Steven Tyler: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  Years later the ‘Crazy’ video ranked number twenty-three in VH1’s Top 100 Music Videos of All Time. In March 1995, ‘Crazy’ won Aerosmith their third Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. When Liv was filming the pole-dancing scenes someone had called out to her to give the camera ‘a little more ass’ - a risky request with her protective father around.

  Steven and Liv continued to enjoy a special father/daughter relationship. Affectionately, Liv has maintained: ‘I can smell my dad from a mile away. He has this ambery smell that just melts into him.’ Liv would visit with her father and whenever they could not sleep, they would sit up all night discussing face creams and the like. Liv must be about the only girl who could - or would want to - purloin a pair of her snake-hipped father’s jeans!

  Having modelled for less than one year, Liv turned her sights on acting, and stepped determinedly into that tough industry. She later confessed: ‘I had never been to an acting class in my life.’ Yet in 1994, at seventeen years old, Liv was cast in the psychological thriller Silent Fall, written by Akiva Goldsman, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Richard Dreyfuss and Linda Hamilton. In the early days of Liv’s acting career, film critics nicknamed her Liv Taylor because with her dark hair and blue eyes she apparently reminded them of the legendary Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor. Liv commented bluntly: ‘It’s cool to be compared to her but, honestly, who gives a damn?’ Steven was immensely proud to see his eldest child set out on this career path.

  On his own front, Aerosmith played more dates that summer, took a brief break, then hit the road again. Twenty-five years earlier, as a twenty-one-year-old bombed out of his skull, along with hundreds of thousands of rock fans, Tyler had attended the fabled Woodstock festival in Bethel. In 1994, Aerosmith headlined Woodstock II, held between 12 and 14 August at Winston Farm in Saugerties, New York. Over thirty acts took part in this festival, including Joe Cocker, Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, the Spin Doctors and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Having shunned the original 1969 event, Bob Dylan performed on the third day of this musical extravaganza. Tyler led his band through knockout renditions of ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’, ‘Walk This Way’, ‘Love In an Elevator’, ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ and ‘Livin’ on the Edge’, among others, radiating an intensity that made his wired audience forget their mud-caked condition. For the hundreds of thousands of people, the amazing finale was crowned by an impressive fireworks display.

  Aerosmith hung around New York to attend the MTV Video Music Awards held this year at the Radio City Music Hall on 8 September. Nominated in nine categories, the band won three trophies, all for ‘Cryin’ - Best Group Video, Viewers Choice Award and the coveted Best Video of the Year. Tyler made their acceptance speeches and later displayed to photographers the lipstick imprint on his left cheek of the kiss he had received from Madonna.

  Neither Tyler nor any of his bandmates normally displayed any political affiliations, but days after the MTV awards show, the band hosted a fundraising event for the veteran Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy at Brad Whitford’s Massachusetts home. Setting off on the final leg of their world tour then, the band trekked around several US states, pitching up in Texas, Arizona and California among other places.

  November saw the release of the compilation album Big Ones. Chock-a-block with some of Aerosmith’s best-loved hits, it also included two new songs - ‘Blind Man’, written by Steven and Joe with Taylor Rhodes, which had been recorded at New York’s Power Station Studio, and ‘Walk on Water’, recorded on the Isle of Capri after the European leg of their tour. Said Joe: ‘We wrote “Walk on Water” with Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw. We wanted to include a couple of new tracks on the record because it has worked so well for other artists recently.’ Big Ones peaked at number six in America, one place higher than its best in Britain. It quickly went double platinum and fulfilled Aerosmith’s contract with Geffen Records. Columbia Records simultaneously released the box set Box of Fire, comprising a CD of every Aerosmith album released by that label, as well as a CD of rare cuts.

  That same month, at the inaugural MTV European Music Awards staged at the Pariser Platz in Berlin, Germany, Aerosmith made off with the Best Rock Band and Best Rock Act awards. Close to Christmas, the Get a Grip world tour finally came to an end. Although Steven was exhausted, he was up for the opening on 19 December of Mama Kin’s Music Hall, a club on Lansdowne Street in Boston, which was co-owned by the band and the Lyons Group. Aerosmith performed before an audience of just under three hundred; it was picked up for live broadcast by two locally based radio stations. Boston continued its love affair with the band when, at the city’s annual music awards, they won the Outstanding Rock Band of the Year award for the seventh consecutive year. They also collected the Right to Rock trophy, and Tyler took the prize for Best Male Vocalist.

  By the end of 1994, Tyler was entitled to feel satisfied and was unwilling to be drawn on the secret of Aerosmith’s success. It is difficult to think of any other hard rock outfit whose recording career had commenced in the early 1970s and was still at the top of its game, still with all its original members. Although Steven Tyler is the central focus, Aerosmith remains a democracy with every member integral to its success - five men with differing personalities that somehow gel. In the mid-nineties, Tyler’s bond with Perry was stronger than ever. The pair were consistently photographed together in rock magazines, sometimes choosing to highlight hilariously the contrasts in their personalities. Joe is the epitome of cool and style, Steven an unpredictable vagabond prince. To accusations that Perry can often come across as sour-faced, the lead guitarist once retorted: ‘Next to Steven, anybody looks moody!’ During their recent world tour, Steven did whatever he could to avoid the shows becoming stale. He never wanted to feel that he was doing anything by rote. He had long ago honed his stage act to a T, but he did not lack ambition. He was not content simply to soak in thunderous applause, or to raise stadium girders with howling cheers and whistles. He claimed that one of his next goals in performance was for the audience to achieve ‘multiple orgasms’!

  CHAPTER 12

  A Cat With Nine Lives

  IN JANUARY 1995, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry inducted Led Zeppelin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during a ceremony held at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, later jamming on stage with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and the late John Bonham’s son, Jason, on drums. After this, Steven went on holiday with Teresa and their children. In spring his thoughts turned to songs for Aerosmith’s first album under their new contract with Sony. Progress was steady, and once summer arrived Steven rewarded himself with a hunting holiday, reverting to a boyhood passion.

  At the back of Steven’s mind were concerns about the band’s manager, Tim Collins, whose behaviour had become puzzling. The days when Aerosmith had needed an external hand on the tiller were gone. Like the others, Steven was clean of drugs, sober, focused and in command, so it was perplexing when their manager would tell them that he felt they were in danger of breaking up. It is said that Collins seemed to be in favour of the band undertaking further therapy, but Steven and the others could not see the need for it.

  Sidelining this anomaly, as the year progressed Steven concentrated on coming up with fresh material. In addition to working with Joe, to help inspire him he collaborated with lyricists Marti Frederiksen, Taylor Rhodes and Glen Ballard, producing ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, ‘Full Circle’ and ‘Taste of India’. Because it had been a while since the band had played live, they road-tested the new material and re-oiled the wheels in early November, performing as the G-Spots at the Middle East club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the new year they flew to Miami to bite the bullet and create their next album with Glen Ballard as producer. Steven toiled at a hotel in the city’s sophisticated South Beach district. He was joined by his friend, songwriter Richie Supa, and two other former collaborators, Mark Hudson and Desmond Child. As they knocked ideas around, one song quickly emerged, called ‘Kiss Your Past Goodbye’.

>   As the jewel in Miami’s crown, South Beach is a hot spot for film and music stars, and boasts a vibrant nightlife scene amid the bars and clubs along Ocean Drive. Sometimes, to unwind after intensive songwriting sessions, the band gravitated to this bustling environment, where Tyler was often hit on by buxom young beauties eager to drape themselves around a guy whose stock-in-trade was oozing flagrant sexuality. With a grin that almost split his mobile face in half, he would happily pose for photos. That was as far as he went, but rumours soon circulated that he was living it up with women. Talk also surfaced that he was doing drugs again, which was also untrue, but since trying to deny these rumours would give them more oxygen, he chose to ignore them and keep focused on the song collection that had built up enough for the band to start work at Miami’s Criteria Studios.

  In several ways, however, the situation was not good. Joey Kramer’s father had recently died; thrown into emotional turmoil, the drummer needed time away from work. The unease over manager Tim Collins was deepening. Aerosmith had not recorded before with Glen Ballard, and so band and producer were unfamiliar with each other’s ways, and by now Steven had been sitting with songs for so long that there was a real danger of him losing impetus with the material. All this was against the irritating backdrop of ugly rumours continuing to circulate.

  To help keep a sense of perspective, Tyler touched base often with his family. Liv had left school by now, while seventeen-year-old Mia had recently moved with her mother from New York’s Madison Avenue to an apartment on East 68th Street. Come spring 1996, Teresa, Chelsea and Taj joined Steven in Miami. The presence of his wife in town helped to douse the rumours, but the working atmosphere remained strained. A stand-in drummer was found to hold up the absent Joey Kramer’s end, but there was not always the sense that they were working as a cohesive unit. Despite this, unique songs were evolving from Tyler’s chaotic creativity. Along with Richie Supa and Glen Ballard, Steven had come up with a number called ‘Pink’; with Joe Perry and Desmond Child he had created ‘Hole in My Soul’ and ‘Ain’t That a Bitch’.

  The satisfaction of knowing that a sound song collection was taking shape could not cancel out the fact that matters were coming to a head with Tim Collins. Years later, it was revealed just how difficult Aerosmith felt the situation had become. According to the band members, the manager would tell them to their faces that they were no longer in recovery; presumably Tim Collins believed the rumours flying around Miami. The way Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer remember it, the manager also told them that Steven was considering their respective positions in the band, which was not the case. And to further muddy the waters, with the boot on the other foot, Steven’s frazzled bandmates were apparently strongly urged by Tim Collins to write a letter to their frontman complaining about his behaviour. Joe Perry has described the letter as confrontational. All five in Aerosmith acknowledged that Tim Collins had been of enormous assistance to them at a given time, but they felt that the manager was now seeking to have too much control over their lives. They have since said that at times they felt manipulated and under an oppressive degree of scrutiny. For whatever reason, Tim Collins seems to have believed that Steven was spiralling out of control, but Joe Perry was adamant: ‘I know what Steven looks like when he’s fucked up. Even though there were times I might have been thinking, he’s acting strangely today, I knew that he was not getting high.’

  Troublesome and worrying as all this was, Collins finally crossed the line with Tyler when he telephoned Teresa and told her that Steven was being unfaithful to her with girls he encountered on South Beach. Teresa has recounted publicly how shocked she was to receive this telephone call at home. Tyler went ballistic. His temper snapped and he was so angry he quit Miami, along with the rest of the band. Two months later, at the end of July, Tim Collins was fired.

  The ex-manager immediately went to the press, and at least two major US publications ran the story that Steven Tyler was suspected of using heroin and needed detox again. Once more, Steven was livid. This kind of coverage he could do well without and, considering that he was innocent of these charges, he also felt deeply aggrieved. In a calmer frame of mind, he did later try to figure out specifically how Tim Collins could have believed that he had begun to take heroin again. He eventually pinpointed one day in Criteria Studios in Miami when he and Joe had been arguing heatedly over a point - not an unusual occurrence. Nor was it strange that Steven had been ranting, as was his wont when passionately fired up about something. Steven believed that someone at the studio, new to his volatile ways, had rung round a few people claiming that he was acting like someone who was high on dope.

  In any event, incensed by these newspaper and magazine stories, Tyler categorically denied having relapsed. He declared how proud he was to have stayed sober for ten years. ‘I don’t drink or do drugs because I don’t want to and I like the me I am now,’ he stated. ‘I like being able to write songs and to be able to be with my kids.’ Steven gave a lengthy interview to Rolling Stone in which he reiterated that he had not fallen off the wagon at any time in the past decade. Steven was, of course, conscious that Sony would not have much cared for this hugely negative publicity, and he was also acutely aware that such accusations rebounded on more than himself. He was particularly raw that it impacted on his youngest daughter, Chelsea. He revealed: ‘She had a sleepover and one of the girls’ mothers would not let her sleep over because: “Daddy was back on drugs.” When your seven-year-old daughter says that to you . . .’ To press queries as to whether he considered himself to be a drug addict, he replied that someone in recovery is always a drug addict, you just do not do drugs. It all made for a very difficult and distressing time when Tyler admitted that he found it incredibly hard-going trying to keep everything together and to remain creative. It became so bad while recording their new album that it could have threatened Aerosmith’s existence. Recently reflecting on what he termed the ‘nasty press’ coverage at this time, Tom Hamilton said: ‘It was really hard on the band emotionally. We probably came pretty close to saying: “Fuck it!”’

  Time would be a healer regarding some aspects. As far as Tim Collins was concerned and the unfortunate manner in which their working relationship unravelled, Steven is still able to separate his anger over the endgame from his genuine gratitude to the manager for the vital role he had played in helping Aerosmith to get sober and back in the saddle as a successful, working band. That said, it was unquestionably true for Steven that after Tim Collins was fired, certain Aerosmith attitudes had the opportunity to resurface and for those and other reasons, he felt rejuvenated.

  More changes occurred in summer 1996. Kevin Shirley replaced Glen Ballard as producer for the new album, and A & R man John Kalodner was back on the scene. Having spent some time in California after Miami, Aerosmith returned to Boston when, on 12 August, they issued a press statement that Wendy Laister, who had been working alongside Tim Collins, would be on their management team. Soon after that, they went into a New York recording studio to recut their album. Tyler knew it was of paramount importance that they shaped up to meet everyone’s expectations, but he also maintained: ‘I think bands get in trouble when they start over-thinking things - dare we do that, or we’ll get a bad name, sort of thing. So we just did what we did.’

  Even so, considering the accusations that had recently ricocheted around, it was a bold move when Steven, in partnership with Joe Perry, Mark Hudson and Steve Dudas, came up with ‘The Farm’, a number containing lyrics about a drug addict with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his arm. But not only was Tyler determined not to be restricted in his craft by false rumours or the pressure that stemmed from that, he was writing about something he knew all about, and was not glorifying drug addiction. Likewise, references to New York in the song were rooted in a fear he privately battled with, for there had been a period whenever he arrived in this city that his first action had been to go in search of a drug dealer.

  Of the hard rock song ‘Nine Lives’, by Tyl
er, Perry and Marti Frederiksen, Joe said: ‘We went to see AC/DC and that was the inspiration for that song. We came straight back and wrote “Nine Lives” and we’ll keep doing that. We absorb stuff. We’re not a band that says: “This is how it’s got to be.”’ Another rock number, ‘Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)’, saw Steven revert to his penchant for raunchy lyrics. Written in conjunction with Joe Perry and Glen Ballard, the title was inspired by a slogan Steven once saw on a car bumper sticker. Once again challenged on his taste for the near-the-knuckle lyrics of this particular number, he announced unrepentantly that it was like being ‘in search of the perfect blow job’. In October, Aerosmith was named the Act of the Decade at the 1996 Boston Music Awards. A month later, recording ended on the new album, appropriately titled, considering Aerosmith’s history, Nine Lives.

  Part of Steven’s past life reared its head around the start of the new year when his ex-wife, Cyrinda Foxe Tyler, published Dream On, Livin’ on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith. In this tell-all memoir, Cyrinda pulled no punches when recounting her version of her years with the frontman. In graphic detail, she laid bare some of the most intimate aspects of their relationship. Not long after the book was released, Cyrinda indicated that in the paperback edition she intended to include some nude photographs of Steven. At that point, Steven stepped in to object to this plan. Apparently, these revealing snaps were to have been passed to Steven when their divorce had been agreed in 1987. Steven initiated legal proceedings in order to prevent publication of these privately taken nude photographs, a lawsuit that dragged on for two years.

  In February 1997, putting this personal issue behind him, Steven joined his bandmates to shoot the video for ‘Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)’ in Los Angeles under the aegis of Michael Bay, who had directed the recently released action thriller, The Rock. This video was short of the sassy teenage temptresses previously depicted by the likes of Alicia Silverstone and Liv. Buttonholed as to why Liv did not appear in this video, Tyler joked that his daughter’s professional fee now for such appearances would have outstripped the video’s entire budget. ‘Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)’, Aerosmith’s first single release of the year, reached number thirty-five in the American chart and number twenty-two in the UK.