Aerosmith
Aerosmith’s frontmen, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, talk to Neil Mccormick about sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and retirement
Last goodbye for bad boys of rock?
‘Music is the strongest drug of all!” declares Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler. Our interview has officially ended, but the leatherskinned, elfin-featured, colourfully attired rock superstar has pursued me into the corridor to continue our discussion. He holds me there for another 20 minutes, drawling into my face with his gritty voice, enthusing about bands he loves: Led Zeppelin, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones (with Brian Jones).
Aerosmith are on a farewell tour of Europe, the so-called Aero-vederci Baby! Tour, which reaches the UK on June 11, when they headline the Download Festival at Donington Park in Leicestershire. It is being billed as the last UK show by a group often referred to as “America’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band”. They formed in 1970, have had the same five-piece line-up since 1971, sold more than 150 million records worldwide, and scored classic hits including Dream On, Walk This Way, Dude Looks Like a Lady, Love in an Elevator and I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing. Along the way, their hedonism made them synonymous with the rock’n’roll life style. So is this really the beginning of the end for “the Bad Boys from Boston”?
“Every day is goodbye,” says guitarist Joe Perry, the other half of the band’s creative axis, known to their fans (in recognition of their historic debauchery) as the Toxic
‘Sometimes Joe gets so stoned and starts playing and just what dribbles off his fingers is magic’
Twins. “Things happen that are out of our control. A year doesn’t go by when the list of the fallen just gets longer and longer, and you think ‘there’s another band that won’t get back together again.’ It is the end of an era. We’re just giving it all we got, while we still got it.”
Tyler and Perry are fascinating together. They sit in a hotel room in Munich before a concert in the open air Königsplatz auditorium, ignoring an entourage of stylists and assistants fussing around them. They are both lithe and muscular, essaying a gypsyhippy look put together with scarves, necklaces, rings and piratical facial hair. They look surprisingly healthy for their ages (Tyler is 69 and Perry 66), especially considering their decades of debauchery, which had more or less come to an end by the Nineties. Former model Bebe Buell (whose brief fling with Tyler in the Seventies produced a daughter, actress Liv Tyler) has said of Aerosmith: “They won the prize hands down for the rowdiest rock and roll band in that era, no question.”
Perry, I am given to understand, still indulges in the odd vice. Tyler struggled with addiction and practises total abstention, but had a spell in rehab in 2010 for addiction to painkillers. “We survived things other people died doing,” he says. “There’s no shame in that.”
Tyler is animated to the point of agitation, talks fast and talks at you, but is respectful of Perry’s laid- back demeanour, allowing plenty of space for his musical partner’s less vociferous contributions to the conversation.
Although they have written more than 85 songs together, and led the band for five decades, they haven’t always got along. Perry briefly left the group in the Eighties. Tyler pulled out of a tour in 2009, and the band considered replacing him with Lenny Kravitz. There have been public conflicts over Tyler’s priorities, with the singer appearing as a judge on the reality-tv show American Idol for two seasons from 2010 to 2012.
Sometimes, it seems they are conducting a war of words in separate interviews. Yet in person, they appear genuinely close. “Hey, you’re not going to get two type-a personalities who get along all the time,” says Perry. “We’ve butted heads over the years, but when we get into the room with the band, all bull---- goes out the window. All of a sudden, it’s very clear what it’s all about. The lawyers can stay out there, the managers can stay out there, the girlfriends can stay out there. We’re going to sort it out for ourselves.”
Tyler is adamant that the duo work together closely. “Usually in his basement, sitting in each other’s faces. We’ll go in a room and lock the door, we are not going to leave until we have a song or we can’t stand each other’s smell any more.” Perry praises Tyler’s perfect pitch and timing, his ear for hooks and melodies, his “doubleentendre” lyrics. Tyler says of Perry, “His licks inspire me. I don’t think he knows how good he is. Sometimes he gets so stoned and starts playing and just what dribbles off his fingers is magic.”
They both enthuse about other creative duos at the centre of classic bands, Lennon and Mccartney in The Beatles, Jagger and Richards in the Stones, Ray and Dave Davies in the Kinks, Bono and Edge in U2. “What good is a ball if there’s no wall to bounce it against?” says Tyler. “How’s that ball going to come back to you?”
Music fandom percolates through the whole conversation. “We talk a lot about how to facilitate the vibe,” says Perry. “You know, listening to Chuck Berry records and Sly and the Family Stone – what is it about those songs that really clicks? How does the bass work with the drums? Why are the horns there? We analyse that stuff, and then you got to let it happen.”
This may explain why it is sometimes hard to take Aerosmith seriously. Their music spans heavy rock, power ballads, funk, folk, blues and pop, and their sets still include cover versions of old favourites like Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well and The Beatles’ Come Together, because they are essentially a really great bar band, perhaps the ultimate rock showband. They have never been particularly original. They are all about what works.
“You know, the limousines were never part of the dream,” points out Tyler. “We didn’t know about going on tour, filling baseball stadiums and selling T-shirts – no one did that back then. We wanted the band to be so good that other bands thought we were good. But I think the music we’ve written has stood the test of time. There are songs that will live forever, that we’ll listen to on the way to Mars. And sometimes it’s your own song.”
I have my doubts about whether this is really the end for Aerosmith. Already, they are talking about extending their farewell tour for five years, and then “we’ll see…”. Tyler talks rapturously about looking out from the stage at seething crowds every night. “There’s beautiful 20-year-old girls, slim and gorgeous and screaming. How weird is that? My girlfriend’s jealous. I’m 69! I feel like I’m 12. Every muscle in my body and my throat is aching, and there’s so much joy onstage. It’s times like that we just go: ‘What would I rather be doing?’ Never mind me – how about everybody else on the planet? If you ask around – would you like to go up and be the lead singer of Aerosmith tonight? Do what I do, get paid what I get paid, then go home. Will you take that? It’s the best job in the world.”
‘I’m 69! I feel like I’m 12. Every muscle in my body and my throat is aching, there’s so much joy on stage’