Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (11 page)

We used to give the peace sign, and if someone nodded, you’d say, “Wanna get high, man? You got a joint?” And it was lovely. Today you don’t know what somebody’s thinking. Today, I see people in the street and don’t know if they’re going to hug me or mug me. You know, I don’t really care if you get on the Internet, text, or Twitter . . . we were accessing the fucking cosmos! Okay, now I do sound like a character out of a Crumb comic—or Oscar the Grouch. But I just figured out why guys like me turn into curmudgeons . . . the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, everybody has rolled over and given up, and there’s no more afternoon baseball.

I
’d drop acid and go into the city. You’d look down at the sidewalk and it was
melting.
I was walking on a great gray, sparkling snake. It shivered when you stepped on it. The sidewalk was
alive
! And then there was the Electric Circus in the East Village with the Rubber Room. I’d take acid and go in there. I
lived
there! The Rubber Room was this padded space made for people who were tripping, because they were going
“YEE-HAA!”
and they didn’t want anybody to hurt themselves.

One Sheridan Square in the West Village—the Stones and the Animals would go there. I’d sit there listening to that song “Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)” by John Fred and His Playboy Band.

It was the beginning of the disco era, and in that club they would play the music so fucking loud, and we were in there going, “Fuck, this is fucking great!” Clubs with bone-jangling loud music! That was the beginning of all of it. And no one sold T-shirts to the revolution. Think about that! No one was selling T-shirts in 1971! What were we
thinking
?

By the late sixties I was seriously into Haight-Ashbury. I’d way got over my Mod Mick phase—so had Mick. I was into—I don’t want to say my feminine side, but the hipper women’s stuff, the way Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg dressed those guys! They really had that motley, tatterdemalion medieval troubadour thing down. Eventually the hip King’s Road shops began exporting that stuff, like the New York branch of Granny Takes a Trip. As soon as I began to refine my own personal style, I was immediately attracted to the Anita Pallenberg/Keith Richards gypsy look. But after I saw Janis—
she
became my fashion idol.

Eventually Anita and I became good friends. When I go over to England I always try to see her. Last time I met her where she works, at the designer Vivienne Westwood’s boutique. Vivienne Westwood, now Dame Vivienne, designed clothes for the Sex Pistols and then brought her eccentric clothing into the mainstream—if you can call her wildlife outfits mainstream. I was looking around at the bizarre clothes in the shop when a woman came up behind me, covered my eyes, then put her hands around my neck, almost snapped my fucking neck off, and said, “Who is this?” “Uh, I give up.” “Your best English fucking cunt!” It was Anita in her broken-English Cockney accent.

A few years ago, when Keith and Anita still lived in Bing Crosby’s old house out on Long Island, I went to spend a couple of days with them. I’d bought this rare book in a weird little bookstore in New York. The guy kept it in the back room; it was about black magic and shit. I took it with me. A little light satanic reading for a weekend in the country. It was about the derivation of the Seven Sacred Sins and all that dark stuff. When Anita found it under my bed, she had a fucking fit. She ripped the book up. When I asked her why she did it, she screamed at me in front of Keith, “How
dare
you bring this into my house? Are you here to cast spells on us?” Meanwhile we were all gacked to the nines on coke.

T
he sixties and us, we got away with it. And now, “fuck-all” lives on! You’d read R. Crumb and then these characters would be there right before your eyes. You’d go, hey,
he’s
from R. Crumb. Oh, that was so great! A little lame and filthy, but what the hell, R. Crumb had Mr. Natural and, you know, Flakey Funt and Angelfood McSpade. Oh, it was just so good.

At the end of the sixties I lived at Sleepy Hollow Restorations, right before the Tappan Zee Bridge. I’d be so
high
coming from New York or Yonkers in my car, in my Volkswagen, from eating hash brownies and recording records, I would wind up missing the exit and drive over the bridge. Whoops! Forgot cash! I’d go over the bridge with no money! Problem is, there’s a
toll
on the way back into New York. I’d drive up and go, “I just don’t got—!” But I was scared to death. That happened quite a few times. I remember there was a tree there that had such a beautiful face against the sky at sunset.

At eighteen most kids think about becoming a man. Never did! The guy you went to high school with figured it out. Got a job, went to work every day. He became a man. But here I was at twenty-two. I was at a loss. What was I going to do? Tune pianos like my uncle Ernie or teach music like my dad did at Cardinal Spellman High School? I had that moment of angst.

“Perplexity,” sayeth my man Kahlil Gibran, “is the beginning of knowledge.”

Yeah, but he wasn’t living in Sunapee and doing crystal meth. I loved speed, man! Remember the speed that burned when you snorted it and you had to keep it in the freezer? It was blue and it had that terrible smell? “Oh! That tastes terrible!” It was an acquired taste, one that I acquired without too much difficulty. You could eat the paper it was wrapped in and you were fuckin’ forget-about-it.

I
loved
Quaaludes, too. Especially when you got too high on speed or blow. Whenever I’d go to rehab, they’d say, “Well, you’re always chasing the drug.” And I go, “Yu-uh!” It’s like having a fast car and you go really fast, but then occasionally you’ve got to stop and go get gas, but while you’re getting gas all you want to do is get back in that fast car. It’s like that time again! You have no blow, you run out, you go to your dealer and get some more, and then you’re in the car breaking the sound barrier and your brains are pouring out of your ears and then someone goes, “Here, check this out!” It’s like ethyl alcohol and you hit this button and your mind chills down.

The wildest places we played were fraternities. With Fox Chase I played Bones Gate—it was a famous raunchy fraternity at Dartmouth they based
Animal House
on. At those parties I used to sit under the keg, they’d turn the keg on, and I’d beat everybody out.

Fox Chase was the last band I was in before Aerosmith. Right before that, in 1969, William Proud went out to Long Island and I was with them there until that fell apart and I went back up to Sunapee.

I had no money. I was desperate, defeated, doomed. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. William Proud had played every nightclub, grotto, union hall, gym, bar mitzvah, and VFW hall for a fifty-mile radius. We were burned out on the trail. Nowhere left to play. It all came to a head one night at the last incarnation of Salvation in the Village, way out in Southampton on Long Island.

At the Hampton gig, I practically strangled our lead guitar player, Twitty Farren, to death during a rehearsal. Top that, Alice Cooper! Midrehearsal, I look up and see Twitty—who was a fuckin’ great guitar player, by the way—
yawning
. I asked myself, “Is it the heat or is it that his heart isn’t in it anymore?” I was high as a kite, and I jumped over the drum set to try and choke his raggedy ass, but I fell over my high hat and cracked my leg instead.

I ran out of the club, stuck out my thumb, and hitchhiked all the way back to New Hampshire . . . drumless, bandless, hopeless. But still telling my mom, “Mom, I’m going to be such a big star there’s gonna be girls hanging off the rafters, kids coming through the windows, battering down the doors. We gotta batten the place down, put up six-foot fences, put shutters on the windows. We’ll need an intercom and electric gates to keep out the rabid fans. Or else we’ll have to move.” “Of course, Steven.” My mom always believed in me, she was a stone romantic.

William Proud—Peter Bover, Twitty Farren, Mouse McElroy, and Eddie Kisler—wasn’t really working out. It was still fun, we still got gigs, but it was small potatoes and wasn’t leading to anything. No road to destiny! I grew up in a family where we were all very close, and I was probably homesick or whatever they call that today.

Summer ended, the town was cold. No one to cop from, no drugs, nothing up here—everyone had left. Oil lamps, candles, winter, the wind whistling through the pines. No band, no plans, no future, and they were starting to roll the sidewalks up. It was my first season of wither. And then,
on the seventh hour of the seventh day
I heard Joe Perry play. . . .

CHAPTER THREE

The Pipe That
Was Never Played

B
efore we get started, you’re probably asking yourself, “Is this about that famous pied piper from that children’s story or just another clever drug reference?” Read on . . . seek and ye shall find. . . .

I’m a great believer in moments arising. You’ll miss the boat, man, if you’re not ready for star time. Then at least you need a brother like the Kinks, Everly Brothers, and of course the Stones. And I was ready, ready as anybody could be. “Keith, gimme an E!” And the emcee is saying, “Let’s hear a big hand for old Whatsisname and the Miscellaneous Wankers.” Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . but I always thought I needed a brother to rock the world—and FATE would take care of the rest.

I’d been a rock star ever since I could remember. I came out of my mother’s womb screaming for more than nipple and nurture. I was born to strut and fret my hour upon the stage, fill stadiums, do massive amounts of drugs, sleep with three nubile groupies at a time . . . AND endorse my own brand of barbecue sauce (oh no, that’s Joe). All I needed was for the rest of the world to see who I truly was—Steven Tyler, the Demon of Screamin’, the Terror (or tenor) of tin pan time and space. Recipe demanded a cookin’ band, a few hit records, and, as alluded to a moment ago, my mutant twin. Was that too much to ask?

By the summer of 1970, sixties megalodons and heavy metal raptors still ruled the land—the Stones! The Who! Pink Floyd! Black Sabbath! Deep Purple! Led Zeppelin! All those poncey Brits with their bloody million-quid blues riffs, limey accents, Marshall amps, flaunting their foppish King’s Road clothes. We didn’t stand a chance, mate. Back in the USA little bands came and went. They huddled in the underbrush trampled by the passing Ledzeposaurs. If you heard a bustle in the hedgerow—that was us. I’d been in my share of these little bands, eking out a living gigging for sixty dollars a night (if we were lucky) in crummy clubs, gymnasiums, dance halls, and dives.

I was even the designated rock star of Sunapee (summer population, 5,400; winter population, 500). I had 45s on the jukebox at the Anchorage where we all hung out. I had a couple of singles out, the very pop and Brit Invasion–like ballad “When I Needed You” and the Beatlesque, Dave-Clark-Five-sounding “You Should Have Been Here Yesterday” with Chain Reaction. I was a local hero . . . a rapidly evolving legend in my own mind. But that was all. I’d burned through countless bands and come home a beaten child.

I started mowing lawns. I had a little piece of hash that I kept in my hash coffin and smoked in my hash pipe, which was labeled
The Pipe That Was Never Played.
A couple of tokes, get loaded in an old drafty house with little curtains that closed. I’d sit around with my friends. We’d talk about what we were going to do for a living. Maybe we’ll become cops—I actually
said
that! Oh, I swear! I wanted to be a local cop like my best pal, Rick Mastin, who carries a badge on the lake. I can drive around at night, I thought, at least have something to do, like Biff, the old cop in the harbor. What would we be doing when we’re sixty? That was another topic of conversation. Ah well, we’ll smoke cigars and sit on the deck. But as soon as the words came out of my mouth I heard a high-pitched bat shriek in my brain. No, I don’t think so.

Sunapee is not unlike
Our Town
—only smaller, a little more artificial (because it’s a vacation resort) and on a lake. Sunapee Harbor is just like the postcards of itself: quaint cottages, souvenir tchotchke shops, colorful local characters, aging rock stars. . . . The masts of sailboats sway in the harbor. It’s
sooo
picturesque. A perfect little stage set designed for tourists. Antique paddle-wheel boats docked next to an airbrushed little park. The crew wear Gilbert and Sullivan naval uniforms, and the captain
narrates
the cruise—the history, landmarks, and lore of crystal clear Lake Sunapee—as he indicates points of interest for the enlightenment and entertainment of the gawking visitors. “Now, over here, to your right, is the lighthouse where legend has it two star-crossed lovers would meet on moonlit nights . . . and over there is the summer home of degenerate rock star and control freak Steven Tyler [gasp!], who spent his summers here as a child mowing lawns and talking to elves. . . .”

They actually do an
Our Town
bit (billed as Crackerbarrel Chats) where old-timers (playing themselves) sit around an old woodstove at the Historical Society Museum and share, firsthand, their memories, experiences, and photos of days gone by. I’ve signed up for next year. My subjects will be whittling, bird-call clocks, the size of Slash’s cock, and how to throw a TV set out of a hotel window into a swimming pool so it explodes when it hits the water. (Hint: extension cords.)

Sunapee’s quaint all right, but if your aspiration in life is to be a rock star, then you’re in trouble. This isn’t the place to be. I knew that in a few weeks the town would start to close up. Like Brigadoon, every September it all evaporates. They fold up the flats, strike the set, and overnight it’s this deserted village—the kind of town you see in Stephen King movies where the place has been abandoned due to a supernatural fog. I’d stand in Sunapee Harbor all by myself and there’d be
nobody there
. It gave me the creeps! No wonder the town is filled with alcoholics—there’s nothing else to do.

Winters in Sunapee are brutal. Six months of howling wind and driving snow. A Siberian nightmare! And I’d spent plenty of winters in Sunapee, licking my wounds, getting high as a kite, brooding, regrouping, reassembling myself, and practicing my Jagger pout.

I’d spent too many winters up there doing that. I wasn’t going to do it again. I said, “That’s fucking
it
.” I prayed to the Angel of Cinder-Block Dressing Rooms and Ripped Naughahide Couches, “Deliver me from this horror!”

And then one day—like an apparition—Joe Perry! Joe pulled up to my parents’ place in Trow-Rico in his brown MG. There ought to be a plaque to mark the spot where that happened. God, I can see it in my mind’s eye—the pebble retaining wall below the big house, the steps up to the house where I used to clip the hedges—it was such a Technicolor wide-screen moment. He got out of his little Brit sports car. He was wearing black horn-rimmed specs.

“Hey, Steven, we have a band and it’s playing the Barn tonight. I wanted to invite you to come down and see us. You know Elyssa, right? She’ll be there.” Oh, yeah, I knew Elyssa, the pinball wizardess. She was Joe’s girlfriend, drop-dead gorgeous.

Now Joe, Tom Hamilton, and a little kid called Pudge Scott were in a group called the Jam Band that played around Sunapee and Boston. I went down to see them play that night at the Barn. There was Joe, Tom Hamilton on the bass, Pudge Scott on the drums, and a guy named John McGuire singing lead. All of them totally disheveled, fronting that unbridled bohemian cool of the early Brit rock bands. Joe looking a little dorky with his black-rimmed glasses patched with masking tape and his guitar
way
out of tune.

John McGuire was the original shoe-gazer . . . an affectation later taken to a high art form by Liam Gallagher of Oasis and others in the postgrunge bands of the nineties like Adam Duritz in Counting Crows. With these guys the lead singer looked down at his feet instead of out at the audience. Supposed to indicate authenticity, disdain for showbiz—but what the hell. I’m watching John McGuire looking down at his shoes and I’m thinking, God, no eye contact there, no connecting with the audience—what
is
that? Then I notice he isn’t exactly looking at the floorboards. He had a couple pages of
Playboy
taped to the floor of the stage between his feet, and he was looking down at her tits, you know—how great was that? Wonder if Eddie Vedder had pages of
Surfer Magazine
taped to those early Pearl Jam stages?

Joe sings lead on the next song. I’m sitting down with Elyssa watching Joe sing “I’m Going Home,”
you know, the old Ten Years After song? Joe couldn’t sing at all. He sings like the Brit blues blokes, like Alvin Lee.Those kind of songs where you don’t have to hold a note (because you can’t actually sing), doing the early rock stutter, the way Ray Davies does “All Day and All of the Night.”

Next song. And then they went into “
Weeeellll, beh-bee, if you gotta rock gong-gong-chick-gong, I got to be your rockin’ horse.
” Joe’s singing it kind of like Dylan, because he couldn’t really hold notes back then—nor did he want to. Singing pretty, on key, was pop shit. Leave that to Dusty Springfield and Joannie Baez. The blues cats were aiming for the genuine Delta gris-gris growl.

They played only three songs the whole night—a lot of riffing, noodling—one of them being Fleetwood Mac’s “Rattlesnake Shake”—the mojo-driven Peter Green version (rough and dirty, pre–Stevie Nicks and the megahits). Fleetwood Mac’s
Live at the BBC—
we’d use that as our reset button. It’s the Holy Grail, the kabbalistic shit, pure unstepped-on melodic sensibility. Get that record, it’s all
in there
.

Joe couldn’t carry a tune to save his life and I thought,
Oh, my god, these guys really
suck!
Oh, shit, these guys are so bad, they’re so out of fuckin’ tune, it’s
embarrassing
! I’ve got to get out of here!

They were playing this great Brit fret-burning blues, but they were
horrible
. They were out of tune, out of time—and I’m an animal of the beat, I have the ears of a bat. If a drum beat is a hundredth of a second off, I become unstable. I rant, I rave, it has to be fixed or the world will stop spinning on its axis. I drive my band crazy with this shit.

I was sitting there in the audience right next to Elyssa looking at Joe play. He had his Keith Richards moves
down
. The menacing hatchet-face scowl and bent knees as if the riff was so heavy it was weighing him down. The cool-chop look slightly undercut by his horn-rimmed glasses, white tape in the middle, hair down to his shoulders.

Goes into the second verse. . .

He do the shake

The rattlesnake shake

Man, do the shake

Yes, and jerk away the blues

Now, jerk it

Then—and this is the moment—Joe lurches into the guitar break:
BOOAH DANG BOOAH DUM
. Fuck! When I heard him play that, ah man, my dick went
sooo
hard! He blew my head off! I heard the angeltown sound, I saw the light. I was having that moment—
the
moment. Remember the scene in the movie
The Miracle Worker
about Helen Keller and her teacher? For a million years they’d done the hand signal thing. Then one day, out by the water pump, she signs W-A-T-E-R. At that moment, the levee broke.

Then he played the Yardbirds number
“
Train Kept a-Rollin’,” which became our
top-this-motherfucker
closer. Like me, an old Yardbirds fan—hence our mantras: “Train Kept a-Rollin’ ” and “I Ain’t Got You.”

My ear was a little more finely tuned than these guys’, but what I saw was this rough, raw, uncut rock ’n’ roll thing, the X-factor, the wild thang that runs through rock from Little Richard to Janis Joplin. Now that’s what was missing from the other bands. It’s not something you learn, it’s something you are. You play what you got. I’m thinking, with me make-believing rock star (which I could do
so
well) and Joe channeling Beck-Keit-Page, who could stop us? Who? They were in a very raw, rough state—but so what? If the horse doesn’t want to be ridden with a fucking bit in its mouth the whole time, what the fuck, let it go. If you’ve got this monstrous animal, let it run.

It was so fucking great it made me cry, and then the thought came into my mind just like the midnight train steaming into the station: What if I take what my daddy taught me, the melodic sensibility I’ve got, with the broken glass shards of reality that these guys wove together? We might have something.

Oh, yeah! When they did “Rattlesnake Shake” the fuckin’ energy coming off them was radioactive, they had the juice that all the bands I’d ever been in before couldn’t touch. The sacred fire! With all the acid and Tuinals and crystal meth, we couldn’t get to what they were doing
on the natch
. Right there what was beaming through was the white-hot core of Aerosmith. I went, “Ye-esss! YES!!!” I heard that high ecstatic voice, locusts were singing in my brain! And then I knew we’d have our day.

My whole life I’d been searching for my mutant twin—I wanted a brother. I didn’t want to be in another band without a brother. I needed a soul mate who would go “Amen!” Someone I could say “Fuck yeah!” to when I heard a million-dollar riff. In all the bands I’d been in from ’64 to ’70 there’d always been that one thing missing,
the
essential ingredient. Joe was the missing link. I wanted that Dave Davies–Ray Davies (that was real blood), Pete Townshend–Roger Daltrey, and of course, Mick-Keith thing. I’d never had that.