Aerosmith
Aerosmith, the Boston-based band that became America's version of the Rolling Stones, has been making music for nearly 40 years. The band essentially has had two careers: one before they kicked drugs and alcohol and an even bigger one after rehabilitation.
One of the longest-running, top 10 best-selling bands in American hard rock history, Aerosmith was formed in late 1969 in Sunapee, New Hampshire. Two bands, Chain Reaction, led by Steven Tallarico, and the Jam Band, featuring Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton, had often played at a local club called The Barn. At a Jam Band gig at The Barn, Tallarico decided that he should front this sloppy, blues-based band, and that they needed another guitarist and a new drummer.
The new band formed, and Aerosmith played its first gig at Nipmuc Regional High School in Mendon, Massachusetts, in autumn 1970. The lineup: Steven Tallarico (born March 26, 1948) on vocals, Joe Perry (born September 10, 1950) on lead guitar, Ray Tabano on rhythm guitar, Tom Hamilton (born December 31, 1951) on bass, and Joey Kramer (born June 21, 1950) on drums.
The group moved into a three-bedroom apartment together on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. The band played at high school and fraternity parties and began writing their own material. Kramer had come up with the band's name back in high school and insists it had nothing to do with Sinclair Lewis' novel, Arrowsmith.
Tabano was replaced by Brad Whitford (born February 23, 1952) in 1971 after some artistic differences. Tabano later came back to work on Aerosmith's road crew and then as the band's marketing director.
First Record Contract
In 1972, Steven Tallarico changed his name to Steven Tyler. Big things were about to happen for the band. At a summer gig at Max's Kansas City in New York that year, record industry mogul Clive Davis saw the band perform. Aerosmith, managed by David Krebs and Steve Leber, was offered a $125,000 contract with Columbia Records.
"We weren't too ambitious when we started out," Tyler said in their autobiography, Walk This Way. "We just wanted to be the biggest thing that ever walked the planet, the greatest rock band that ever was. We just wanted everything. We wanted it all."
Moving quickly, the band's self-titled debut album was released in January 1973. Aerosmith went on tour in support of the album, opening for big acts like Mott the Hoople and The Kinks. Stardom would be a relatively short climb for the band from this point.
The following year, a second album, Get Your Wings, was released. A single, "Same Old Song And Dance"/"Pandora's Box" made a small splash and the album went gold. In April 1975, Toys In The Attic was released and hit the Billboard Top 20 Album Chart. "Sweet Emotion" was released on a single and became the band's first Top 40 hit.
On June 12, 1976, Aerosmith headlined their first stadium show at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, to a crowd of 80,000. The show had sold out within 12 hours. It was only the first in a series of successful stadium tours to follow.
Tyler later reflected, "The stage was so high and so far from the audience, you couldn't even see any kids, just lines of bullet-head security guys with their backs to us. The whole thing was too abstract. We were in, like, surrealism shock."
An Army of Fans
The band started calling their fans "The Blue Army" for the blue jeans that they all wore. In Walk This Way, "We were America's band," Joe Perry said. "We were the guys you could actually see. Back then in the Seventies, it wasn't like Led Zeppelin was out there on the road in America all of the time. The Stones weren't always coming to your town. We were. You could count on us to come by."
In 1976, the band released the platinum-selling Rocks album. Earlier songs, "Walk This Way" and "Dream On"/"Sweet Emotion" were re-released and garnered the band Top 40 hits. "Dream On," re-released from their first album, peaked at number three on the charts. In March 1977, "Back In The Saddle"/"Nobody's Fault" was released as a single. In October of that year, "Draw the Line" was released on a single, previewing tracks from their fifth album of the same name, to be released in December of that year. The album went platinum.
In October 1978, the band made a movie appearance in Robert Stigwood's flop, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, as the Future Villain Band. (Stigwood had produced '70s movie hits Grease and Saturday Night Fever.) The band recorded a cover of The Beatles' "Come Together" for the film, and the song made it to the top 30 on the charts. Kramer later remarked, "It was a disaster. A real debacle. The Stones refused to do the part that was offered to us. Now we know why. It was just a pretty silly movie." That same month, Live Bootleg, featuring live versions of the band's hits was released.
The End of Aerosmith
Disagreements between band members and ego clashes tore at the lineup in 1979 as their seventh album, Night in the Ruts, was recorded. Perry left, and Jimmy Crespo replaced him as lead guitarist. Aerosmith toured briefly with new lineup, but fans yelled for Perry.
Perry had formed the Joe Perry Project, rounding up a band of relatively unknown musicians. They released an album of covers and Perry originals called Let the Music Do the Talking. The group released three albums between 1980 and 1983, doing small tours, as well.
By 1980, the year Aerosmith's Greatest Hits was released, Whitford left the band as well. Rick Dufay replaced Whitford in the Aerosmith lineup. Whitford joined forces with Derek St. Holmes, from Ted Nugent's band, on an album, Whitford/St. Holmes. That summer, Tyler took a forced sabbatical after a motorcycle accident. Drugs and alcohol were involved, and the singer spent six months in a hospital.
Rock In A Hard Place, recorded with the new lineup, was released in August 1982. The follow-up tour was hit and miss. In the meantime, Whitford was on tour with The Joe Perry Project.
Aerosmith Reformed
On Valentine's Day in 1984, after a long and publicly infamous estrangement between Tyler and Perry, the two, along with Whitford, were reunited backstage after an Aerosmith show at The Orpheum Theater in Boston. Conversations continued between Tyler and Perry, and by April of that year, the original band was back together. They began this new phase with the aptly titled "Back In The Saddle Tour" and a new manager, Tim Collins.
In November 1985, the band released Done With Mirrors on a new label, Geffen. The album, produced by Ted Templeman, who had produced the early Van Halen albums, was not a platinum-selling comeback.
In 1986, up-and-coming rappers Run DMC gave Aerosmith the push back into the spotlight they needed with their cover of "Walk This Way" on their album, Raising Hell. The song hit the charts, and the video, featuring Tyler and Perry dueling with the rappers through a thin wall, played frequently on MTV.
Over the years, the band had become infamous for their alcohol and drug abuse. The press dubbed Tyler and Perry "The Toxic Twins." In September 1986, Collins called a 6 a.m. band meeting and included New York psychiatrist Dr. Lou Cox. It was an intervention for Tyler, but the whole band needed help.
In the band's 1997 autobiography, Walk This Way, Collins recounted that he had told the band, "You guys need to change your lives and get sober and I'll promise you this: We will turn this group around and make it the biggest band in the world by 1990." Tyler and Perry went through rehab. The band worked together to become—and to stay—sober.
Aerosmith released Permanent Vacation in August 1987. For the first time, the band had songwriting help. Desmond Child, who had written hit songs for Bon Jovi, was called in and helped finish "Dude Looks Like A Lady" and "Angel." The songs garnered the band their first hits in years. In September 1988, Aerosmith received their first MTV Music Award for "Best Group Video" for "Dude Looks Like a Lady." Single "Angel" peaked at number three on the Billboard charts.
Tyler's Famous Children
Tyler's former girlfriend, Bebe Buell, and her daughter, Liv, went to see Aerosmith in August 1988. "She was eleven years old," Buell said. "We were the only ones allowed in Steven's dressing room, and Steven took her around and introduced her to everybody. She met her sister Mia for the first time.… This was when everything finally clicked for her."
Liv Tyler, to that point, had been brought up believing that her father was performer/producer Todd Rundgren. Rundgren had been involved in her life and contributed support. Her younger sister, Mia, was born to Tyler and his first wife, Cyrinda Foxe. Tyler's two daughters made names for themselves in acting and modeling, respectively.
Hit the Charts, Won Grammys
Pump was released in September 1989 and produced multi-platinum album sales and numerous awards. In 1990, Aerosmith won MTV's Best Metal/Hard Rock Video and Viewers' Choice Awards, as well as their first Grammy Award, for "Janie's Got A Gun," a song about child abuse.
Their success continued in 1993 with Get A Grip, which shot up the charts to number one. Four tracks from the album, "Livin' On the Edge," "Cryin,'" "Crazy" and "Amazing" hit the charts. "Livin' On the Edge" won the 1993 Grammy for "Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal." "Crazy" also won a Grammy in 1994.
Nine Lives debuted at number one on the album charts in 1997 and spawned the hit single, "Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)." The following year, the band contributed a track for the movie Armageddon, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" (written by Diane Warren). It was the band's first number one hit. Aerosmith continued recording for film in 2003, with a track called "Lizard Love," on the sound-track of the movie Rugrats Go Wild! Perry wrote score music for the 2003 Small Planet Pictures film, This Thing of Ours, as well.
In March 2001, Just Push Play was released, debuting at number two on the charts. "Jaded," the single from the album, hit number seven on the charts that year. The album was unusual in that it was recorded without the band being in the same room together. Joe Perry told The Tennessean, "We were making the record on ProTools and massaging everything, polishing everything up.… I couldn't make another record like that and call it an Aerosmith record."
The new century saw Aerosmith gaining awards and recognition. On March 19, 2001, Aerosmith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Boston's Berklee College of Music awarded Steven Tyler an honorary doctoral degree in music in May 2003. The band also has an "Aerosmith Endowment Award" recognizing outstanding musical and academic achievement, at Berklee.
Aerosmith was one of the few bands in rock history to come back as strong as they had started. One reviewer from The Times of London summed up the Aerosmith concert experience: "Tyler, a glamorous stick insect, brought the band out dancing through a two-hour set which took in all the best tunes of their career.… They saved "Walk This Way" for the last encore as the sunset grew to a distant purple glow. Tyler strutted and pouted until a giant fireworks display signaled the end. The shimmering brilliance belonged, however, to Aerosmith alone, a band who retain the power to astound."
In August 2003 Aerosmith once again, 30 years later, joined forces with Kiss to launch a summer tour called the Rocksimus Maximus Tour. This nation-wide tour was a huge success producing a gross of approximately $50 million. With some time on their hands before the tour with Kiss took off, Aerosmith decided to produce an all-blues album. "Honkin' on Bobo," the album's title, was released March 30, 2004. This album got back to Aerosmith's earlier sound of the 1970's making it appeal to past fans as well as new. According to Jim Farber from the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service the new album "treats blues as slamming party music rather than as the soul-searching stuff of legend."
Books
Aerosmith and Stephen Davis, Walk This Way, Avon Books, 1997.
Huxley, Martin, Aerosmith: The Fall and the Rise of Rock's Greatest Band, St. Martin's Press, 1995.
Periodicals
Associated Press Newswires, May 10, 2003.
Billboard, August 16, 2003; April 4, 2004.
Billboard Bulletin, January 20, 2004.
Business Wire, September 8, 2003.
Finance Wire, October 8, 2003.
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 30, 2004.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 22, 2003.
Plain Dealer, September 6, 2002.
Press-Enterprise, November 1, 2002.
Reuters News, September 4, 2003.
Rocky Mountain News, December 6, 2002.
San Antonio Express-News, October 4, 2003.
State Journal-Register, October 19, 2003.
Tennessean, September 19, 2003.
Times Union, November 27, 2003.
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, September 6, 2002.
