Steven Tyler: The Biography (18 page)

It is a treasure to Steven that Liv does not harbour any resentment against him for not having been in her life for eleven years. Liv’s inherent maturity was not long in showing. Looking back on her teens, she candidly pointed out: ‘I never had much to rebel against because my parents were always so cool. I mean, what was I to do? Smoke a joint? Go to rock concerts? That’s all they ever did’ - and far more besides! In time, Liv took the Tyler name. She told
US Magazine
: ‘Wanting to be more a part of my real father was only natural and I liked the name. It’s a great name.’

Liv’s true paternity was not made public knowledge for a further three years. Mia, meantime, would overhear comments about how alike she and Liv were. So Cyrinda sat Mia down one day and explained that as her father had had relationships before they had married, he
could
have other children to other women. Mia was thrilled to learn that she had a sister, and the girls went on to become close.

In September, Aerosmith performed for a second year at the MTV Video Music Awards, again held at the Universal Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. For the first time, Aerosmith had been nominated for two awards - Best Group Video and Best Stage Performance in a Video, both for ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’. When the
Permanent Vacation
tour came to a close, Aerosmith had played on bills with Deep Purple, Dokken, White Lion and Guns N’ Roses, and Tyler’s deepest delight was how the fans had been outstandingly loyal and receptive to them.

It had taken a great deal of guts, determination and a sheer passion for life and music, but by the end of 1988, from the depths of drug-ridden despair, Aerosmith had roared back to life. Steven still wrestled with the fear that one slip could bring him crashing down again, this time from an even higher perch. ‘It’s a bitch to stay straight,’ he candidly confessed. Taking his sobriety one day at a time, he promised himself each morning that he would not take dope or drink that day - knowing that he could not vouch for his willpower tomorrow. On tour, he had taken extra precautions to isolate himself from temptation to the point where he had left no one in any doubt that if he caught anyone doing drugs or taking alcohol in his dressing room, there would be all hell to pay.

Primarily, Tyler had found new beauty in his personal and professional lives. The rehabilitation clinic in which he had ditched his addictions had used religion as the bedrock of their therapy, and Steven did believe that other forces were at work. ‘There’s got to have been a plan for this band,’ he maintained, ‘either by a higher power, or an angel of mercy because for all the shit I did,
someone
threw me a rope.’

CHAPTER 10

Going Up, Mr Tyler?

TOWARDS THE
end of 1988 several weeks were devoted to developing ideas for the follow-up to
Permanent Vacation
. Revelling in the creative benefits of his hard-won sobriety, Tyler was typically tongue-in-cheek: ‘I’ve been like a squirrel storing things up and I can’t stop fiddling with my nuts!’ He maintained that they wanted to keep the material simple and guitar-oriented, but the song collection that evolved over the coming months wove an interesting and intricate tapestry.

Steven collaborated with Jim Vallance on two numbers, ‘Young Lust’ and a belter called ‘The Other Side’, both of which came quickly to fruition. Desmond Child’s services were called upon to assist Tyler and Perry pull together ‘What It Takes’, a song that proved immensely popular with the fans live; seven other songs came from collaborations within the band, for they had closed ranks this time. From the band’s perspective, exploring collective creativity was always the best, and at this time it could only help to foster their new cohesion. Still, Perry’s raucous riffs marrying with Tyler’s intrinsic understanding of melody could, even after all these years, leave the others in awe.

A Tyler/Perry number to come straight off the bat was ‘Monkey on My Back’, reflecting Steven’s experience with drug and alcohol addiction, but the two standout tracks were swiftly identified as the diametrically different songs, ‘Love in an Elevator’ and ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’. Tyler once confessed: ‘I put so much sex in my lyrics because it is always on my mind.’ Certainly, the source for ‘Love in an Elevator’ has become a near fabled tale in rock.

According to Tyler, one evening in a swish hotel elevator, two nubile beauties ambushed him, keen to check out his credentials as a groin-grinding rock god. Not in the least averse to this ‘attack’, Tyler ended up down on his knees attending to one lady, who was in a startling state of undress. Completely engrossed with making out, the steamy pair forgot where they were until reaching the ground floor lobby, where the door slid smoothly open. Hotel staff and customers queuing to use the lift could not believe their eyes. Said Steven: ‘It was very exciting. The door was open for all of six seconds, then closed, but it felt like a millennium! ’ Steven effortlessly came up with the lyrics to tell this story and they twinned perfectly with a riff Joe had become attached to. The chemistry was right and both Tyler and Perry knew that it would be a stimulating live number - something which always motivates them. Perry later stated: ‘“Love in an Elevator” really sums up the excitement I feel is all over the
Pump
album.’

In complete contrast, ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ dealt with a taboo topic. In the basement of his house, Steven had installed a sophisticated keyboard next to the treadmill he used to keep fit. Exercising often energised him lyrically. In ‘Janie’s’ case he had the song title and the melody but no specific direction. He had read a newspaper article about gun crime, and was working out down in his basement with the question of why a girl would get hold of a gun percolating through his head. As lyrics came to him thick and fast, drenched in sweat with his heart pumping, he leapt off the treadmill and began to pen a song about a fictitious girl who is raped by her father and subsequently seeks revenge by gunning him down. As a father of girls, Steven found the idea of sexually abusing one’s own daughter a totally alien concept, and he had to reach deep into unknown realms to come up with this song. ‘Once I’d tapped into the insanity, the song wrote itself,’ he said. Tyler took nine months to perfect this powerfully evocative song, which has since been hailed as one of his finest compositions. It was nearing completion when he presented it to the others in the studio. Not noted for delving into weighty social issues in song, Steven stunned his bandmates this time. Joe Perry stated: ‘“Janie’s Got a Gun” came out of left field. It is rare for us to do a song about anything other than fucking or sucking but this one dealt with child abuse.’

Having rehearsed in January 1989 in a Massachusetts recording studio, the band quit wintry Boston and headed for Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver, Canada, to begin work again with producer Bruce Fairbairn. Tyler was champing at the bit to see how the fruits of all his labour would flourish. Events in his private life were also challenging.

On 6 March, Teresa gave birth to a baby girl they named Chelsea Anna Tallarico. Steven had now had three daughters to three different women in the past twelve years. In his relationship with Teresa, Tyler had not always played it straight. With his trademark candour, he has confessed publicly that he went through a spell of being unfaithful, and gave a stark explanation for cheating on a woman whom he knew had shown him enormous devotion. Referring to all those years he had been drugged to the point of collapse, he expressed a deep frustration that he had missed out on too many girls who had offered themselves to him. When he beat his addiction to drink and drugs, it was a feeling that he acted upon. He declared: ‘When I got sober, I started to fuck everything that walked.’ Having got married seemed only to increase his attraction, and women made flagrant moves on him. That Teresa hung on in there as this tough spell ran its course is something Tyler was grateful for. He said: ‘My wife was with me at the tail end of my addiction when I was living at the Gorham hotel. We shared the madness back then and she shares in my madness now.’ At a point in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Steven underwent psychological evaluation in a clinic which sought to help him understand the reasons he had become a drug addict and an alcoholic. This had involved long intensive discussions about his life. Though suspicious of the tendency among therapists to blame everything on a patient’s upbringing, at the end of this assessment he said he felt that it had helped.

It was less pleasing by spring that clashes were erupting at Little Mountain Sound Studio. Steven knew the value of having experienced people such as producer Bruce Fairbairn and A & R man John Kalodner involved in this new album, but Aerosmith had changed since making
Permanent Vacation
. That album’s success and their strengthening health and sobriety had restored the band’s confidence. The five men were harder to handle in the sense that they once more had a strong vision of what they wanted and were capable of doing; it did not come naturally to them to give ground to others whose job it was to keep Aerosmith firmly on track to even headier heights. Steven was passionate about his lyrics and did not want to hear it when the Geffen Records executive tried to persuade him to omit or alter certain words to ensure that the songs were palatable enough to draw the all-important commercial radio airplay. Arguments broke out in the studio as these matters were thrashed out before recording wrapped in June.

In summer 1989, Bon Jovi were one of the world’s biggest bands, and were on the road supporting their hit album,
New Jersey
. That August, having headlined the Moscow Music Peace Festival at the Lenin Stadium, they flew to the UK to play some dates, including one at the Milton Keynes Bowl in Buckinghamshire. Five years earlier, on Bon Jovi’s first British tour backing Kiss, Jon Bon Jovi had come under attack from critics with one reviewer dubbing him a ‘juvenile Steven Tyler’. Although an absurd description, in essence comparisons to Steven had not affronted Jon. He remembered having avidly watched Tyler perform around the New Jersey shore clubs in the 1970s, and he did not argue with the notion that he had subliminally absorbed a smidgen of the flamboyant frontman’s stage style. Steven and Jon’s paths had crossed a few times over the years and each star respected the other. So, when Steven and Joe Perry went to Britain that summer they attended Bon Jovi’s Milton Keynes gig and ended up joining the New Jersey rockers for an encore, blasting their way through a memorable rendition of ‘Walk This Way’.

In America, Aerosmith’s new single, ‘Love in an Elevator’, was released. Delivered by Tyler at his usual break-neck pace, the rock song was accompanied by a video that oozed lust from start to finish. It contained stage performance shots with Steven lasciviously thrusting his way through the raucous number, and cutaway shots depicting steamy goings-on in a department store elevator. Dummies wearing bikinis came alive as busty, cavorting models when no one was looking, and Steven played tonsil tennis with a willing shop assistant. The single peaked at number five on Billboard and dropped anchor in the UK at number thirteen. When
Pump
followed in September, the eagerly awaited album attracted Aerosmith’s best reviews yet. Its darker, more thought-provoking subject matter found widespread favour, and the new layers in Steven’s lyrics earned him high acclaim. In Britain,
Pump
hit number three, while the album stopped at number five in the US but it went multi-platinum, stayed on the charts for over two years and became the fourth bestselling album of 1990.

Aerosmith’s stock was rising; sixteen years on from releasing their eponymous album, they were rapidly reaching the realms of elder statesmen in rock. The band provided instruments, stagewear and memorabilia to Boston’s Hard Rock Café, which created a wall display dubbed the Aerosmithonian. The Rolling Stones, meanwhile, were on their
Steel Wheels
tour of America, and that October on MTV Mick Jagger had jokingly included Aerosmith among possible opening acts for his band. Talking of Jagger’s remarks, Tyler told
Rolling Stone
: ‘He was being facetious. I wanted to smack him!’ That Tyler was jesting was clear when he got the chance to meet up with Jagger when the Stones’ tour hit the east coast, and the two frontmen greeted each other warmly. For Steven, it was surreal. It did not seem so long ago that he was the skinny, hyperactive youth who would hang around outside New York clubs, hoping for a glimpse of the legendary Rolling Stone singer. To be meeting Mick Jagger on equal terms took a bit of getting used to.

Tyler’s thoughts quickly switched to Aerosmith’s tour plans. What would become a massive worldwide undertaking kicked off in Europe in October 1989. Steven’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. He stated: ‘The positive response to our music is what keeps it exciting for us and we have come to realise that we’re musicians first and foremost and we still love playing together night after night.’ In mid-November, Aerosmith played a nine-date UK leg, their first live British concerts since 1977. When they performed at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, they were joined on stage by Whitesnake’s frontman, David Coverdale, who duetted with Steven on the Beatles number, ‘I’m Down’.

Right then, the second single to be released from
Pump
was ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ accompanied by a dark video depicting the raw emotions redolent in this song. The single did not register in Britain but peaked early in the new year on the US chart at number four. Steven dubbed ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ as the toughest song he had written. That said, it was very important to him to fire a warning shot across the critics’ bows, and he stressed: ‘I don’t mean to take the piss out of my lyrics on “Janie’s Got a Gun”, or of how people would like to hear something deep but it really is only rock ’n’ roll!’ Joe Perry, too, insisted that Aerosmith had not become an ‘issues’ band - that Steven had not set out to write a message song. That preserve, he felt, was more the domain of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. ‘It was interesting doing the song and getting the reaction we did,’ said Joe, going on to vent his opinion on the way the two singles’ videos had been received. The groundbreaking video for ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’, directed by David Fincher, was gruesome in places and disturbingly insinuated the incestuous rape contained in the song’s lyrics. It also contained an emotionally brutal scene where the character of ‘Janie’ shoots her abusive father at close quarters. Said Joe: ‘It blows my mind. You get oohs and ahs about the half-naked girl in the “Love in an Elevator” video. Then when “Janie” kills her father, blows his brains out over the table, no one raises an eyebrow! Some people’s attitude to life sucks.’