Strapped into a 10-seat jet flying at 15,000 feet a few days ago, Steven Tyler and his band, Aerosmith, were literally and figuratively on top of the world.
Their recent album, ”Pump” (Geffen), is both an artistic and commercial triumph, with more than 4.5 million copies sold worldwide. Ten months after its release, it`s still in the Top 20 on the Billboard charts.
In addition, Tyler and guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer are on an extended world tour, which began last fall in Europe and which brings them to the World Music Theatre on Friday and Alpine Valley Music Theatre on Saturday.
So as he began fielding questions on his portable phone after taking off from Logan Airport in Boston, Tyler could afford to laugh off a bad pun about his past.
”Is this the highest you`ve ever been for an interview?” he was asked.
”Noooooo way. I did a few from the other side of the Moon,” said Tyler with a throaty chuckle.
”The great part about saying that is I made it back from the Moon.”
And therein lies the story of Aerosmith. It`s a band that drank more booze, snorted more cocaine, shot more heroin and killed more brain cells than even the pitiful ”rock dudes” satirized in the movie ”Spinal Tap.”
The band even broke up for a time in the early `80s; Tyler, Hamilton and Kramer carried on as a shadow of Aerosmith while Perry, and later Whitford, left to work on solo projects.
At the time, the band took the rock-industry cliche of ”creative differences” to its violent extreme. The band`s principal songwriters and so- called ”Toxic Twins,” Tyler and Perry, couldn`t stand each other. They shouted, fought and finally destroyed the best things in their lives: their friendship and their band.
Several years later, after many trips into and out of detox clinics, Tyler finally kicked his addictions, and the other band members soon followed. Tyler now claims he has been drug- and alcohol-free for 3 1/2 years, a period that coincides with the rebirth of Aerosmith as one of rock`s most vital bands, and his own maturation as a husband (he was married in 1988) and father to a 15-month-old daughter.
”When I first saw `Spinal Tap` about eight years ago,” Tyler says, ”I got bent out of shape, because so much of it was true.
”We were the people`s band because we toured so much, but it`s what broke us up. There was a camaraderie, a partnership among thieves, when we were all getting high together, but it never stopped. We lost sight of what we were doing this for.”
The relationship between Perry and Tyler also has been renewed and strengthened.
”It`s like a marriage, through thick and thin,” Tyler says. ”When you take away the crutches of booze and drugs, you see that person in a whole new light. It`s like this veil of stupidity is lifted, and you`ve got a new friend again.”
Almost in spite of themselves, this Boston-based quintet wrote the book on American hard rock in the `70s.
One can imagine a young Axl Rose, long before he was a member of Guns N`
Roses, going to bed with tapes of Aerosmith`s ”Toys in the Attic” and
”Rocks” buzzing in his ears.
Those two albums, and other bodacious hard-rock songs such as ”Dream On,” ”Walk the Line” and ”Lord of the Thighs,” spawned a wave of would-be Aerosmiths in the `80s: Motley Crue, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, Ratt and countless other strutters and posers.
Perhaps just as importantly, Aerosmith has played guinea pig for a new generation of rockers tempted by rock`s hard-partying lifestyle.
”I have no regrets,” Tyler says. ”I had a great time. I also nearly died a few times. There`s too much wrong in our society for me to be telling people, `Don`t do drugs.` More than anyone, I can appreciate why someone would want to do drugs.
”But I`ve got information about what it`s like to be high all the time, and I can say this: Getting straight is the best thing that ever happened to me, or the band.”
He remains a dedicated member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and his influence on his fellow rock `n` rollers goes beyond his abilities as a musician and singer.
Tyler confirmed a story related by his producer, Bruce Fairbairn, that while in Vancouver recording ”Pump,” Aerosmith came to the aid of another high-profile band of recovering addicts also in town cutting a record.
”The guys in Motley Crue were listening to the playbacks of their album, and it sounded so good that they wanted to do what we usually did-party up a storm,” Tyler recalled. ”So they called me up, and I just provided a little positive reinforcement.”
The sessions in Vancouver in early 1989 proved exhilarating and pressure- packed for Aerosmith as well. For the first time, the band had to work at its craft, Tyler says.
”It was the riskiest album we ever made,” he says. ”We`d taken risks before, but always with our eyes closed. Instead of worrying about songs, we`d be worrying about where we were gonna get our nose filled with cocaine.”
Perry and Tyler had worked up about 17 songs in a 16-by-22-foot studio in Massachusetts over the winter-”we were just jamming, panning for gold,”
Tyler says.
They took the shiniest nuggets to Vancouver, where the band recorded them by blasting away in unison while Tyler sang over the top. No overdubs, just a raw performance that Fairbairn used as the basis for each track.
Later, Tyler would improvise even more vocal ideas in a sound booth, and bits of these were included in the finished product.
”Pump” captures the raw, raucous feel of those live sessions. Tracks such as ”Young Lust” and ”Love in an Elevator” are consummate hard-rock celebrations of that favorite hard-rock topic: sex.
Others, such as ”Monkey on My Back” and ”Janie`s Got a Gun,” address addiction and child abuse. Though critics have pointed to Aerosmith`s newfound ”maturity” on these songs, Tyler says that ”Young Lust” and ”Monkey”
are all of a piece.
”Journalists like to write about `Janie` or `Monkey` because they supposedly have more `substance` than the other songs,” Tyler says. ”That`s bunk. The bottom line is, `Does the song work or not? Does it rock?` If it`s good, people will listen to it no matter what the subject is.”
For Tyler, who is ”41 going on 20,” the essence of great rock ”is to let the kid out.”
”Suddenly, when you`re an adult you can`t be a kid anymore?” Tyler asks. ”Who says? That`s why people lose their hair, that`s why they`re neurotic. Their record starts skipping because they`re so engulfed in their adultness.
”You`ve got to make time for play. It`s something I`ve learned and that I think is important to pass on.”
But when the kids come to play at Aerosmith`s concerts, they also might learn a few other lessons about the essence of rock `n` roll. Aerosmith is one of the few hard-rock bands left that continues to bridge the gap between the white heavy-metal crowd and black music: the blues, R & B and even rap.
It`s no surprise that Perry`s funky guitar riff and Tyler`s trashy jive-talking vocal on the 1975 track ”Walk this Way” inspired rappers Run-DMC. They recorded a historic version of the song with Perry and Tyler in 1986; as the first rap-metal song, it won rap huge mainstream acceptance at a time when it was still regarded as an exclusively black and underground art form.
”I get joy out of the fact that the rappers respect us,” Tyler says.
”Because when we were coming up the blues was the coolest thing. Like all great art forms, rock is an evolving thing, an extension and a reinterpretaton of the root. For us that root was the blues.”
Tyler is pleased that many newer bands choose to imitate Aerosmith, but most lose something in the translation. The greasy, funky underpinning that defines Aerosmith seems to have been lost in layers of mousse and mascara. Image has outstripped feeling.
”It`s easy to form a rock band these days: Buy some rock `n` roll clothes, get a rock haircut and a rock photographer, and you can play L.A. next week,” he says. ”That`s why there are so many flashes in the pan these days.”
Many critics considered Aerosmith just that about 20 years ago. Tyler says the band survived the bad reviews because ”there`s nothing cheap or false about what we do. The fans gave us a stage, and we used it well.”
Though Aerosmith has matured, it hasn`t really changed. If anything, it`s a more consistent band, now, but its heritage-from early cover versions of the blues-rooted ”Train Kept A-Rollin` ” to newer songs drenched in blues feeling such as ”Monkey on My Back”-remains intact.
”We`ve never been afraid to let the roots show,” says Tyler, pausing for effect as he slipped in a pun of his own. ”Besides, roots are sexier than any haircut.”
