Aero-dynamic
Belfast Telegraph, United Kingdom
June 20, 2007
“When I look at Joe Perry on stage”, says Steven Tyler of his band’s lead guitarist, “I see someone who looks as sculpted as one of his horses. I try to be the same because I’m an egomaniac. I see artists that have got frumpy or fat and they look a mere shadow of the Adonis they once were. Everybody’s got a hero they’ve watched go to seed, right?”
Were Aerosmith’s 59-year-old singer not so well preserved himself, his words might be harder to swallow. What might read to some like mild body fascism is, for Tyler, a simple expression of the rules of rock star engagement. To stay on top you have to walk it like you talk it, he says. Today, in his Knightsbridge hotel suite, Tyler is talking it, in leopard print shoes and a black leather jacket open to reveal his skinny bare torso. When asked about Aerosmith hits such as “Love in an Elevator”, he has a pleasing tendency to sing parts of his response. Inquire whether his background as a drummer helps explains why his vocals are so rhythmic, and he scats the chorus of “Rag Doll” while keeping time on an imaginary hi-hat.
Aerosmith are in town to headline Hyde Park Calling, their first full-length UK show in eight years, and on 1 July Joe Perry will play the Concert For Diana. Three years Tyler’s junior, Perry acknowledges that the pair are the worst possible advert for the dangers of drug abuse. “People look at us and think, ‘OK, they got away with it – why shouldn’t I?’” he says, square jaw tilting upwards. “The truth is it’s all in the genes. My Italian grandfather on my mother’s side had a full head of hair in his old age, and my paternal grandfather was this wiry Portuguese sailor.”
Formed in Sunapee, New Hampshire in 1970, Aerosmith initially struggled to shake off the tag of Stones copyists. By 1975’s Toys In The Attic, though, they had carved a niche and were sounding – and looking – like the band for which stadium concerts had been invented.
Marrying gutsy, high-octane guitar riffs with Tyler’s liking for a double en-tendre, the group quickly became a loveable tour de force that greatly influenced Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses and scores of other hard rock acts. But Tyler and Perry didn’t earn their “Toxic Twins” epithet for nothing. Circa 1982’s aptly titled career nadir Rock In A Hard Place, their cocaine- and heroin-fuelled spats almost sunk Aerosmith.
“Of course I did way too many drugs”, says Tyler. “I spent a lost week in a hotel room with Roger Taylor from Queen, and he wasn’t the only guy. The highs were incredible but the lows made you feel like someone was sucking the blood from your jugular with a straw. I sunk to my knees and lost everything, but I’m part Italian and my good old-fashioned guilt came up and I had to check in to rehab. The only way out is through.”
Remarkably, while cocaine abuse tends to corrode a voice – witness the depleted upper ranges of Elton John or Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks – Tyler seems to have got off scot-free. The showboating notes in seminal 70s ballad “Dream On” remain well within his grasp despite his snorting of much of Columbia, not to mention some major throat surgery just last year.
“This note I can hit all day”, he says, unleashing a startling falsetto scream. “But this” and he delivers a coffee-table-rattling “Oh yeah!” from his diaphragm, “requires more work. When I was doing heroin it gave me a gravelly voice and I just couldn’t hit the notes, but I’m clean now of course. I take great pride in not chickening out of the big notes.”
Aerosmith rose again when mercurial producer Rick Rubin suggested they rework a key track from Toys In The Attic with the hip-hop act Run DMC. The resulting single “Walk This Way” became a huge crossover hit in 1986, paving the way for Aerosmith’s drug-free comeback album Permanent Vacation.
A string of Enormodome-filling albums followed, including 1989’s Pump, 1993’s Get A Grip and 2001’s Just Push Play. But 2004’s grittier collection of blues covers, Honkin’ On Bobo, seemed to acknowledge some overegged puddings.
With James Brown gone, Tyler says he feels the passing of the old guard more strongly than ever. He had the chance to sing with another funk legend, Sly Stone, at the 2006 Grammy Awards, but as an audience of millions witnessed, Stone wasn’t quite all there.
“I don’t know what happened to him”, Tyler says, alluding to Stone’s own drug abuse. “He must have zigged when he should have zagged. When I met him backstage he was standing before me in a motorcycle helmet, and right before we went on, his manager said to me, ‘Steven, you’ve got to sing Sly’s part.’ I was like, ‘Come on man – that’s sacred ground. In the end I had to do it, though.”
Tyler and Perry seem like the rock equivalent of The Picture Of Dorian Gray, retaining their looks and vitality while their peers slowly crumble like waterlogged impasto. But what of the inevitable waning of the male libido – does Tyler see it as a blessing or a curse?
“Youth is beautiful, man”, he says, slipping off a shoe to reveal black varnished nails. “There’s nothing good about your libido waning, even if it does free you up to do other stuff. And any man who tells you different is a liar. Life is not about hobbies and putting a ship in a bottle. I mean, talk about displacing one thing with another!”
Aerosmith play London’s Hyde Park 24 June and Dublin’s Marlay Park 26 June.
June 20, 2007
“When I look at Joe Perry on stage”, says Steven Tyler of his band’s lead guitarist, “I see someone who looks as sculpted as one of his horses. I try to be the same because I’m an egomaniac. I see artists that have got frumpy or fat and they look a mere shadow of the Adonis they once were. Everybody’s got a hero they’ve watched go to seed, right?”
Were Aerosmith’s 59-year-old singer not so well preserved himself, his words might be harder to swallow. What might read to some like mild body fascism is, for Tyler, a simple expression of the rules of rock star engagement. To stay on top you have to walk it like you talk it, he says. Today, in his Knightsbridge hotel suite, Tyler is talking it, in leopard print shoes and a black leather jacket open to reveal his skinny bare torso. When asked about Aerosmith hits such as “Love in an Elevator”, he has a pleasing tendency to sing parts of his response. Inquire whether his background as a drummer helps explains why his vocals are so rhythmic, and he scats the chorus of “Rag Doll” while keeping time on an imaginary hi-hat.
Aerosmith are in town to headline Hyde Park Calling, their first full-length UK show in eight years, and on 1 July Joe Perry will play the Concert For Diana. Three years Tyler’s junior, Perry acknowledges that the pair are the worst possible advert for the dangers of drug abuse. “People look at us and think, ‘OK, they got away with it – why shouldn’t I?’” he says, square jaw tilting upwards. “The truth is it’s all in the genes. My Italian grandfather on my mother’s side had a full head of hair in his old age, and my paternal grandfather was this wiry Portuguese sailor.”
Formed in Sunapee, New Hampshire in 1970, Aerosmith initially struggled to shake off the tag of Stones copyists. By 1975’s Toys In The Attic, though, they had carved a niche and were sounding – and looking – like the band for which stadium concerts had been invented.
Marrying gutsy, high-octane guitar riffs with Tyler’s liking for a double en-tendre, the group quickly became a loveable tour de force that greatly influenced Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses and scores of other hard rock acts. But Tyler and Perry didn’t earn their “Toxic Twins” epithet for nothing. Circa 1982’s aptly titled career nadir Rock In A Hard Place, their cocaine- and heroin-fuelled spats almost sunk Aerosmith.
“Of course I did way too many drugs”, says Tyler. “I spent a lost week in a hotel room with Roger Taylor from Queen, and he wasn’t the only guy. The highs were incredible but the lows made you feel like someone was sucking the blood from your jugular with a straw. I sunk to my knees and lost everything, but I’m part Italian and my good old-fashioned guilt came up and I had to check in to rehab. The only way out is through.”
Remarkably, while cocaine abuse tends to corrode a voice – witness the depleted upper ranges of Elton John or Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks – Tyler seems to have got off scot-free. The showboating notes in seminal 70s ballad “Dream On” remain well within his grasp despite his snorting of much of Columbia, not to mention some major throat surgery just last year.
“This note I can hit all day”, he says, unleashing a startling falsetto scream. “But this” and he delivers a coffee-table-rattling “Oh yeah!” from his diaphragm, “requires more work. When I was doing heroin it gave me a gravelly voice and I just couldn’t hit the notes, but I’m clean now of course. I take great pride in not chickening out of the big notes.”
Aerosmith rose again when mercurial producer Rick Rubin suggested they rework a key track from Toys In The Attic with the hip-hop act Run DMC. The resulting single “Walk This Way” became a huge crossover hit in 1986, paving the way for Aerosmith’s drug-free comeback album Permanent Vacation.
A string of Enormodome-filling albums followed, including 1989’s Pump, 1993’s Get A Grip and 2001’s Just Push Play. But 2004’s grittier collection of blues covers, Honkin’ On Bobo, seemed to acknowledge some overegged puddings.
With James Brown gone, Tyler says he feels the passing of the old guard more strongly than ever. He had the chance to sing with another funk legend, Sly Stone, at the 2006 Grammy Awards, but as an audience of millions witnessed, Stone wasn’t quite all there.
“I don’t know what happened to him”, Tyler says, alluding to Stone’s own drug abuse. “He must have zigged when he should have zagged. When I met him backstage he was standing before me in a motorcycle helmet, and right before we went on, his manager said to me, ‘Steven, you’ve got to sing Sly’s part.’ I was like, ‘Come on man – that’s sacred ground. In the end I had to do it, though.”
Tyler and Perry seem like the rock equivalent of The Picture Of Dorian Gray, retaining their looks and vitality while their peers slowly crumble like waterlogged impasto. But what of the inevitable waning of the male libido – does Tyler see it as a blessing or a curse?
“Youth is beautiful, man”, he says, slipping off a shoe to reveal black varnished nails. “There’s nothing good about your libido waning, even if it does free you up to do other stuff. And any man who tells you different is a liar. Life is not about hobbies and putting a ship in a bottle. I mean, talk about displacing one thing with another!”
Aerosmith play London’s Hyde Park 24 June and Dublin’s Marlay Park 26 June.
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