Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (36 page)

Then I get the countdown—they call out to me to give me the time I have left till I have to go on: “Fifteen minutes!” That’s when I first get that “
Oh, shit!
I gotta go onstage!” jolt. Any bug that I got flies out of my body ’cause it knows deep down inside it’s going to be two hours of
insanity.
I’m throwing a party for twenty thousand people. I
love
it, I’m addicted to adrenaline. “Five minutes!” someone calls out. We walk down the side of the stage and the tape rolls—it’s a five-minute film. I got my big burly friend K. C. Tibo and his wife to take pictures of us that we could project on the screens in the back during the show. K.C. made an Aerosmith film with a voice-over in the style of the old newsreels: “And defending the nation is. . . .” We found the reporter that used to do them, got his voice, and put it on the tape. It shows us at various places on tour. “And we stopped in Berlin!” We could be in Berlin on the European tour, we could be in Prague, we’re going to France. It’s projected behind us on an LED screen.

The LED screen is forty by sixty feet. When you hear LED you think a flat screen, but this thing is five inches thick. It’s set up every night, hi-def Aerosmith. We used to have a camera showing us coming out of our dressing room and walking up to the stage.
Bor-ing!
Been there, done that. Not cool. This new montage of scenes K.C. came up with out of his head—he’s brilliant, great cinematographer. He did the whole European tour with us, but because he stayed with me and filmed me, some people in the band got a little jealous and knew that I was doing a movie. If I die, K.C. has explicit orders to make all these clips into a movie and put the thing out, so the world can see what goes on with me.

My ex-wife Teresa is there, my girlfriend Erin is there in the dressing room. Dan Neer is interviewing me on a boom for XM Radio, I’m getting my face done by the makeup girl, the pitcher from the Red Sox is there with his wife. There I am ogling girls, philosophizing, chewing people out, hanging out with the Make-A-Wish Foundation kids. I go around the corner real quick because I have to pee. Dan says, “Do you mind if I come?” I haven’t warmed up yet, and my cell phone rings, it’s Al Gore! So there’s all this stuff going on while I’m taking a leak. I tell the makeup girl, “You can look if you want.” When you’re not married, there’s all sorts of things you can do, stuff I could never do when my wife was around. I can’t
tell
you what
joy
that is. Because with wives you can’t joke! That’s part of the bargain. It’s all on film, a day in the life. . . .

Curtain drops, Aerosmith’s on, two-hour show. The show takes us from nine fifteen to eleven fifteen. We’re supposed to be off at eleven fifteen—that’s a state curfew. If we go over it, we gotta pay them a couple of thousand dollars a
minute;
sometimes it’s
five thousand
dollars a minute
if you’re in New York at Madison Square Garden; it’s ten thousand dollars every five minutes in L.A. And we
always
go over it. Makes you wonder what Axl Rose paid on his tour. Okay, so we get offstage at eleven, eleven fifteen, an hour backstage taking showers, meeting people, talking to girls, twelve thirty we’re at the plane, we fly back, an hour-and-a-half flight.

Like they say, the woman has to be in the mood, the guy just has to be in the room—and that—being in the mood—goes for the lead singer, too. You have to get it up, you have to get up there onstage and flaunt your petals. (You’re asking yourself,
What is he saying? Where is he going with this? Is he on drugs again? Better call Tim Collins
.) Onstage, who takes the brunt in Aerosmith? ME! When your audience doesn’t respond to a song, who feels worse about it, who owns it the most, the guitar player or the lead singer? No wonder I got Lead Singer Disorder.

And what is the leading cause of LSD? Guitar players! They drive lead singers crazy! Guitar players can put their amps on 10 and have a roadie change their strings.

Thank you! Onstage, no one’s going to hear if Joe’s guitar is out of tune—it’s been out for years, it was out for most of the seventies. Now we have really good guitar techs. Still, it slips. Stuff happens. Joe plays so hard, his guitar still goes out of tune. I always wondered,
Is it just me? How come only I notice it?
It bothers the hell out of me onstage, but the audience doesn’t hear a thing. They’re stuck on the image of Joe being there, the cool cat they saw on the back of the album. Oh my god, it’s
him
and it’s live and
there he is
! Steven Tyler—live and in person. Well, I got news for ya, if I for a second sang flat
“I could lie awake just to hear you
breathin
’,”
Oh, whoops! In the press, in the paper: “His voice was all right, but he kind of missed a couple notes.” And they would put their finger on what note it was. “Steven Tyler looks good, but his voice is slipping. Maybe old age and years of drugs, maybe drug rehab—” Oh, they’ll look for anything! They speculate like crazy. That’s why, in my Italian mind, that lawn’s got to be mowed and good. It’s got to be raked—or I ain’t going to the beach! So if I don’t sing really good and be all I can be in the Aero Army (ha-ha) they’ll be on my case like white on rice.

You’re in a band, you make it, you’re let in the door; then you have to be realer than the realest real for people to relate to when fans are standing on their feet for three hours to come see you. They need to see a show that evokes something extreme in them. So you’ve got to, telepathically, and through body language and song,
reach
them profoundly, visually, electrically, do something that changes their Everything. The song you sang once touched something in their life, something that they can totally relate to. They heard you first on the radio
without
seeing you; now they’re one-on-one with you by being there.

We’re onstage, and during the last song, I hear in my ears, “Steven, we’re doing a runner, the cops are waiting, go right to the car, stage left, stage left.” We run out that way. That’s when you put on the bulletproof vest, when you hear that goofy cartoony voice saying, “
Ex-it staaage left.
” I snap into the vest, I’m so hot and just, like,
hoo-hah-hoo-hah
. I need to sit in the car in just my underwear and a towel with Erin. She gives me a little something to drink, we get in a police motorcade, the police siren goes off,
BaroooOOOOOOoooooOOOOOOoooooo!
It’s
so
loud! The noise! Trying to talk over the noise of the police siren, the plane’s engines on the runway.

A
quiet moment with Erin before the storm of the next show, 2006. (Melissa Mahoney © Steven Tallarico)

Around twelve thirty we’re back on the plane. The pilot’s complaining because he’s got to fly so much—and we just came offstage! I guess it’s all relative, because we all think our problem is the worst until we see someone else’s. I’m bitching because I’ve been onstage for two hours and I hurt. Meanwhile somebody else was building the fucking pyramids.

The next morning, you don’t have a show that night, but you’re fucking dragging your ass. How do you fix a sore back? Back in the gym. You got to stretch that shit out. I learned that early on. But no jogging—those guys that run every morning have fucked-up knees and legs and feet—just like I do from working out onstage for thirty years. We wear out, and that’s a secret that nobody knows. The best exercise for anybody is keeping your hand away from your mouth—food is kind of a drug addiction itself. I did drugs because it made me feel good, beginning, middle, end of story. People eat because they got a lot of time on their hands and want to satiate the body. It’s fucking great, I love to eat! Being off the road now, I love to eat, but I can’t just indulge.

Two o’clock we’re back in Dallas. Two thirty, we’re dragging our fucking sorry asses into the lobby. What time did we leave? C’mon, try and keep up! It’s a twelve-and-a-half-hour day. I first noticed that about seven years ago. I always just took it for granted, “Ah, it’s three o’clock! We’ve gotta get to bed!” We never do two days in a row. In the past my throat was ripped, and after years of that I finally went, “You guys, fuck you. I’m doing day-on, day-off and I don’t care how much money you think we’re losing, that’s what I need for my voice.” Joe’s guitar tech takes his sorry-ass worn-out guitar and strings, changes them, sets the guitar up for the next date. I don’t have anyone to change my strings.

Three o’clock, I fall onto my comfortable bed at the Four Seasons and go to sleep. Nine o’clock my alarm goes off, I get up, order breakfast, go to the gym. . . . And that’s my life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Where You End
and I Begin . . . Again
(the Goddess)

I
should be alone, without girlfriend or significant other, and when I need my love, go to a fair. Go to a mall! I used to say to my wife, “Jesus Christ, I get more love from a fuckin’ stranger on the corner than I get from you—are you
tired
of me?” “Oh, I’m just tired of you always being angry.” “Tired of me being angry? I’m angry for a reason!” “You always have reasons.” True. But I’m supposed to turn into a Stepford husband? “Good morning, you look so beautiful, I’m glad you have such nice hair, and your teeth! That face! You look so good. Lovely to see you again! Bye.”
Ding!
Next morning: “Hi. Wow, you haven’t changed a bit, you look so young!”
Ding!

It’s easy to get accolades from kids on the street, but from your exes—forget it, even when they weren’t exes. Instead it was “Why do you look at the women like that?” “That’s what I do for a living.”

I’ve never had a relationship with a woman who really trusted me. I’m this guy onstage with an outrageous, larger-than-life persona, a persona designed to be over-the-top, out there—and
nasty
. Any woman who ever acknowledged that would have put the fire out. Immediately. If they’d said what they knew to be true: “I knew you were gonna fuck all those women.” Never did they ever acknowledge that side. Ever. But if I fucked
anything,
it was the fucking inquisition. Even when I just kissed another girl.

“You’re disgusting! Why did you kiss that girl?”

“I kissed her on the cheek.”

“Oh, why would you do that?”

“’Cause out there, I was in the moment.” Do I have to explain every single thing I do in my performance? Should I explain yet another thing I do out there so that you can try and take the piss out of my performance at night? “I didn’t fuck her, fer chrissakes!” But even at fifty, after going through two marriages, I didn’t have enough brains to go, “Wow, well, this is so over!” and end things with Teresa. I had beautiful Chelsea and Taj, and I wanted the dream to go on.

I’ve been in a band most of my life, and if you live like that you don’t have normal things happen to you—like
weekends.
Rock stars don’t get weekends, time when you can stop being the guy on the lip of the stage. When I had kids at home I’d think,
I’ve gotta get up early like other fathers—mow the lawn, take out the trash.
When I’d fuck up I’d feel bad and call Joe Perry, who doesn’t get up until one o’clock. “I’m a rock star,” he’d say. “Have you forgotten who
you
are?”

Compared to most men who come home every night to their wives and their kids and all that delicious everydayness of normal life, I’m at a disadvantage. Oh yeah! The whole rock star business—combined with the basic male impulse of wanting to fuck anything that moves—does put a kink in the ideal of domestic bliss and the till-death-do-us-part thing.

I would goggle down at the girls in the front row in the tight tank tops with their nipples sticking out like rocket boosters, because that’s
my job.
My job onstage is to be sexy, that’s what I am! It’s the equivalent of me saying to my wife, “Why are you such a whore in bed?” To which she’d say, “Well, it’s only in the bedroom.” “Well, with me, it’s only onstage!” “Well, no it isn’t! You’re looking at them like that out here in the parking lot, too!” “I am?” So now I’m bad for being naughty onstage, bad for flirting with girls at home, bad for arguing with her about it. . . .

Everything to do with women is a negotiation, because it’s based on sex. Your boss can tell you, “Show up, suit up, shut up.” But you can’t exactly say that to the woman you want to fuck tonight.

In this world, you know, it’s “size doesn’t matter” and “sex isn’t everything,” but then why is cheating in a marriage the final straw? (And by the way,
fuck
is no longer one word. It’s
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!
Or FUCK, you’re gorgeous! It is so expressive, it’s
Fuuuuuuck!
)

It’s funny. Getting married, it’s all “I, Betty, take Joe . . . better or worse . . . death or sickness.” Excuse me? Did you say better or worse? And then you divorce him? Didn’t you take a vow? Weren’t we supposed to learn compassion and forgiveness from the Pope? Didn’t the Pope once go visit the guy in the hospital who shot him? So how come I can’t get none?

Why would a man and a woman who call themselves soul mates ever leave each other over something as frivolous as sex? The wife, in a high-pitched voice, says, “Well, ’cause it’s deeper than that, Steven. It’s really a trust issue.” And that means if I fuck around, you can take all the money out of my account and sell all the animals? Excuse me, but what does a hand job have to do with my bank account? Suddenly they’ve forgotten everything except that laundry list of what they don’t like about you?

As soon as I left my Teresa I became sexually active. Sad to say, but everyone said, “Wow! You seem so happy now!” And I thought,
Hell, yeah!
I can go to character breakfasts at Disneyworld now. Whereas in the past,
someone
didn’t want to go. Or whatever it is you like to do and she doesn’t. Or vice versa!

Your girlfriend, your wife, they’re supposed to be your soul mate but you really never know. When you’re in therapy you find out that you often do things in life out of necessity. Naturally, I didn’t want to hear that. There comes a time in a man’s life when he realizes he’s not getting any younger—I think I’ll marry this girl. And if you tell her she’s your soul mate, she’ll love you even more. Hey, we like to raise goats together, live in the country, eat brown rice, pet the old donkey. And isn’t it funny how we found out that we both like—?

And then one day she catches you fucking somebody else and it’s “I never did like that fucking donkey! You and your fucking donkey. You and your fucking chickens. I never fucking liked them and I’m bummed out that you never
sensed
that I didn’t like them [
sniff
].”

And you go, “Oh my god, but . . . I thought that we were soul mates.”

“Fuck you and your soul mate shit.” And in a second, they’re gone. . . . In a fucking heartbeat. Any guy that’s caught fucking, suddenly everything that the wife loved him for . . .
gone
!

Behind every great rock star there’s the rock star’s wife, drop-dead gorgeous, walking around in a thong—the kind of gorgeous woman you jerked off to in
Playboy,
but after two hours in a room with her you’d lose your mind. She’s belittling the rock star, humiliating him, you wonder how that rock star could be with her. Because men are imprinted. They just want to get laid. It’s a slammin’ thing. Why does a guy who’s the president of the bank want to suck on a high-heeled spike while she’s smacking him on his ass with a riding crop that’s leaving welts?

I’m half man, half woman. Most men are 80 percent man,
woo-hoo-woo-hoo-woo,
like an ape. There’s not a lot of female emotion evoked in most males. My generation grew up in a John Wayne world, the macho cowboy or the GI going, “I don’t want anyone to touch my bitch! I don’t want anyone to touch my female!” What a crazy fucking thing is that? It’s all male ego run riot.
Gzooom!

I like to jerk off, I like to come! Who gives a fuck what gets you off? Gays love me! I walk into a roomful of queens and go, “Oh, you found me!” Still, I got to tell them, “Don’t even think about hittin’ on me. I’m a breeder and you know it.” Gay sex just doesn’t do it for me. I tried it one time when I was younger, but I just didn’t dig it. The idea of some guy pulling my hair back, biting my ear, and shoving his cock in my ass doesn’t appeal to me.

Sex is the strongest force in the universe. Forget about the Grand Unifying Theory, Stephen Hawking, I’ll tell you what it is: women. Aren’t women the strongest sex? What force is more magnetic than that? It’s not just pussy. We’re attracted to women for their energy. We’re attracted to their fluidness, their ability to nurture a baby without even knowing how, to be able to put up with screaming and crying and colic and shitty diapers where men would go, “I’m fuckin’ outta here! I’m gonna go kill me a saber-toothed woolly mammoth an’ bring it on home to eat tonight.
Wa-haaaaaa!
” We don’t have tits; we couldn’t nourish a gnat.

Hooo-hoooo!
Based on testosterone alone, guys are fucked. Most women are—can be—a little nuts upstairs, but they’re basically nurturers, and we are, used to be, were created to hunt. We’re created to be Ted Nugent. For a million years we did the hunting. We didn’t sharpen our spears and sign a
contract
! Kill the fucking animal! Blood, guts, blurt. That’s why women crawled to the back of the cave and had their babies. So the male wouldn’t
eat
the baby. Animals do it! We’re not far from that. There’s something going on: in all of our fightings, we have not been able to find that cranial capacity to go from the monkey brain to ours. It kills me. I just
kills
me. Very rarely will you find a compassionate man who’ll say, “I’m sorry,” or cry. Hell, you join the women doing that! “What’re you, a faggot? You’re gay? Be a man!” I mean, wow! I’d rather be gay, if that’s what gay is: smell the flowers, like to suck on my thumb, cry, smile big.

We keep the vagina hidden. It’s too strong in our society. Jesus and Mary Magdalene—it says “and he kissed her” and the rest is scratched out. He kissed her
what
? Her lips, her hands? We all know what the Holy Grail was, it was a vagina. Now that really is mystical. Those guys, the Knights Templar, are looking into the chalice—like that scene in
Basic Instinct
where Michael Douglas can’t look at Sharon Stone’s pussy—and they go into a swoon. What do you mean the chalice was gold with rubies. Please! Whatever the God force is, it certainly isn’t in a golden box! Gold
we
made. Heaven and hell, we invented. Put
that
in the gold box.

Fucking-A women are different. They can have babies. They can nurture. Nurturing is part of a woman’s DNA. But what about remembering anniversaries—is that part of their genetic makeup, too? Even tough chicks like my girlfriend, Erin Brady, get sentimental and pissed off when you don’t remember. Last time I was in England with Erin, I got in trouble for that. We were doing the English equivalent of the Grammys. Oasis was playing that night. Well, unfortunately, this big night was also Erin’s birthday or our anniversary or something. See? I’m already in trouble because even now I don’t remember which one it was.

Whatever it was, I realized it along the way or someone told me. A little red flag went up in my mind. “Oh, my god!” So I called the hotel and said, “Give her some flowers.” But she got it in her head that I took the flowers off a counter or that they otherwise hadn’t actually come from me, which in a way . . .

“Erin, you gotta understand. I’m getting ready to do the Grammys, my head is in the clouds, I don’t know
what
I’m doin’, let alone to say Happy Birthday.” Or was it our anniversary? Hey, I probably even messed up on the apology. “Listen, I miss my own kids’ birthdays,” I told her, “never mind what
day
it is.”

“Well, not with me!” I think she said.

Finally I go, “Oh,
o-kaaayyyyyy
.” We only broke up for ten minutes that day.

W
hen I started to make money I said to Teresa, “You know what, honey? Go buy whatever you want.” And she said, “Really, I can? Can we get, like, a
house
?” Oh, they forget all that! And then when I come home and say, “Look, honey, I was a little nasty on tour,” it’s “What-do-you-mean?” “What do you mean ‘what-do-you-mean?’ ” Why did I tell her? Because I’m a fucking idiot. Oh, I know what happened. I was in rehab, I was sober, I was trying to be honest about everything. In rehab they were telling me, “Well, you should tell her, but it’s not me that’s sayin’ you should.” I took their advice. Unfortunately.

It’s that word
but
. When they said to me, “
but
it’s not me that’s telling you to do it,” I should have known better.
But
is a scary word. It’ll get you every time. You know what my uncle said about the word
but
? It stands for “the basic underlying truth . . . is to follow.” So when you go, “I didn’t tell him,
but
. . . ,” it means you did tell him. And when you go, “I told him,
but
. . . ,” it means you didn’t tell him.

Isn’t it a crazy coincidence—or is it fate?—that my ex-wife Teresa was a twin and my girlfriend is also a twin? Hmm, maybe those seven-year-olds from the choir had something to do with it. When I was younger, if I ever ran into twins I’d say, “How about me and your sister getting together?” By the way, if I were on
Oprah
right now, I’d say, “Is there anyone out there who’s got twin sisters? E-mail my Web site tomorrow, let me know.” Oh, yeah, I don’t do e-mail.