia’s ninth birthday, Steven and Cyrinda’s divorce became final. Cyrinda retained custody of their daughter but she was extremely unhappy with the alimony arrangements - she later publicly revealed the amount to have been a little over $252 per week. She also later stated her feeling of having been badly advised when it came to some aspects of the divorce settlement. From Cyrinda’s point of view, the problem was that during the period when these matters were thrashed out, Steven was on the skids, in the grip of drug and drink addiction. Aerosmith was washed up and at that point no one could have predicted a Lazarus-style revival. Cyrinda had hoped to secure a stake in songwriting royalties for Mia but was advised that that would not be forthcoming. Even during the divorce proceedings, although Aerosmith’s new album and single had charted, that did not equate with pots of cash instantly pouring into Steven’s bank balance.

  With a Boston Music Award for Outstanding Rock Band of the Year under their belt, Steven and Joe went on a press tour of Europe. It was Tyler’s first visit to the UK in a decade; he talked frankly to the music media about his drug-free, rejuvenated band - preparing the way for Aerosmith going back on the road. The Permanent Vacation tour, commencing in autumn 1987 in Binghamton, New York, stretched over the next twelve months and took in more than 150 shows in forty-two US states and overseas. Throughout the tour, Tyler worked himself to the bone to reclaim Aerosmith’s crown as a dynamic live act, and it proved to be one of the happiest tours of the band’s career. They got themselves a double-decker bus and brought along their loved ones. Steven has particularly fond memories of night journeys across Europe between gigs, when he would gaze through the windscreen at the stars in the early hours, as the countryside flashed by. For an outdoors man at heart, it had a liberating feel. Of gigging around America, Tyler said: ‘I’m having so much fun, getting up in the afternoon, flying to a show, rockin’ the asses off twenty thousand maniacs, flying home at midnight and sitting up till 3.00 a.m. thinking how beautiful life is.’

  As newly recovered drug and alcohol addicts, though, stringent steps had had to be taken to prevent them from falling off the wagon. In advance of Aerosmith arriving in each town and city, their hotel room mini-bars had to be stripped of anything alcoholic. Among those around the band, including any support act, there was a complete ban on drug taking, and if anyone wanted to drink alcohol they had to do it well away from Aerosmith. With a brief break for Christmas, the tour picked up again in mid-January, taking in the southern and western states, and beyond.

  On 26 March 1988, Tyler turned forty. That spring, Permanent Vacation spawned its next hit single, ‘Angel’, the sentimental ballad written by Steven with Desmond Child. It lodged in the UK chart at number sixty-nine but soared in the States to number three on Billboard. During the tour, Steven drew immense satisfaction from hearing the audience sing the lyrics of this song along with him. It was moments like these that drove home to him just how wasteful those years had been when he had been too stoned on stage even to stay upright.

  Not everyone was in such a mellow mood, and it was now that Steven’s ex-wife chose to challenge the financial settlement agreed in their divorce. Aerosmith’s comeback was clearly going to be sustained, and Cyrinda still felt deeply aggrieved. Her life with Mia continued to be anything but the comfortable existence that she felt it ought to be. Money remained tight and she found it hard sometimes even to keep w
arm. Once, when Steven paid a visit to the house in New Hampshire he asked where his boat had gone and Cyrinda had snapped: ‘I burned it so that your daughter wouldn’t freeze to death, you bastard!’ Cyrinda’s hopes that legal wrangling would improve her status did not materialise - at least, not to the level that she had hoped for - but changes did occur. Part of the 1987 divorce settlement held Steven responsible for paying for parochial schooling for Mia. When Cyrinda upsticked from the rundown lakeside house in 1988 and relocated to New York, Mia was enrolled at Marymount School. She and her mother at the same time moved into a nearby apartment on Madison Avenue, where they would stay for the next few years. Cyrinda had managed to improve their situation but was sometimes wearied by the fact that everything had to be achieved via lawyers.

  Not put off by the demise of his first marriage, during a break in touring, Steven wed for a second time when, on 28 May 1988, he and Teresa Barrick tied the knot during a ceremony held in Oklahoma. At the end of June, Teresa became pregnant and was expecting their child the following spring. Also in June, ‘Rag Doll’, the third single from Permanent Vacation, was released and peaked in America at number seventeen, but was not issued in Britain. Then in July the tour resumed. This time out on the road, Steven was more than ever alive to potential danger, as their support band for the major venues was the turbulent and volatile Guns N’ Roses. Signed to Geffen Records two years earlier, Guns N’ Roses had supported Iron Maiden and Motley Crue. Their 1987 debut album, Appetite for Destruction, was aptly titled, for some of the band’s members already had problems with chemical abuse and alcohol addiction. Steven said of Guns N’ Roses’ frontman, Axl Rose: ‘He’s just the kind of “trash the dressing room” egomaniac that I used to be, but when you’re young, when you’re making a lot of money and you’re bent out of shape - you trash dressing rooms!’