Steven Tyler: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  Offsetting Steven’s pleasure in the positive path Liv’s life was taking, was his concern for Mia. Her modelling career continued to flourish but in 2001 her mother, Cyrinda Foxe, suffered a stroke that left her partially paralysed, and her ill health would drastically worsen. The downside of being a successful touring rock star is being unable to be there at crucial times for one’s family. Steven’s wife, Teresa, knew how much that aspect of his fame tortured him. That said, she and Tyler’s eldest daughters each knew how committed he was to his craft. Steven once confessed poignantly that when he is on the road during these gargantuan world tours, in the absence of having his loved ones around him, each night at gigs the fans filling the front row become his ‘family’. Let loose on tour, Tyler knew that he had to toe the line and look after himself. He still remembered those decadent days when a drug cocktail would await him backstage in his dressing room, but ruefully he accepted that nowadays with grown-up daughters ready to catch him out, the wildest defiance left to him was to hack into a fresh cream cookie when no one was looking!

  In early January 2002, Steven limbered up for a fourth, though short, seven-date North American leg of the Just Push Play tour. Commencing in Denver, it wrapped mid-month in San Diego. Some things never changed, though. While Tyler remained absolutely focused on every minute detail of each show and its sound, his best mate Joe Perry continued to take a more laid-back approach. When these separate approaches clashed, Steven and Joe would lock horns. Perry has admitted that he can be deliberately contrary, just to annoy his friend. Then, having thought about things, he sometimes has to concede that Tyler is right. No one in the know took any notice of these noisy arguments, for all they did was spark up the dynamic between the men, which in turn spiced up the band.

  Out on stage, Tyler continued to hold court as the consummate showman, and such was the enthusiasm Aerosmith met on this leg that when they played at The Joint, a two-thousand-seat venue within the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 11 January, they recorded the show for future release as a live album. After a stint in Japan, the Just Push Play tour ended in February, with the statistics reading nicely. The tour ranked as the eighth highest grossing of the previous year - the total gross was more than $43.5 million - and over the entire length of the tour Aerosmith had performed to nudging one million fans.

  Back on home turf, Steven faced a different kind of crowd when on 1 April, to help kick off the new baseball season, he belted out an inimitable rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ before more than thirty-three thousand sports fans packed into Boston’s Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox take on the Toronto Blue Jays. Mid-month, Tyler was truly over the moon when Aerosmith was afforded MTV Icon status - the first rock band to be honoured in this way - the previous year, Janet Jackson had been crowned the inaugural MTV Icon. MTV Entertainment president, Brian Graden, issued the statement: ‘Aerosmith is one of those very few bands whose influence pre-dates and spans the entire history of MTV. They have become a fixture at the network and we are thrilled to be able to honour them in this fashion for their continuing contribution to music and music video.’

  A tribute show titled MTV’s Icon: Aerosmith was taped in Los Angeles, during which various acts performed Aerosmith hits. Among those performers were Kid Rock, who had inducted Aerosmith into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, Pink, Papa Roach, Shakira and X-Ecutioners. Janet Jackson offered a testimonial to the band, and others taking part included the actress Alicia Silverstone. Although a few performers had teamed up to produce their version of the classic ‘Walk This Way’ video, Aerosmith themselves provided the event’s finale; this tribute show aired three days later, on 17 April 2002.

  That spring, Steven and the band went to Maui, Hawaii, for a working holiday; while relaxing after the Just Push Play tour, they wanted to come up with some new material for possible inclusion in an upcoming greatest hits compilation. Tyler spent much of his time on the beach, writing lyrics. One song, ‘Girls of Summer’ hit the spot with him; he still adored the whole process of creating. He said: ‘I just love melody, wherever it takes you. It’s in my Italian blood. We pushed up the rhythm guitar on that song. It was almost better as an acoustic song, rather than done with the whole band.’

  Aerosmith swapped Maui for Miami when it came to shooting the ‘Girls of Summer’ video. Working with director David Meyers on South Beach, the band hired more than two hundred female models to take part in a caper that told the tale of young girls out to have fun. Steven said: ‘They’re hotties and the guys are always trying to hit on them. At the beginning, the main character takes a Polaroid of a guy she spent the night with and shows it to the rest of them. It’s a lot of good stuff.’

  In July, Aerosmith released the double album, O, Yeah! The Ultimate Aerosmith Hits, which charted in America at number four, and number six in Britain. This compilation included the summer anthem, ‘Girls of Summer’, which was released in the States as a single. It did not chart on Billboard, but picked up a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

  In August, Liv’s mother, Bebe Buell, published her tell-all memoir, titled Rebel Heart: An American Rock ’n’ Roll Journey, in which she relayed tales of her time with her famous lovers, including details of her racy exploits with Steven. Tyler, meanwhile, concentrated on Aerosmith’s short North American tour, planned to back the greatest hits album. Dubbed the Girls of Summer tour, it kicked off mid-month in Holmdel, New Jersey. Opening acts for this tour were Kid Rock and Run D.M.C. Crisscrossing states from Pennsylvania to Illinois, after a single incursion into Canada, the band was back on America’s east coast to play a gig at the Tweeter Center in Camden, New Jersey, on 7 September when Steven received the tragic news that his ex-wife Cyrinda had just died.

  Having survived a stroke the previous year, Cyrinda had since been diagnosed with brain cancer. Although Steven had battled Cyrinda’s plans in the past to include nude photographs of him in her memoir, court wrangling and bad feeling were swept aside when he learned of this dreadful diagnosis, and he and his first wife had patched up their differences. Anxious also to do what he could practically for Cyrinda, Steven had weighed in with financial assistance to help cover her medical expenses, and he donated an electric guitar for a fundraiser in her name. Cyrinda had become involved with a musician named Keith Waa, whom she married on 28 August 2002, a mere ten days before her death. While undergoing cancer treatment, Cyrinda was staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, and she and Keith had married at her bedside there. Her third husband later said: ‘She was very sick and we wanted to do it before it was too late.’ Cyrinda was just fifty when she passed away. Heartbroken for twenty-three-year-old Mia losing her mother, Steven paid his respects at Cyrinda’s funeral on 10 September.

  The first leg of Aerosmith’s tour ended twelve days later in Noblesville, Indiana, which concluded Run D.M.C.’s stint as a support act. Less than a fortnight later, the second round of gigs began in Mayland Heights, Missouri, only for news of yet another death to reach Tyler’s ears. On 30 October, as Aerosmith was due to perform at the C.W. Mitchell Pavilion at the Woodlands in Texas, the shocking news broke that Run D.M.C.’s musician and mixer Jam Master Jay (real name Jason Mizell) had been fatally shot by an unknown gunman in a recording studio in the Jamaica section of Queens, New York. Early reports said that two men had walked into the recording studio’s waiting room where Mizell was and opened fire with a .45 calibre gun. Jason took a head shot, which killed him instantly. As lurid rumours circulated about a possible motive for this brutal, cold-blooded murder, Aerosmith joined others in the music industry in paying respects to Jason Mizell and contributed to a fund set up to try and find the shadowy gunman. The second leg of the Girls of Summer tour segued into its final trek, which wrapped up on 21 December at the MCI Center in Washington DC, by which time Aerosmith again ranked in the Top Ten Touring Acts of America, sandwiched between Neil Diamond and the Eagles. The runaway top touring artist in the wor
ld in 2002, by a huge margin, was Paul McCartney, who raked in a staggering $126.1 million, according to Billboard.

  There was an edginess in the music world, however. Already alive to the dangers faced by its stars from stalkers, its fears were further fuelled by the murder of Jam Master Jay. Following John Lennon’s point-blank slaying in 1980, some stars had at least considered carrying weapons for their personal protection in America. Even before this recent murder, both Steven and Joe Perry had been granted New York police department permits to carry a gun.

  Relegating dark fears to the back of his mind, Tyler ended 2002 happy. Liv’s second outing as Arwen Undomiel in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers hit the US silver screen in December, by which time she had been voted the sixth Sexiest Female Movie Star in a poll run by the Australian Empire magazine. Steven made a small screen appearance that same month when he played Santa Claus in an episode of the US children’s television show, Lizzie McGuire.

  On 25 March 2003, Liv and her fiancé Royston Langdon married at a private ceremony held at a villa in Barbados. Reportedly, neither Steven nor Bebe was invited to the Caribbean wedding and were each said to be upset about this. The young couple, however, held a reception a month later in New York, which their family and friends attended.

  Tyler, in contrast, was very much of a mind to pay public tribute to his mother and father when he received an Honorary Doctorate from Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Founded in 1945, this independent music college is considered to be one of America’s top institutions for the study of music outside classical and jazz music. Its buildings are clustered around Boylston Street in Boston’s Back Bay area, and Steven had passed the college countless times when living and gigging around this part of the city as a lean and hungry would-be rock star.

  Rigged out in graduation gown and tasselled hat, Steven accepted the Honorary Degree at the College’s commencement ceremony on 10 May. Delivering his address on stage at the Reggie Lewis Track Center in Boston, Tyler was inimitably irreverent. He told his amused audience: ‘All of us in this room may be different shapes, sizes, colours, may have different interpretations of a G-string and come from different places but it’s the DNA that tags us as members of the same tribe. In other words, we’re all here ’cause we’re not all there!’

  Speaking of his passion for music and his staunch belief in its sheer power he credited his mother, Susan, for ensuring that music had been woven into the very fabric of his life from a tender age. He praised his father, Victor, for having passed down to him some of his magic as a gifted classical pianist. Recounting a loving home life where his mother had nightly read him fairy stories until he had fallen asleep, and where he had crouched happily beneath his father’s Steinway grand piano as Victor had diligently practised, Steven allowed his enraptured audience a very personal glimpse into where the raucous rock star had come from and how his destiny had been shaped. In summing up, he also thanked his wife Teresa and his children for their understanding of his need to get out in the world and express his music.

  Thereafter, Steven dropped off the radar, but news started to leak out that Aerosmith was working on an album that would comprise mainly covers of blues numbers by the likes of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Blind Willie McTell. The band had been rehearsing songs at Joe Perry’s home studio near Boston, and the album was to be co-produced with Jack Douglas. It was said that they were looking to include some original gritty songs that would resonate with a live energy. Of these efforts, Joe confirmed: ‘Some of the songs sound like classic Aerosmith from the 1970s, others sound like old blues songs, but we had a really good time playing them all. We really wanted to get back into the basement and play a live record. This seemed like the obvious way to go.’

  Aerosmith emerged from the background that summer to co-headline a US tour with Kiss. Called the Rocksimus Maximus Tour, it was launched on 2 August at the Meadows Music Theater in Hartford, Connecticut. A new hard rock band, Saliva, had the task of whetting the audience appetite for each double-header gig before Kiss put on their flashy theatrical show and were followed by Aerosmith’s hard rock set. From Connecticut, the bandwagon rolled two days later into Wantagh, New York, to play the Jones Beach Amphitheater, impressing Jon Wiederhorn for MTV to report: ‘Even after thirty-three years with Aerosmith, Tyler sounds hungry and lustful. His cigarette rasp soars over the group’s ragged rhythms and he still has a fierce, glass-breaking, banshee wail.’

  As the tour worked its way around the country Steven, Joe and Brad found time on 4 September to perform at the NFL season kick-off in Washington DC. The second anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America was just around the corner, and Aerosmith and Kiss were among those performers who had decided to avoid playing on that emotive date. September 11 had largely become a day for solemn reflection to honour the dead. It was also thought that this anniversary date could attract a threat to any large gathering. The Rocksimus Maximus Tour got back in the groove on 12 September with a performance in West Palm Beach, Florida.

  For Steven, personally, the first leg of this tour ended memorably when, seven months on from Liv’s wedding, Mia also decided to get married. She had met Papa Roach drummer, Dave Buckner, at the taping of the MTV’s Icon: Aerosmith tribute show in spring 2002. Now the pair chose to tie the knot very publicly by marrying on stage during Aerosmith’s performance on 26 October 2003 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Tyler later recalled how Mia and Dave had turned up for the gig and sprung this plan on him. Said Steven: ‘I got my road manager and had him talk to the manager of the MGM Grand and he got me a judge. The judge came down and married them.’ According to Tyler, after Aerosmith performed ‘Walk This Way’, he announced to the twenty-thousand-strong audience: ‘“Hey, Vegas, I need a favour. My daughter wants to get married tonight. Can I get a witness?” They roared and I brought Mia out and the place went crazy!’ The gig carried on after this unscheduled event, with Steven launching, perhaps inauspiciously, into ‘Cryin’.

  Steven revealed that a little corner inside him had wished that Mia had waited, but so long as she was happy, then he was too. He pointed out: ‘All you can really do is look your kids in the eye and ask: “Do you really love him? Do you think you’re doing the right thing?”’ Tyler also conceded that his two eldest daughters in their mid-twenties displayed a great deal more maturity than he had shown at that age, which kind of compromised his chances of passing judgement on them in any way, even had he remotely wanted to.

  The second leg of the Aerosmith and Kiss tour, which began in Omaha, Nebraska, in early November, ended just before Christmas in Fresno, California. Throughout, Steven had belted out Aerosmith hits but he had also showcased each night a three-song set of blues numbers that were to feature on the band’s next album. This new offering was different, but having tested the water a little, Tyler was keenly awaiting the fans’ reaction to it.

  CHAPTER 15

  Shouldering Secrets And Sorrows

  MID-JANUARY 2004 it was announced that Aerosmith would once again provide entertainment during America’s NFL Super Bowl - this time headlining the pre-game show on 1 February at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, when the New England Patriots took on the Carolina Panthers. Excited by the prospect, Steven waxed lyrical: ‘The Super Bowl is rock ’n’ roll. It’s sexy, it’s slammin’, it’s precision, it’s passion and pure energy.’ Tyler was typically spontaneous, too, when it came to naming the band’s much anticipated forthcoming album, Honkin’ on Bobo; a title with no explanation, which both baffled and amused the others. Steven was deadly serious, however, about this new work, which mainly comprised covers of classic blues songs. Their fans had been yearning for some time for the band to return to the harder sound of their 1970s’ material, and since Aerosmith’s roots are embedded in a love of raw rhythm and blues, it was a challenge that resonated with them. The timing was good, as blues music was enjoying a revival around the world.

  The twelve-song collection included the Ruby Fisher a
nd Kenyon Hopkins number ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’, Fred McDowell’s ‘Back Back Train’ and ‘You Gotta Move’, the Sonny Boy Williamson song ‘Eyesight to the Blind’, Willie Dixon’s ‘I’m Ready’ and ‘Never Loved a Girl’, which was a reworked version of Ronny Shannon’s song, ‘I Never Loved a Man’. The only original song was a slow ballad called ‘The Grind’, written by Steven, Joe and Marti Frederiksen, which had been in the works for some time.

  Honkin’ on Bobo was recorded in three studios (including Perry’s home studio, The Boneyard) and was co-produced with Jack Douglas. Not having worked with Douglas since the late seventies, they found it a surreal experience to look over and see Jack at the helm. Perry once described it like having ‘wicked flashbacks - twenty years had passed but not a moment had passed’. It had proved invigorating, though, particularly as they had laid down the tracks as live sessions in a bid to bring an intrinsically charged energy to the songs. For Steven, recording this way showcased just what his band’s best strength was. Released at the end of March, Honkin’ on Bobo peaked at number five in the US album chart and made the UK’s Top 30. The album only went gold, and no cut released from it made it on to the Billboard singles chart, but this blues collection added to a rising Aerosmith album sales tally worldwide that was cementing the band’s standing as one of America’s greatest rock bands.

  In support of Honkin’ on Bobo, and backed by Cheap Trick, Aerosmith went back on the road. They aimed to play smaller arenas than in the past; to complement this, their stage set resembled an intimate blues club. Kicking off on 11 March at the United Spirit Arena in Lubbock, they gigged around Texas before moving to Little Rock, Arkansas. Concentrating on centres in the likes of Tupelo, Tallahassee, Atlanta and Dayton, in mid-April they played two shows in Canada before winding up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Only one of the twenty-one gigs had to be cancelled, but the second leg did not escape derailment. Commencing in early May at the Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa, the tour rolled along for a few weeks until illness in the band knocked out shows in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia Beach. Managing to get through a performance in Star Lake, Pittsburgh, they had to postpone the next gig, scheduled for the P.N.C. Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey; it was tagged on at the end of this leg, which got back on track on 22 June at the Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York. Gigs in Mansfield, Hershey and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, completed their North American jaunt. There was scant time for Steven to recharge his batteries before undertaking the final segment of the Honkin’ on Bobo tour, and if anything was likely to remind him of his age it was the news that he would become a grandfather before the end of the year.