Steven Tyler: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  The songs were written at the Boneyard, a recording studio Joe Perry had had built in the basement of his house at the ranch he owns near Boston. The demos they made of these songs sounded so good that Steven believed they were as professional as anything then playing on radio. They played music round the clock, creating such a great feeling that it spurred them to record the album in this studio and to produce it themselves, with assistance from Mark Hudson and Marti Frederiksen. Tyler quipped that so many record producers had said that Aerosmith was a pain in the ass to work with, that they had wanted to find out if it was true. Seriously, Steven relished the band taking this aspect of their work into their own hands. They had learned a lot over the years from working with experienced producers and were itching to spread their own wings.

  The entire band believed strongly that they now had no need of a coach. Said Tom Hamilton of this new work: ‘We did it all close to home and as one long, continuous, very organic process, as opposed to in the past when there would be a four-week blast of writing then there’d be some appearance we’d have to make that would completely break up the momentum.’ When it came to shooting a video to accompany ‘Jaded’, however, the band was happy to work with director Francis Lawrence. Aerosmith already had a trophy cabinet crammed with awards for their innovative and outlandish videos, but the video for ‘Jaded’ still stirred the normally supremely laid-back Joe Perry.

  Aerosmith had thrashed out their ideas with the director and between them they had come up with a storyboard depicting the tale of a young woman who is losing touch with reality. The set design was elaborate and extravagant, even for a band accustomed to excess. Said Perry: ‘It was the first time I’d ever walked on to a set and got goose bumps. When I saw that first shot, the big staircase, all those performers and the giraffe, I felt like I was in a Fellini movie. It was incredible!’

  The invigorating experience of making this new album, the fresh freedoms enjoyed by having recorded and produced it themselves, did not mean that there were no spats between Tyler and his ‘twin’. They still got embroiled in heated arguments, but they were productive ructions and always about the music. Anyone visiting the Perry family home and overhearing the rumpus going on down in the basement had to file it under ‘Keep Out! Volatile Men At Work’.

  Mainly, though, they had a ball at Perry’s ranch. Joe owned a sizeable collection of off-road vehicles, of which the band made full use. At times they were as headstrong as a bunch of unruly teenagers. Joe recalled one occasion when they could have come a nasty cropper. ‘We were riding around on dirt bikes and somebody forgot that I have a swimming pool. They came up over the hill and slammed the brakes on really hard and we got to see just how many times a dirt bike can go end over end. Fortunately, there were no broken bones.’

  In mid-September, Steven poked his head above the parapet long enough to clock up that Aerosmith was among sixteen artists being tipped for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Among the others were AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, Queen, Bob Seger and Steely Dan. Several hundred people from across the music business, including artists, record producers, journalists and industry figures, all voted on the nominees, whittling the number down over a period of weeks to those who would be inducted. To be eligible for induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an artist or band had to have been in the recording business for at least twenty-five years, but Tyler was not holding his breath. They had been passed over before for this industry honour. On 12 December 2000, however, it was announced that alongside Paul Simon, Queen, Michael Jackson and Steely Dan, Aerosmith would be inducted. By the end of the year, some music commentators were touting Aerosmith as arguably the pre-eminent American hard rock band; in VH1’s ‘100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock’ they ranked number eleven. And the accolades kept coming.

  In January 2001, at the American Music Awards, Aerosmith received the Award of Achievement, which had at that point only been given to Michael Jackson, Prince and Mariah Carey. Aerosmith performed at the ceremony, debuting their as yet unreleased single ‘Jaded’, and were rewarded with an enthusiastic standing ovation. Weeks later, on Sunday 28 January, Aerosmith performed at the half-time show during America’s NFL Super Bowl XXXV game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants, held at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Nearly seventy-two thousand people packed the arena, and the whole event was also watched live by 750 million television viewers worldwide. Other performers included Nelly, Mary J Blige, N’Sync, Tremors and the Earthquake Horns and Britney Spears. The half-time show culminated with all the performers joining Aerosmith for a rendition of ‘Walk This Way’. When later challenged as to how it felt as hard rockers, performing with breezy young pop stars, Joe Perry drolly remarked that if they could get away with appearing on stage with Britney Spears, then the band was surely bullet proof!

  In March, Aerosmith’s thirteenth studio album, Just Push Play, was released. It lodged at number two on Billboard and quickly went platinum. In Britain, the album made number seven; ‘Jaded’ soon reached the same peak in the US singles chart, stopping six places lower in the UK. A further three singles would spin off Just Push Play: ‘Fly Away From Home’; ‘Sunshine’, and the title track, but ‘Jaded’ was the most successful and in 2001 its video won the Billboard Music Award for ‘Best Hard Rock Clip of the Year’.

  Without doubt, the landmark event of 2001 was being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 19 March at a ceremony held during a black tie dinner at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. In anticipation of receiving this recognition, Steven remarked: ‘Not bad for a bunch of guys that got kicked out of clubs for playing their own songs.’ Aerosmith was the only band to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the same time as having a hit song (‘Jaded’) played on radio across the nation.

  Aerosmith was inducted by Kid Rock, who said during his introduction: ‘Aerosmith are to rock and roll what Fonzie was to Happy Days.’ While the audience politely tried to work out the significance of this remark, Kid Rock carried on with his speech and ended by inviting Aerosmith up on stage as ‘the greatest rock and roll band in American history’. After receiving their coveted statuettes, Aerosmith launched into blistering renditions of ‘Sweet Emotion’, ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’ and ‘Jaded’. If some recipients of this honour preferred to play things cool backstage after the induction, Steven was far from blasé. Openly thrilled, he declared: ‘To know that you’ve got a place next to Elvis Presley? This is totally overwhelming!’

  CHAPTER 14

  A Road Paved With Passion

  HAVING LATELY performed at the NFL Super Bowl and at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, on 27 May 2001 Steven completed a hat-trick of appearances at grandiose events when he sang America’s national anthem at the pre-race ceremony of the 85th Indianapolis 500. This legendary car race, held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, sees dozens of drivers compete for the million dollar first prize over a two and a half mile circuit, before a crowd of over a quarter of a million. Vehicles had displayed band names before but this was the first year that an Indy 500 race car sported the image of a rock band. The Aerosmith vehicle was painted pink and silver, carried Aerosmith’s winged logo and an image of the scantily clad female robot that featured on the cover of the newly released album Just Push Play. In deference to Tyler’s nickname, the car was called The Screaming Demon and displayed on its conical nose a caricature of a yelling Tyler, plus Steven’s autograph. After Steven performed the national anthem, veteran Indy racing driver Jeff Ward slid behind the wheel of this customised car and joined battle with the other competitors.

  Quitting Indianapolis, Tyler hightailed it back to his bandmates, who were excitedly anticipating the imminent launch of the Just Push Play tour. Regardless of how many times he had gigged around the globe, Steven was not jaded. ‘You gotta keep it fresh, coming up with new stage designs and places to go. You always want to outdo what you did last time,’ he said
. Asked how Aerosmith could do that this time, Steven riposted: ‘We could have bombs and blow-up dolls, but it’s better to keep my sex life out of this!’ In keeping with Just Push Play’s cover design, the stage set for this tour had a futuristic theme in silver and white. There would be two impressively sweeping staircases and a huge video wall, which Joe Perry had faint reservations about. ‘The biggest thing on this tour, literally and figuratively, will be the video screen in back. We’ve never brought a screen with us before, so we hope it will add to the live performance, not take away from it,’ he said.

  With Fuel as the warm-up act, Aerosmith launched the world tour on 6 June at the Meadows Music Center in Hartford, Connecticut. They delivered a playlist that alternated between hard-rocking numbers and soaring ballads in a show designed to appeal to all ages, rounding off with an encore that included the haunting and powerful ‘Livin’ on the Edge.’ One MTV gig report stated: ‘The band seemed under-rehearsed at times - Steven Tyler missed his harmonica cue during “Cryin’” - but Tyler went into charismatic hyperactive ringmaster mode and, overall, the band hit a groove and stuck in it.’

  Gigging over a handful of states throughout the month, Aerosmith played a single Canadian concert at the Molson Amphitheater in Toronto before reverting to more North American performances; they completed this first leg on 23 July in Englewood, Colorado. After a two-week break, a second US leg got under way, with scintillating performances creating such a lust among fans for more gigs that, on a high, Aerosmith announced several extra dates to be added to their itinerary between October and December. Fired up, the band quit North Carolina for a gig on 11 September 2001 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Virginia Beach, when everything came to a hideous halt with the terrorist attacks that were launched on the United States.

  Sent reeling like the rest of the world, Aerosmith cancelled the Virginia gig and pulled the plug on dates in New Jersey and Maryland. Less than a week after that mind-numbing tragedy, they went back on stage in Atlanta, Georgia. Steven was uneasy about whether it was right to carry on with the tour. The mood in America was understandably like a tinderbox, with unimaginable sorrow and grief for the thousands of people who died in the attacks, mixed with an equally understandable collective volatile rage. When performing in Nashville, Raleigh and West Palm Beach to conclude this stint, the band remained sensitive to the situation. Would people feel guilty about going out and trying to have a good time for a few hours? Or would they welcome being able to get out from under the blanket news of this atrocity and somehow begin to get on with their lives? There was a remarkable sense of defiant resilience resonating at street level.

  Although Steven concentrated on walking a fine line at concerts, aiming to maintain a positive vibe, like every other American he was inwardly gutted. He told Alex Beam for the Boston Globe: ‘You have to stand at ground zero to experience the magnitude of the hot heaping helpings of hate that people have. I visited ground zero at the Pentagon. The giant hole - the devastation! They rocked America’s world.’

  Ten days on from the terrorist attack, with America a cauldron of seething emotions, a hastily arranged two-hour telethon called ‘America: A Tribute To Heroes’ was broadcast live from New York, Los Angeles and London (by satellite) on all major US television networks; the kaleidoscope of feelings was reflected by the evident state of mind of many of the performers through their telling choice of song. Belligerence shone out when Tom Petty opted to perform his band’s hit, ‘I Won’t Back Down’. U2 offered more subtle strength in the face of intense adversity with ‘Walk On’. Paul Simon turned in a soul-searching rendition of his classic, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, and Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora performed a hauntingly introspective version of ‘Living on a Prayer’.

  Ten days into the third leg of the Just Push Play tour, Aerosmith decided almost at the last minute to take part, on 21 October 2001, in the United We Stand: What More Can I Give? benefit concert for the 9/11 victims held at the RFK Stadium in Washington DC. Other performers included Rod Stewart, Bette Midler, America, Carole King, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson, each artist being restricted to a five-song set. Aerosmith took to the stage in the afternoon. Wearing a long jacket emblazoned with the American flag, Steven led his band through a gripping set which included performances of ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’ and ‘Livin’ on the Edge’; in a nation then living on a knife edge the latter took on an evocative new depth.

  Straight after coming off stage at the RFK Stadium, Aerosmith flew to Indianapolis to honour their scheduled tour date that same night, at the Conseco Fieldhouse. In a charged state, Steven turned in a riveting show for the equally emotional audience. Inescapably, it was difficult to perpetuate a business-as-usual atmosphere - the reckless spirit of any normal rock concert was wholly inappropriate - but Tyler kept trying to find the right balance. For some time to come, every gig threw up this extra challenge, and nightly it very much depended on the mood of the fans.

  With so many people bereaved and suffering, it was not the climate in which to feel sorry for yourself, and so when Steven began to feel tired and unwell, he kept it firmly to himself as long as he could, but eventually a show in Pittsburgh and one in Toronto had to be cancelled. Aerosmith returned to the stage on Halloween for a gig at the Molson Centre in Montreal, Quebec, but Tyler’s throat gave him so much trouble that he had to rest his voice. A date in Ohio was scrapped, while gigs in Boston and Rhode Island were postponed. The band planned to resume the tour in early November at the First Union Center in Philadelphia, but that too had to be rescheduled as Steven’s problems persisted stubbornly. He was well aware of the dangers of placing too much strain on his vocal cords, but a machine used to create dry ice smoke on stage was not helping him, either. The particular machine Aerosmith had been using at indoor arenas was designed for outdoor use; breathing in its emissions so close to the machine for a couple of hours every night on tour had been inadvisable. Tyler saw a pulmonary specialist and for a while was using inhalers, while the dry ice smoke machine was replaced.

  The show got back on track on 10 November at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. Nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden and the Continental Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey, also went without a hitch, but Tyler’s sigh of relief was premature. The tour stalled again briefly when their gig at the twelve-thousand-capacity Jefferson Convention Complex Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, on 1 December had to be scrapped at the eleventh hour after a giant scoreboard at the venue fell seventy feet to the ground and was destroyed, just hours before the gig was due to start. Nobody was injured in the incident and it was suspected that the collapse had been due to a snapped cable, but health and safety issues ruled out allowing people into the venue that night. Six more performances brought this eventful leg of the tour to a close in mid-December at the Gund Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Then Steven was keen to get back to his family.

  Back in the summer, for a magazine spread in Harper’s Bazaar, Tyler had been photographed surrounded by his parents Susan and Victor Tallarico, his sister Lynda, wife Teresa, sister-in-law Lisa and his children, Liv, Mia, Chelsea and Taj. Now, as 2001 began to draw to a close, he needed to catch up with events on the home front.

  The complexion of Liv’s love life had changed. She and actor Joaquin Phoenix had split up in late 1998 and she had subsequently met and fallen in love with Royston Langdon, then lead singer with the British rock band, Spacehog. In February 2001, Liv and the twenty-eight-year-old frontman became engaged and were living together in a New York apartment. Professionally, Liv had hit the big time for she had been cast as the elven princess, Arwen Undomiel, a leading role in the blockbuster screen version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy; other main roles were played by Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen and Cate Blanchett. Liv would star in all three films of this fantasy tale, which was shot on location in New Zealand over eighteen months. Of her screen character, Liv said: ‘I got to play someone three thousand
years old, so that’s quite an acting challenge.’ As the mythical princess, Liv looked enchanting. Behind the scenes, however, she had her hiccups when the prosthetic ears her character sports melted in the sun. ‘I was so upset,’ she revealed of this mishap. ‘The ears were amazing and I kept them on the dashboard of my car but they’re made of gelatine so, of course, by the end of the week one of them had melted into a sticky mess.’ The first film in this multi-million-dollar trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, had its glitzy world premiere in London at Leicester Square’s Odeon Cinema in December 2001, when Liv walked the red carpet alongside co-stars Sean Bean, Christopher Lee and Elijah Wood as a two-thousand-strong crowd of film fans crammed up against the crush barriers.

  Steven, then still on tour in the States, was bursting with pride. With her profile sky-high, it was even more inevitable during media interviews that Liv would be quizzed about her parents, particularly her colourful father and the fact that she had grown up for years calling another man Dad. With unwavering candour, Liv talked of the wild and wayward lives her mother and father had led, but she was not prepared to prudishly judge either of them; off the bat, she established that she had been raised always knowing that she was loved by both parents. Of Steven, she declared: ‘He has been through rehab and he’s clean now but he had some very bad years. The drugs gave him seizures and he could have died. Because of his experience with drugs, I will never go near the stuff.’ Of her mother, Bebe Buell, Liv revealed: ‘I forgave my mom for deceiving me as to who my real dad was. My mom and I are still close, but my dad and I are true soul-mates! ’