Steven Tyler: The Biography (6 page)

‘Write Me a Letter’ was the product of six months’ development, and Brad Whitford recalled how the musical arrangement had been thrashed out during rehearsals in the back room at the Boston Garden. As a lyricist, Steven reacts spontaneously to something he sees or hears; he has the knack of picking out the gems in the mud and creating songs around them, and he puts pen to paper anywhere. ‘Make It’ was written in a car on his way back from Lake Sunapee to Boston. For a long time, Aerosmith would use ‘Make It’ to open their shows. ‘It’s a great way to get things going,’ revealed Tom. Besides ‘Movin’ Out’, the only other co-composition was a song called ‘Somebody’, on which Steven had collaborated with Steve Emsback, a guy he had known in the pre-Aerosmith days. It was ‘Dream On’, however, that became the album’s standout track.

‘Dream On’ began life one late, dark night at Lake Sunapee when Steven, aged seventeen, was feeling very lonely and a little emotional now that summer was over. Drifting indoors at Trow-Rico Lodge in a preoccupied mood, he sat down at the upright piano and tried to translate his feelings into music. From nowhere a melody gradually emerged which he could not get out of his head. At the time he left it at that, with no specific notion of developing it into a song. At the Commonwealth Avenue flat he returned to the piano ballad in the key of F minor, as Tom Hamilton can vouch for. ‘When we were all living together, mine was the only room with a piano in it and I remember waking up hearing Steven playing this song over and over again,’ he said. ‘It pissed me off at the time but I’m sure glad he kept playing.’ Its heartfelt lyrics were about holding on to the hope of fulfilling aspirations and the grit needed to take life’s knocks. Tyler has been blunt: ‘This song sums up the shit you put up with when you’re in a new band.’ With its haunting quality and the way it builds to a crescendo, ‘Dream On’ made a lasting impression on Aerosmith fans and is classed as the prototype for today’s hard rock power ballad. ‘“Dream On” is one of my favourite songs to play live,’ stated Joe Perry.

To put the finishing touches to this batch of songs, Aerosmith spent time that autumn holed up at the Sheraton Hotel in Manchester, Massachusetts, before moving into a rented house. This concentrated time helped the five men to focus purely on their debut album, free of all other distractions. It was when they headed back to Boston that Steven decided to change his surname to Tyler. Though it is commonplace for singers to adopt a stage name, some stars become irritated when reminded of their real name. In the case of Queen’s Freddie Mercury, Farookh Bulsara had yearned to reinvent himself as someone synonymous with glamour and strength - hence Mercury, the messenger of the gods. But Steven did not want to shut a door on his past. He did not want to deny his heritage. He simply saw changing Tallarico to Tyler as giving him a snappier name in preparation, he hoped, for when he hit the big time; he has little patience with those who attempt to apply cod psychology to his name-changing. He recently blasted: ‘I got that shit in rehab - “I want you to keep Tyler out of here.” Fuck! I
am
that guy. Steven Tyler and Steven Tallarico are the same guy!’

Over two weeks in October 1972, Tyler joined the other four at Boston’s Intermedia Sound Studios to record their debut album with producer Adrian Barber. In addition to the seven songs Aerosmith had prepared, they recorded a cover version of the Rufus Thomas rhythm and blues number, ‘Walkin’ the Dog’. Though recording their debut album was what they had all dreamed of, they were too uptight and scared of making a mistake to be able to relax and enjoy the experience. Strain tautened every aspect of the recording process and this tension made relations fraught. Joey Kramer later recalled Tyler’s growing frustration when nerves made his timekeeping while drumming less than perfect. For some, it was also claustrophobic and a rushed affair.

In 1976, Steven recalled: ‘Bob Ezrin [a producer] heard our first album and thought we needed a lot of work, which we did, but we’re honest. We’re not a band that puts track over track.’ Tom Hamilton has since reflected: ‘When we recorded our first album, it was done with very little studio experience. Unfortunately, we made a sort of crude album.’ Brad Whitford confirmed this when he revealed: ‘It was recorded on a recording console that was literally homemade. Part of it was cardboard with knobs the size of headlights!’

Steven was dismayed when reaction appeared to be decidedly cool at Columbia Records during the first playback of Aerosmith’s debut album, and a comment from one label executive that there was no immediately recognisable single among the tracks leadened Tyler’s heart even more. Along with the others, Steven went through the process of shooting the album cover but even this was a downer when they realised that there was a dearth of material to chose from to help hype the band in the album’s liner notes. The Boston media had yet to notice Aerosmith. Feeling the way he did, it did not help Steven when he picked up at the record company that there was, by contrast, enormous excitement about another artist who was about to launch his recording career with the label.

The previous summer, the New Jersey singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen had signed a worldwide ten-year, ten-album deal with Columbia Records. His debut offering,
Greetings from Asbury Park,
had been recorded in just three weeks and was due for release the same month as Aerosmith’s album, but Springsteen was already being touted to critics and the music media as the new Bob Dylan.

A hot-off-the-press copy of Aerosmith’s first album was sent to the band, and they all sat around Joey Kramer’s Boston apartment and listened to it in complete silence. Low though their expectations already were, the general feeling at the end of the final track was one of dense dismay.

Aerosmith
was released in America in mid-January 1973 and went into instant oblivion. Despite their best efforts the record company could not drum up any promotion for the album, so it had absolutely no chance of impinging on the music-buying consciousness. Depressingly for the whole band, when scouring the record shops it was hard even to stumble across a copy on the packed record racks. What made it worse was that, rightly or wrongly, they did not feel they had a support network beneath them, at least not the kind and strength of network they had always imagined there would be when launching a new band on the highly competitive music scene.

Expressing his personal belief, Tom Hamilton once declared: ‘When the album was released, Columbia Records hated it, all of their reps hated it and the disc jockeys also hated it!’ Steven remembered that those rock critics who did give
Aerosmith
a fleeting mention did so only in order to pan it thoroughly. Said Joe Perry: ‘By this time, we had fans in Boston who loved us and packed out the clubs wherever we played. So it was only ever the critics who did not give us the credit we deserved.’ In the midst of a bleak mid-winter January, that was very cold comfort.

CHAPTER 4

Spliffs, Tiffs And Stiffs

AEROSMITH ARRIVING
on the music map with the merest whimper did not suit Steven Tyler and the situation was exacerbated when critics weighed in deriding the band as the poor man’s Rolling Stones. Rock journalists came away from gigs and wrote of how, from a distance, the blond Tom Hamilton to Tyler’s right could be Brian Jones, the brooding guitarist to the left resembled Keith Richards, while a skinny, prancing front man bawled out lead vocals. Understandably irked by this, in a
Rolling Stone
interview Steven revealed: ‘Anybody who says I’m a Jagger rip-off because I look like him a little has no intelligence. And what am I supposed to do - get plastic surgery?’ He had more pressing concerns than that, however. With the debut album’s poor chart performance, Tyler knew that Aerosmith had to break on the live circuit beyond the confines of New England. So, while they continued to play five nights a week at clubs and colleges, he was on the lookout for work supporting established bands that would take the group all around America.

Like most major bands, Aerosmith suffered the growing pains associated with going out on grossly mismatched bills. Their first proper tour was playing support to the Mahavishnu Orchestra - an outfit that fused music and mysticism. The instrumental group’s Top 20 album,
Birds of Fire,
released in March 1973, set them up to hit higher heights a few months later with
Love Devotion Surrender
. The only adoration Aerosmith saw was reserved for the headliners. As for surrender? That is what Steven and the others had to do with their pride. It was a true baptism of fire for the five. Tom Hamilton recalled of Mahavishnu Orchestra: ‘The band would meditate before they started playing and we were not into that! We’d already found our own way to meditate, chemically.’ Often dispirited before even stepping on stage, they came off stage thoroughly dejected after performing to stoically unimpressed audiences who were never going to get into Aerosmith’s gutsy act. Slow handclaps and calls for Mahavishnu demoralised and angered Tyler by turn, though he knew well that they were flogging a dead horse. He said: ‘It was weird, like Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees, but it was to get us out on the road.’ Stubbornly ignoring the boos and catcalls, Aerosmith tried to rise to the occasion every night, telling themselves to put it all down to experience. They had to be resilient, for the music press switched its attack and now dubbed Aerosmith a punk band. Tyler did not appreciate this - to a New Yorker, a punk meant a slob. Manager David Krebs recalled: ‘Aerosmith was not a press favourite. The press thought they sucked.’ Happy to relegate this first support slot to history, in spring 1973 Tyler was excited to be opening for one of his all-time favourite bands - the Kinks.

Although afforded legendary status - and to this day often cited as hugely inspirational to a new generation of music stars - the Kinks had found it impossible to mirror the chart success attained in America by their sixties’ peers, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In March 1973,
The Great Lost Kinks Album
peaked at number 145 on Billboard, but the ultra-English band had begun to gain ground at concert level in the States. When Aerosmith opened for them, though, it was not exactly the joy Steven and the others had been so eagerly anticipating.

It is perhaps too strong to say that Aerosmith discovered that their heroes had feet of clay, but they were certainly deeply disappointed, on a practical level, not to be given a sound check before playing. Also, it was maybe the case that a very London sense of humour missed the mark with the Americans and caused unintentional irritation, but Steven did not find much to laugh about. In performance, however, he thrust out his chest, plunged his fingers into his hair and raised the roof with high-octane renditions of hard-rocking numbers. Road-testing their own original material gave him a buzz. His flat-out enthusiasm could not help but elicit a response, and like any self-respecting support act Aerosmith was out to steal fans from the headliners. With relentless drive, Steven was bent on building Aerosmith a hardcore following, throwing everything into his act. This paid off, and led to them securing a slot at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre, albeit stapled last on to the bill of a charity gig. Needless to say, they were delighted, and when they reverted to club and college gigs their fee per night had quadrupled.

The bugbear continued to be the reaction of the music media. After gigs, Steven would eagerly rifle through national music magazines in the hope of finding a mention, only to come up blank or else find Aerosmith still being dismissed as copycats. Keeping his spirits up was not easy, but his rascally personality was ever ready to burst out - as was evidenced when a Rhode Island newspaper featured Aerosmith on its front cover. Inside, the paper printed a shot of a clowning Tyler cheekily mooning. Signs of a breakthrough came, however, when
Creem
magazine provided Aerosmith with its first nationwide review, picking up on the sheer sexuality of the band’s lyrics and performance style, and affectionately dubbing them ‘delinquents’. While Tyler appreciated this he was inwardly concerned that because
Aerosmith
had under-performed, Columbia Records may already be considering cutting the band loose.

Welcome green shoots burst through when ‘Dream On’ was released in June 1973 as the first single off the debut album. Nationally, it reached a modest number fifty-nine on the US chart, while regionally it became a hit across the north-west, upstate New York and in New England. The rock ballad was also voted the number one song of the year by listeners of two Boston radio stations, WVBF and WBCN; all of this helped
Aerosmith
to creak its way, months after its release, to number 166 on Billboard. Drawing what encouragement he could from ‘Dream On’, Tyler and the others concentrated on performing at summer festivals across New Hampshire and at high school proms, fraternity parties and occasional week-long club residencies. This gigging entertained thousands and drew the eye of
Variety
magazine, which commented on Steven’s grinding groin action at the mike and his eye-popping stagewear. It tailed off by dubbing Tyler the undoubted focus on stage. Other publications followed suit and began to single out Aerosmith’s raw raunchiness.

Steven set out to turn his audiences on every night, but sometimes the smouldering flame ignited in unexpected ways. At one show at the Suffolk Downs horse-racing track near Boston, the audience became so worked up that they began throwing beer bottles at the band. Once two or three did it, others got in on the act until Steven was faced with the daunting sight of all these missiles raining down on the stage. Despite these reactions, they persevered and completed their tour. When Aerosmith came off the road late that summer they decided once again to share an apartment; they found a place on Boston’s Beacon Street, where they had to devote their energies to creating songs for their second album.

Invigorated by their experiences over the year and spurred on to prove themselves, the band’s creative juices were flowing; from this songwriting blitz emerged a mixed bag, with hard rock numbers such as ‘S.O.S. (Too Bad)’ and ‘Lord of the Thighs’ perhaps coming easiest to Steven. Of the Joe Perry/Steven Tyler collaboration, ‘Same Old Song and Dance’, in 1992 Steven recounted to
Rock Power
: ‘That was a real classic Joe Perry riff. I just filled in the blanks. I hate to spell things out too much but that was about one girl who was pulling on my guitar player’s balls.’ Tyler also collaborated for the first time with drummer Joey Kramer on the slower-paced ‘Pandora’s Box’. Said Kramer: ‘We were up in New Hampshire and I had this old guitar I’d found in a dumpster and I came up with the riff. I played it for Steven and he went to work on it.’ The most atmospheric number was a ballad called ‘Season of Wither’. Perry preferred to steer clear of ballads - he only made slow blues an exception - but he was impressed by this Tyler composition.