Steven Tyler: The Biography (7 page)

Steven tended to leave writing lyrics to the last possible moment, believing that he worked best when under pressure. Naturally, strong emotion motivates him best, but whereas loneliness had inspired ‘Dream On’, ‘Season of Wither’ stemmed from a fusion of melancholy and anger over his financial status. In threadbare basement surroundings, having doped himself up with pills, he strummed on a guitar and produced this song. Drugs, of course, played a prominent role in life at Beacon Street, where the chemical buffet included Tuinals, Seconals, blue crystal meth and quaaludes, while a surfeit of hash ensured spliffs rolled the size of fat cigars.

All the same, for several weeks the band diligently rehearsed this clutch of new numbers to the best of their budding ability. In the main, Tyler managed to maintain his dream of success, but in autumn 1973 he suffered a fleeting crisis of confidence. The differing personalities in Aerosmith made for some heavy-duty clashes, and arguments tended to break out all the time. Steven was as guilty as anyone of sparking a row, and while a set-to could sometimes alleviate the tension, at this moment in time when Steven felt little support from any section of the music business, the fact that he and his bandmates were so quarrelsome made him fear that Aerosmith was just
too
volatile to make it. With his quirky sense of humour he once declared that fine stood for: ‘Fucked up, insecure, neurotic, emotional’. Banishing doubt, Tyler overcame this wobble and looked forward to returning to live performance, again on support duty; this time they were backing the British band, Mott the Hoople.

Fronted by Ian Hunter, and with singles ‘All the Young Dudes’ and ‘All the Way from Memphis’ to their credit, Mott the Hoople was making an impact that autumn on US audiences. Aerosmith hitched their trailer to this wagon in October, garnering much-needed experience in playing large coliseums and auditoriums. At first, Hoople was happy that the warm-up act was so effective in building the atmosphere, but before long awareness dawned of just
how
avidly the crowds were reacting to the scantily clad, snake-hipped singer with outrageously overt sex appeal. For Steven, however, this tour established the point at which he could put even fleeting doubts aside. Near nightly, to his immense satisfaction, he watched overwrought teenagers leaping barriers and scrambling to climb on stage, making a grab at his legs. In December, when Aerosmith played at the renowned Whisky A Go-Go club on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Tyler’s on-stage charisma reaped rave reviews, helping to elevate the band to a new level.

It was with a spring in their step, then, that towards the end of the year Aersomith headed to New York to record their second album at Record Plant Studios, where they would work with Jack Douglas. The influential New York-born record producer already had impressive credentials, having worked as an engineer on The Who’s album
Who’s Next?
as well as on John Lennon’s
Imagine
. At Record Plant he had brought his studio skills to bear on offerings from the New York Dolls and Patti Smith, among others. Earlier in 1973, Jack Douglas had caught Aerosmith in performance around Boston and was attracted to their raw, hard-rocking ethos. He had met them briefly in person and liked their defensive edginess - something, as a native New Yorker, that he well understood. He developed such a strong bond with the band that for a while he was nicknamed the sixth member of Aerosmith. No one was under any illusions as to how vital it was to make inroads with this follow-up album. Tom Hamilton has bluntly revealed: ‘The record label said: “If your next record doesn’t do a lot better, that is the end.”’ Initially a little intimidated to be recording in such a famous facility, they soon overcame their nerves and knuckled down with their experienced producer at the helm. Although drug-fuelled squabbles broke out, recording was completed in January 1974 and
Get Your
Wings
was released on Columbia Records two months later. Though the album spent eighty-six weeks on the charts and eventually went gold on the back of future success, its highest Billboard ranking was number seventy-four. Three singles from the album were released throughout the year: ‘Same Old Song and Dance’; ‘S.O.S. (Too Bad)’; ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’. All failed to register on the US singles chart, hardly helping Steven to feel secure. Holding their nerve, in March, Aerosmith launched themselves on a gruelling touring schedule playing mainly support to virtually the A-Z of pop and rock bands. Said Tom Hamilton: ‘We got on the best tours we possibly could and projected as much fun as we pos-sibly could and gradually we became popular. We did that everywhere so eventually people started buying our albums. I’d say the secret to making it big in rock, and keeping it that way, is to play your balls off touring.’

Starved of radio airplay, Aerosmith had no chance of breaking that way but their grassroots following was strengthening with every live performance. This growing fan base soon came to be known as the Blue Army, largely because the band attracted strong support from America’s blue-collar community, but partly in recognition of the fact that the majority of the fans showing up for gigs were denim-clad teenage boys. In demographic terms, certainly in these early days, Aerosmith’s testosterone-driven music appealed predominantly to guys with attitude.
Rolling Stone
once described fans rolling up for a particular Aerosmith gig as akin to ‘a boozy army of hard hats coming to dismantle the place’.

That year Aerosmith headlined in their strongholds around New England, playing sold out shows at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre, shining too as emerging stars in pockets across the US. Though Steven was gaining a reputation as a flamboyant frontman, a role that came completely naturally to him, he has revealed that he often regrets not playing on tour. ‘I miss playing instruments very much. I play on the albums, a little guitar, drums here and there, but I definitely miss that when I’m touring. It’s something to do. There are a lot of dead spots up there on stage so I just hide behind my scarves.’

The fractiousness inherent in Aerosmith was not the only source of tension. Elyssa Jerret accompanied Joe Perry wherever he went and her constant presence was later said to have aggravated matters, while Tyler and Perry’s ever escalating drug use further fuelled feelings of resentment which could only add to the cauldron of unrest. By Tyler’s own admission he was stoned much of the time - it had become essential to him constantly to chase the elation he craved, for without that feeling he became nervy and irritable. He could not do without a fix even for the couple of hours each night he was on stage, which was why he had pockets stitched into some of the long flowing scarves dangling from the mike stand to hold his back-up stash of drugs. During performances, he could feed what was becoming a serious habit.

Steven’s stage style was now very much the ragamuffin gypsy look - torn clothes made of floaty material that swirled around him as he gyrated manically about the stage. Joe Perry, the black-clad epitome of Mr Cool, once groaned: ‘Oh man, he definitely gets dressed in the closet, with the light off!’ But visually, it was extremely effective. Steven’s lurid stagewear had started off being provided by friends who would run him up outfits as favours, but he had progressed beyond that and soon he rasped to journalists: ‘You have no idea how much it costs to look this cheap!’ Despite his cheek, Steven was still not at all secure, a fact that showed when the rock media began knocking on Aerosmith’s door for interviews. Looking back, he wished that he had been a little less nervous when sitting down with journalists but, having received bad reviews and criticisms from the press in the past, his distrust of the music press was understandable.

When Aerosmith returned to Boston in late 1974 after such a hectic year the rewards were plain to see. The reception at gigs was now so wild, state after state, that cops were becoming nervous about controlling hyper fans on the verge of spiralling out of control, and the money the band coined in was at last steadily rising. With a real feeling that Aerosmith was taking wings Steven focused on writing songs for their next album. The ceaseless roadwork had sharpened the band, helping to infuse Steven with a positive attitude, but it is also true that their troubles behind the scenes provided grist for the mill. Brad Whitford believed that in the song ‘No More No More’, Tyler cleverly held up a mirror to life inside the band at that time. Joe Perry agreed, describing this number as representing ‘a page from our diary’. The pacy tempo of ‘Toys in the Attic’ appealed greatly to the lead guitarist, while Tyler was later not too certain where his head had been when writing ‘Adam’s Apple’. Tyler collaborated on numbers with Whitford, Perry and Tom Hamilton, and he fell back on a pre-Aerosmith song, ‘You See Me Crying’, which he had penned with Don Solomon. He also opted for a cover version of ‘Big Ten Inch Record’, but two particular songs written for this third album would stand apart from the others.

At the start of 1975 recording work had begun, once again at Record Plant Studios in New York with producer Jack Douglas. Joe Perry had stumbled upon a stimulating riff while messing around during a sound check, but coming up with lyrics proved annoyingly elusive. With nerves fraught and fatigue setting in, Douglas suggested the band took a break, so they quit Record Plant late one night to get some fresh air. Passing the prostitutes plying their trade alongside the drug dealers in shady Times Square, the band wandered into a cinema showing the Mel Brooks-directed comedy
Young Frankenstein
starring Gene Wilder, Gene Hackman and Marty Feldman, famous for his startlingly bulging eyes. Feldman’s character in the movie would croak ‘Walk this way’ at people, and that clicked with the band.

Although Steven Tyler’s confidence could drop when he had to come up with lyrics, he was more than capable of stepping up to the task when the pressure was on. Back at the studio, with the song title to stimulate him, he clamped on a pair of headphones and let fly. ‘That was me just throwing my hands in the air and going with a retching sound. I loved that,’ he said. Ideas were coming thick and fast, and as he had lost his notepad he ended up rushing out to pen the lyrics to what became one of Aerosmith’s most famous hits on a wall by the staircase. Unashamedly, the song is saturated with sexual innuendo suggesting masturbation, three-in-a-bed sex and romps with older sirens. Said Steven of ‘Walk This Way’: ‘It’s about what I went through in high school, the relationships with girls. It reeks of teenage sex.’

The other notable number was ‘Sweet Emotion’ which, despite what the title suggests, stemmed in part from a bitterness that had taken root inside Steven. He has stated that he cannot pinpoint when he physically sat down and expressed himself so poignantly in this song, but he does not dispute that some of the lyrics were inspired by his complex feelings for Elyssa Jerret. He has candidly admitted to blaming her for being a barrier between himself and Joe Perry. Considering that Joe and his girlfriend were growing even closer, this release of Steven’s frustration and naked hurt was unlikely to be well received, and did not help the suffocating pressure under which they were all living. More money purchased a better grade of dope and now what Perry termed ‘unstepped-on cocaine’ became the drug of choice. As cocaine often induces paranoia, this was the last thing anyone needed.

In late March 1975, with recording over at Record Plant Studios, when Steven led the band out on tour around America just prior to the release of
Toys in the Attic,
their faith in the new material proved to be well founded. The album reached number eleven on the US chart, but more than creating Aerosmith’s commercial and artistic breakthrough,
Toys in the Attic
became a hard rock classic. Billboard said: ‘The band’s sound has developed into a sleek, hard-driving, hard rock powered by almost brutal blues-based riffs. Aerosmith strip heavy metal to its basic core, spitting out spare riffs that not only rock but roll. Steven’s lyrics are filled with double entendres and clever jokes and the entire band has a streetwise charisma.’ The single ‘Sweet Emotion’ was released in May and made number thirty-six.

With this welcome impetus, the band worked hard that summer, turning in electrifying performances, such as at the Schaefer Music Festival held in New York City’s Central Park. At gigs, the mercury was teetering on the verge of exploding backstage where the aggravation between Steven and Joe Perry was now noticeable to total strangers; in a different way fans out front were becoming crazed. At one Central Park gig in the 1970s, a female fan scrambled on stage and launched herself on to Steven, clawing at him in such a frenzy that he was left with a large bleeding hole in his left earlobe. New safety measures had to be implemented both to protect the band in performance and to dissuade the teenagers from harming themselves in their fever to get on stage.

At the same time, after a period in rock when androgyny had left audiences not sure what to make of sexually ambiguous stars, Steven Tyler oozed full-on heterosexual lust. He has declared: ‘The stage is my mistress and I fuck her to death every night. I do feel sexy up there.’ Sex permeated Steven’s whole life. He wrote about it, adored to sing about it and continued to be insatiable when it came to slaking his desire for women. He saw no reason to limit his horizons. As he plainly put it: ‘It’s a trip seeing girls with big tits and tiny asses just dripping with sex, throwing themselves at you - especially if they’ve brought a girlfriend with them! Man, that’s orgasmic! I haven’t had it [three-in-a-bed sex] as much as I would like but when I have had the pleasure, it has
truly
been a pleasure!’ One of Tyler’s later regrets was that there had been times when his drug consumption left him flaked out on his back alone in bed, too stoned to get it up.

But if sex was Steven’s mistress, drugs were rapidly becoming his master. He flatly denounced those who decried drug users as being empty-headed fools, arguing that drug abuse was rooted in the search of feeling great. Comparing the similarities between the molecular structure of cocaine and heroin and that of adrenalin and endorphins, he reasoned: ‘Taking drugs is very akin to feelings that humans get when they are elated.’