Steven Tyler: The Biography (24 page)

Steven made his first live appearance since having surgery on 29 June, when Aerosmith performed a forty-five-minute set at the private premiere party for
Armageddon
, held at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. He still had to wear a leg brace to support his knee, and before the five hundred invited VIP guests, the band performed the live debut of ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’.

Armageddon
publicly premiered on 1 July 1998 and went on to attract four Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Best Original Song for ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’, which debuted that summer in the American singles chart at number one; it was Aerosmith’s first ever number one single in their twenty-five years as recording artists. The song remained in pole position on Billboard for four weeks. It also topped the charts in nine other countries including Australia, Germany and Italy. In Britain, the impressive rock power ballad made number four. ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’ was nominated for a 1998 Grammy Award in the category of Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, as was ‘Pink’. At the Grammy Awards ceremony, held in the new year, ‘Pink’ took the trophy.

Despite the derailment to the tour caused by his knee injury, Steven was in buoyant mood about Aerosmith’s past, present and future. He voiced his frank amazement and gratitude that the band was still hanging on in there, still coming up with the goods. Perfectly aware that it was very easy for their lurid reputation for drug abuse and excess to deflect attention from their musical ability, Tyler stressed to journalists: ‘It wasn’t anything we shot up or put up our noses that gave us the edge.’ It was, he maintained, the various talents each of his bandmates brought to Aerosmith. Keeping the unit intact, he felt, was both their hardest and their greatest achievement.

In his by now acknowledged capacity as an elder statesmen of rock, Tyler was quizzed on what he thought about the violence that was becoming synonymous with certain elements in music. Steven stated: ‘You start dancing with your shadow too much and it’s obvious. You can either walk around smacking each other or loving each other. The dark energy dies. So, what do you choose?’

Tyler’s energy reserves never flagged. To keep his frame stick-thin, Steven started every day with a robust session on a Stairmaster in the gym. His potent attraction to his female fans had in no way been diluted by having turned fifty, although Tyler took a pragmatic view of it all. ‘It’s just a fantasy that goes hand in hand with rock,’ he maintained. ‘If they really knew us, it wouldn’t be the same - just ask our wives - but I like to keep that little bit of a fantasy.’ He also knew how to teasingly suggest his availability. The impudent star confessed to looking at other women and ever so slightly on occasion briefly caressing the odd busty babe backstage but he found no difficulty in leaving things at that.

He had not lost the buzz of turning on the radio and hearing Aerosmith songs belt out over the airwaves. Come the late 1990s, however, radio was changing and older artists were being dropped in their droves from playlists around the country. When Tyler discovered that this was happening to Aerosmith’s music at radio stations across Los Angeles he got on the phone personally to find out why. One radio producer told him that that particular station would not be playing Aerosmith because they were classed as a rock act. Steven promptly challenged the guy by reeling off a long list of the band’s romantic ballads. Whether or not this mission made a blind bit of difference to those in charge of the station’s playlists, Tyler felt better for having at least tried to tackle the issue.

In a less militant mood, Steven took stock of his life and although content enough, he did not believe in resting on his laurels. In summer 1998, he had ambitions of breaking into the realms of acting. With differing degrees of success other rock stars, including Roger Daltrey, David Bowie and Jon Bon Jovi had made it on to the silver screen. Unsurprisingly, Steven envisaged himself cast in a flamboyant passionate role in a high-octane action adventure movie. Since he was planning getting back on the road with Aerosmith and writing more songs for future albums, it was hard to see quite how he would have the time to attempt to break into acting, but he admitted: ‘Life’s gotta be complicated for me.’

CHAPTER 13

The Keeper Of The Flame

FEELING RECOVERED
from his knee operation and buoyed up by the success of ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’, in summer 1998 Tyler was ready to resume Aerosmith’s
Nine Lives
world tour. Plans were announced for a major US leg kicking off in August at the Walnut Creek Amphitheater in Raleigh, North Carolina. During its expected run through to the end of the year, the band hoped to knit in the dates that had to be postponed when Steven picked up his injury. But fate intervened again in July, when drummer Joey Kramer sustained second-degree burns on both legs, his left arm and hand. He had been sitting in his sports car at a petrol filling station in Scituate, Massachusetts, with the engine still running, when a leak in the petrol tank hose caused fuel to set the car ablaze. Joey was very lucky to scramble alive out of the burning vehicle, and was rushed to hospital for treatment for his horrific injuries. Aerosmith postponed their tour plans, and over the next six weeks Kramer made remarkable progress. He later praised: ‘Without the care and time taken by the entire staff of the burn unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital, I don’t think my rehabilitation would have been so speedy.’

The seventh leg of Aerosmith’s world tour finally got under way on 9 September at the Montage Mountain Amphitheater in Scranton, Pennsylvania. As the band then headed to New Jersey they learned that they had added two more trophies to their collection; at the MTV Video Music Awards they picked off the prizes for Best Rock Video for ‘Pink’, and Best Video from a Film for ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’. By now, the
Armageddon
soundtrack had gone triple platinum. Hurling himself into performances from Clarkston to Cincinnati, Chicago to Columbus, on 24 September in St Louis, Missouri, for their gig the next night at the Riverport Amphitheater, Tyler took time out to throw the first pitch at the St Louis Cardinals baseball game against the Montreal Expos at the city’s Busch Stadium.

Hitting state after state, Steven went all out to prove his fitness and enthusiasm. In early October, when Aerosmith took to the stage at the GTE Virginia Beach Amphitheater, his breathtakingly explosive passion enthralled a 25,000 capacity crowd during the ninety-minute show. His energy levels were extraordinary and he wielded his microphone stand with almost careless abandon as he gyrated around the stage. Rock journalists left that evening to scribble that Tyler was now possibly rock’s greatest frontman. He does draw an intriguing blend of emotions from his devoted fans, for in addition to responding to the pulsating sexuality he flagrantly exudes, he also elicits an enduringly deep affection.

Come autumn 1998, Steven’s public statement mirrored his private feelings, as he confessed that after twenty-five years in the business he and his bandmates had at last lost their sense of insecurity. Steven saw new dimensions to his world and he relished the fact that Aerosmith was in tremendous shape; each night the band played out of its skin in the quest of rewarding the loyal supporters who had stayed true to them through thick and thin. Steven also openly valued the fact that his friendship with Joe Perry had deepened yet further. This relationship still formed the axis on which the band’s fortunes turned. It was stimulating, too, that Aerosmith was more than holding its own in such fast-moving times; they were learning how to take advantage of the worldwide web, which was beginning to make a serious impact on the way rock music reaches its audience. On 17 October, their gig at the P.N.C. Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, simultaneously went out as a webcast; over 120,000 people downloaded the performance, making it the largest single artist webcast, at that point in time.

Days later, Aerosmith released a twenty-three-track double live album called
A Little South of Sanity
. Comprising tracks recorded during the band’s 1993-1994 world tour and during some gigs on their
Nine Lives
tour, it peaked at number twelve on Billboard and reached the Top 40 in the UK album chart. Steven did not over-enthuse about this compilation. He appeared to view it as an album he would likely find most interesting when he listened to it in his old age. He continued to be fascinated with the breakneck pace of technology, firmly contemplating a time when gigs could be recorded live and CDs made available virtually as fans are streaming out of the auditoriums. This North American leg ended in late October in Toledo, Ohio, but behind the cheeky grins and quick quips to the media, Steven was quietly concerned. Twenty-four gigs in, his operated-on knee was threatening to give him some problems. He preferred not to think about the prospect of needing more surgery, and after donating $10,000 to the Massachusetts General Hospital, where Joey Kramer had been treated for burns earlier in the year, he launched Aerosmith back on the road.

With the tour now renamed the
Little South of Sanity
tour, the next batch of dates commenced in early November at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; in the ensuing weeks they performed in fourteen states. Veterans of the road, Aerosmith have notched up their share of hairy experiences and touring mishaps. Joe Perry highlighted one particular hiccup as his favourite rock ’n’ roll moment. ‘We were at some puddle-jump airport and our jet ran off the runway. It was probably two in the morning after a gig and we all had to get out of the plane and shoulder it back on to the runway to take off. We were all covered with mud.’

At the MTV Europe Music Awards held at the Fila Forum in Milan, Aerosmith won the Best Rock Act award, which the band accepted via video link to Italy and, for the second year running, they took in the new year with a gig at the Fleet Center in Boston. Sticking around home territory for a gig on 2 January 1999 at Worcester’s Centrum Arena, just two more dates in Pennsylvania and Tennessee wrapped up their wanderings in time to collect the accolade of Favourite Pop/Rock Band Duo or Group at the American Music Awards.

Away from the spotlight, Steven’s concern had deepened. This recent round of dates had proved punishing on the knee that had been weakened last spring, and the prospect of further surgery now made him outwardly nervous. He revealed how distressing it had been to undergo knee surgery, for he had had no guarantees that post-op he would be able to do everything he had taken for granted before - from lifting and carrying his children to careering around the stage. He felt that having successfully come through surgery once, it shortened the odds of him equally well surviving a second date on the operating table. While he hoped that a rest from touring would, in itself, be enough to relieve the worrying pressure on his leg, he tried to relax at home with his family. Spending time with friends, he accompanied Joe to Los Angeles’ Whisky A Go-Go club to cheer on the guitarist’s eighteen-year-old son (by his first wife, Elyssa); Adrian Perry was performing there with a band called Dexter.

Not everyone was in the mood to play happy families, however. Tyler’s troubles with Cyrinda Foxe’s wish to publish nude photos of him in the paperback edition of her memoir,
Dream On: Livin’ on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith
, came up again when Steven won the latest round in their court battle. Steven’s stance remained that his ex-wife did not have the right to publish these snaps for commercial gain, without his consent. In March 1999, a New York State Supreme Court granted a temporary restraining order preventing Cyrinda from publishing these revealing images until their ownership could be legally established. This was not the end of the matter. Following this temporary restraining order, the case was remanded to a lower court for further adjudication.

That same month, changes occurred in the management, publicity and legal departments handling Aerosmith; the band ultimately signed with a Los Angeles-based management firm and hired a new legal team. It had become almost a given that Aerosmith would mop up at the annual Boston Music Awards, and in April they lifted four trophies: for Act of the Year; Best Rock Band; Best Video for ‘I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’; and Best Male Vocalist. As this embarrassment of riches further cemented Aerosmith’s ties to Boston, Tyler wanted to give something back to the city that had taken him so firmly to its heart; he donated money to help build an Oprah Winfrey ‘Angel House’ for a needy family in Boston. Steven also donated the rights to the song ‘Fallen Angels’ to the chat show star’s organisation, Angel Network.

After the three-month lay-off, Aerosmith had by now resumed their tour in Columbus, Ohio. It was a bitterly cold spring, with the foul weather ensuring that winter illnesses continued to cut down people across the whole country. Already feeling poorly, when the band took to the stage on 1 May at the Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater in Greenwood Village, Colorado, Steven came down with the flu, and despite his condition worsening over the coming six days he stubbornly fronted Aerosmith when the band played at the famous Hollywood Bowl. Situated on North Highland Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, with its distinctive concrete band-shell stage, the Hollywood Bowl has a romanticism all of its own among performers. Joe Perry confessed: ‘We knew that we were putting Steven’s voice at risk but there was no way we were going to blow out the Hollywood Bowl!’ That night, resplendent in eye-catching silk, Steven pouted, pirouetted and thrust his way through the set, gamely disguising his weak condition from the fans, but ending the night with laryngitis that was severe enough to force some cancellations to allow him to get his voice back and to recover from the flu. When the tour resumed, as Aerosmith prepared to play at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 17 May, they were saddened to hear that record producer Bruce Fairbairn, with whom they had worked on their multi-platinum albums,
Permanent Vacation
,
Pump
and
Get a Grip
, had that day been found dead in his Vancouver home. Just under a week later, Aerosmith wrapped up their North American stint at Tinley Park in Illinois.