Steven Tyler: The Biography (23 page)

With its sleazy riffs and lascivious lyrics, on its release
Nine Lives
entered Billboard’s album chart at the top. It made number four in Britain, where the
New Music Express
said: ‘
Nine Lives
is traditional Aerosmith, rasping sub-Stones, third generation removed white blues.’ Within a couple of weeks, however, there was controversy over the album cover. The artwork for the album sleeve depicted a man with a cat’s head, dancing on top of a collection of snakes. Aerosmith had been under the impression that this was an original design. They were stunned when it emerged that this was not the case and that this image had inadvertently deeply offended the Hindu community. Joe Perry revealed: ‘Once the album was on the market, the Hindus saw it and they really freaked out. We were getting emails, lawyers’ letters, and there were bomb threats on the Sony building. After that, we went: “That’s it! We’re changing the cover art,” and we stopped the presses.’

In May, ‘Hole in My Soul’ failed to breach the US Top 50, but made the Top 30 in Britain, where Aerosmith launched their
Nine Lives
world tour with a gig at the Telewest Arena in Newcastle upon Tyne, breaking the house record. After another British date at the Manchester Nynex Arena, Aerosmith headed east to gig around Europe, taking in Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, before returning to Britain for four further dates - one in Birmingham, and their only Scottish gig at the SECC in Glasgow, before pitching up at London’s Wembley Arena for a two-night stint, ending on 5 June. Accompanying Aerosmith on this leg were Shed Seven and Kula Shaker. Ever on the lookout for interesting support acts, Steven had enjoyed a live radio broadcast Kula Shaker had given, but all had not gone smoothly on tour as one evening Kula Shaker left the stage after performing just one song, hugely frustrated at the poor quality of their sound. Unfortunately, on that particular night there had been no time for the support act to have a sound check because Aerosmith’s own sound check had taken an age. Joe Perry explained: ‘Usually, after fifteen shows we don’t sound check unless we want to work on a new song. We’d only rehearsed, though, for a couple of days before the tour.’ Teresa had joined Steven in London for the Wembley Arena dates. Backstage that second night, the post-gig gathering included the band members’ families, a bevy of the usual beauties and a smattering of stars. Jon Bon Jovi was engrossed talking with one of Aerosmith’s business managers and, as a lover of the sixties music scene, Steven was also thrilled that among the band’s guests was The Pretty Things’ frontman, Phil May.

While the band continued to gig through Europe, at home the
Boston Globe
reported that the proceeds from the sale of Aerosmith T-shirts at the chain of Hard Rock Café restaurants, amounting to more than half a million dollars, would be going to a children’s hospital. Back on US soil, Steven was keyed up to play a warm-up gig at the Entertainment Center, Old Orchard Beach in Maine, before leading his band into the north American/Canadian leg in early July. Kicking off at the Corel Center in Kanata, Ontario, he wowed audiences through performances in Montreal and Toronto before giving his all for twenty-five gigs spread across fourteen US states, wrapping up at the Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana, on 31 August.

A second US leg would start in North Carolina in late September, but before that, at the annual MTV Video Music Awards held at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Tyler was delighted that Aerosmith won the Best Rock Video award for 1997 for ‘Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)’. That month, Aerosmith also picked up two nominations in the MTV Europe Music Awards - in the Best Live Act and the Best Rock Act categories.

Tyler’s attention right through to near the end of October, however, stayed squarely on eliciting the very best response he could from his home-grown fans as the band took in another ten American states before dropping anchor temporarily after an appearance during the Universal Concerts held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Night after night on this gruelling schedule, with his adrenalin pumping, Steven knew that he was electrifying the performances for loyal fans who had come in their droves from far and wide to see them. Perhaps he could not pick out individual faces in the gloom beyond the stage footlights, but the rapturous reception Aerosmith was given everywhere spoke for the Blue Army’s continued devotion.

In a more modest situation, it gave Steven immense pleasure when, in early November 1997, Aerosmith performed a benefit concert for the Nordoff Robbins charity. They played for autistic children, and Steven was thrilled when at one point, as he sang them a song that he had been taught as a kid, the children joined in and sang and danced along with him. Aerosmith received the Silver Clef Award at the 10th Nordoff Robbins dinner at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.

Not long after a third north American tour got under way at the Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida, Aerosmith performed ‘Pink’ at the Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, which was broadcast live on US network television on 8 December. The
Nine Lives
world tour took a break after a New Year’s Day gig at the Fleet Center in Boston.

Taking time to relax with his family did not mean that Steven sat about in his moccasins, doing nothing. He had taken up roller-blading and skiing, and he indulged his long-time liking for mucking about on the water by piloting jet boats. For a star who tunes in so passionately to his stage persona, it takes him remarkably little time coming off the adrenalin-driven high of live performance to slip behind the curtain into family life. For just about a week that inbuilt buzz of ‘showtime’ grabs at him at a certain point in the evening. Once that leaks away, he is happy helping out about the house, being with his wife and children. He does take off on his own - sometimes he puts on the rollerblades, skates off and can be gone for hours. Towards the end of 1997, he was in quite reflective mood, telling his wife that if he died tomorrow then he would die happy. He had not become jaded with success and was grateful to be tasting it a second time around. It still gave him immense delight to hear thousands of fans sing his own lyrics back to him at gigs, and among his fan mail he received letters from drug addicts telling him that
he
had inspired them to at least try to put the needle away, to seek help with their addictions. An emotional man anyway, letters like these touched Tyler very much.

In January 1998, Steven sheathed his skinny frame in his flamboyant stagewear once more when the US leg of the
Nine Lives
world tour resumed in Maryland. By the time it ended the following month in Michigan, Aerosmith had picked up two Grammy Award nominations, for ‘Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)’ and for
Nine Lives
. The third single from
Nine Lives
, ‘Pink’, was released, charting at number thirty-eight in Britain, while managing to peak eleven places higher in America. With Steven’s harmonica opening, ‘Pink’ was an unusual song - in places not immediately comprehensible - and its accompanying video was fantastically bizarre. It featured various people including John Kalodner and the band members individually morphed into a wide range of freakish incarnations - Joe Perry, for instance, at one point ambles towards the camera as half man (playing electric guitar) and half horse. Steven’s many wild and weird guises included appearances as a child with bunny ears, a dancing skeleton in a top hat, a bronzed bodybuilder flexing his pecs and wearing only a posing pouch, and a shapeless young girl. Steven and Joe briefly showed up as one man with two heads - Tyler’s head and Perry’s head sitting on one wide pair of shoulders. Each bewildering character sauntering or rushing towards the camera was more outlandish than the last. Finally, Steven’s quizzical face fills the screen. He goes cross-eyed, then signs off with a flash of his infectious grin before ducking swiftly down out of shot. While fans struggled to know what to make of ‘Pink’s’ video, Steven came down with viral laryngitis, paying the price for having given his all in concert for much of the past ten months.

He had recovered by the time Aerosmith flew to the Far East for their seven-date tour of Japan. Kicking off on 1 March at the Dome in Nagoya, visiting Osaka and Fukuoka before two gigs at the Tokyo Dome, the tour concluded with two nights at the Yokohama Arena. They left Japan mid-month for America, where eleven days later, on 26 March, Steven privately celebrated his milestone fiftieth birthday.

Showing no sign of slowing down, Steven relished embarking on what would be their fourth US leg when the Aerosmith roadshow got back into gear in mid-April at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. After playing dates in Colorado and Washington, the band arrived in Alaska for two gigs at the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage. On 27 April, the day of the first concert there, news was released that Aerosmith songs would anchor the official soundtrack album to accompany an upcoming feature film called
Armageddon
. Two nights later, the world tour literally came to a crashing stop.

The performance had gone well. Then during the encore, while swinging his microphone stand around, in a second’s mistiming Steven hit himself with the heavy metal base and he fell awkwardly on to one knee. It was not just an embarrassing tumble on stage. As soon as Steven stood up it was obvious to him that damage had been done. It turned out that he had torn his anterior cruciate ligament and surrounding cartilage. He needed an operation, and so the band was forced to postpone the remaining fourteen US and Canadian dates. They hoped to be able to reschedule these dates for later in the year, but an entire European tour which had been planned to kick off on 26 June at the Petrovsky Stadium in St Petersburg, Russia, and end on 1 August at London’s Wembley Arena, had to be cancelled altogether. A proposed South American tour also had to be elbowed.

Once the swelling in his injured knee went down, in early May 1998 Steven underwent surgery. The straightforward procedure went well, and his doctors advised him to stay off the road for at least three to four months. He recovered at his home in the Boston area and in an effort to keep Aerosmith’s name in vogue, along with his bandmates he began to look at material for a possible live album release. What most invigorated Tyler, however, was Aerosmith’s involvement in the soundtrack for
Armageddon
, the Hollywood science-fiction blockbuster about attempts to stop meteors from hitting and destroying the Earth. Directed by Michael Bay, it starred Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck and Steven’s daughter, Liv, who played Grace Stamper, Willis’s screen daughter.

In the past three years, Liv’s acting career had taken off with appearances in
Heavy
,
Stealing Beauty
,
That Thing You Do!
and
Inventing the Abbots
. It had been a period of considerable change for Liv. She said: ‘I cried on my eighteenth birthday. I thought that seventeen was such a nice age. You’re young enough to get away with things but you’re old enough, too.’ In 1997, at twenty years old, as part of asserting her independence, she had stopped living at home with her mother; that same year,
People
magazine had named Liv Tyler as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. Her role in the multi-million-dollar movie
Armageddon
was an opportunity to truly exploit her dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty, and to prove her magnetism on the big screen.

Aerosmith contributed four songs to the official soundtrack album: two new numbers - a lush power ballad called ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’, written by lyricist Diane Warren, and a rock song, ‘What Kind of Love Are You On?’ - plus their classic number, ‘Sweet Emotion’, and a cover of the Beatles’ song, ‘Come Together’. Of Aerosmith’s involvement in this project Steven said: ‘We got to see what they had of the movie so far and it was so exciting, so fantastic with all this stuff going on, especially where they put “Sweet Emotion” in the film. I immediately fell in love with it. Then I saw the love scene with Ben Affleck and my daughter and at the end [of the film] when she starts crying and yells “Daddy”, the tears started running down my face.’

The video to accompany ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’ was shot in the Minneapolis Armory in spring 1998 when Steven, post-operation, was still having considerable difficulty with walking. In long, black flowing clothes, Steven adopted a dramatic look and his emotive delivery of the power ballad is, for many fans, one of his best ever. The video of Aerosmith performing the number was spliced with scenes taken from the movie and with a touching twist at the end, when Liv as Grace Stamper in mission control cries and reaches out to an image on a huge TV screen, it is an image of her real father’s face that she tenderly touches.

Steven had been keeping track of his eldest daughter’s career with pride, attending her film openings when he could and visiting the cinema to see her movies, often more than once. With Liv’s profile rising, in November 1994 she and her father had appeared together on the cover of
Rolling Stone
, Liv giving her father a peck on the cheek, only to draw criticism from some who claimed that it had somehow looked incestuous. It was an absurd reaction that Steven seriously struggled to comprehend. Asked if he saw Liv as sexy, he resoundingly barked: ‘No! Others do.’

As a protective father, a reformed drug addict and a raucous rock star who is never shy of speaking his mind, Steven Tyler is a daunting figure for any young guy hoping to strike up a relationship with one of his daughters. Right then, Liv was dating actor Joaquin Phoenix, whom she had met on the set of the film
Inventing The Abbots
, but Phoenix had managed not to feel intimidated by the formidable, sometimes unpredictable, frontman.

On 27 May 1998, MTV premiered Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’ as more details of the film’s soundtrack emerged. In addition to Aerosmith’s four numbers, the album featured songs from Jon Bon Jovi, Bob Seger, Journey and ZZ Top among others, while composer Trevor Rabin contributed ‘Theme from Armageddon’.