Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (43 page)

Animals don’t have brains like ours and are easily impressed by big fake-outs. If you hold a blanket up to a bear, it’ll run away. They tell you, “Lay down.” Yeah, so it eats your ass?! No, you should go
“Arhhhh!,”
jump up and down, scream, grab a blanket, a big branch. Because an animal doesn’t know the branch isn’t you. Long ago humans found out how to extend their egos: If I build a building, it will be an extension of
meeeee
. People know it’s not you, but in some way it
is
you. Just like a song—that’s my feathers, my proud plumage.

I
t was March 2001 and I was on a quest for the Grand Pashmina—otherwise known as how a European tour almost got canceled on account of a six-hundred-pound garden ornament. I was up in Sunapee closing up the house. We had a week before going on to Europe to begin a tour. I was trying to lift a six-foot black feather lawn ornament made out of wrought iron. There was still permafrost in the ground, and in trying to move the fucker I pulled both sides of my back out. I couldn’t get out of bed without excruciating pain, and the thought was looming in my mind that we might have to cancel. The gear’s already on its way over there on a steamship. Just to get out of the bed, I’d have to roll on my side and then get on my hands and knees and then slowly get up. It is the worst pain on earth—the muscles were ruptured. I was under a cloud, just a looming sense of doom reawakening my fear of abandonment, the overwhelming feeling of I-know-not-what.

I went over to Europe anyway—to do a tour promotion. There I am in Munich, freaking fucking out. We get to the hotel and there’s the classic promoter’s assistant. They’re always a hoot. Sometimes you can play them like an old 45—right before the chorus, you lift off the needle because you know what it’s going to be: the thieving, lying voice of the promoter. You try to weasel under the thread of their spiel and get into whatever is actually going on. But on this trip it wasn’t drugs I was after—I was in search of the Grand Pashmina.

It’s a soft, woven cloth made from the underbelly of goats up in the Himalayas. Every night when the stars shine, their fur glistens with tiny sparks of light. I bought one for six hundred bucks. It was about three feet wide and six feet long, so it could cover me completely, and when I pulled up on it, it was like empress chinchilla, softer than the folds of a clit. And that took my pain away for a minute, and then it all came back horribly, gruesomely, and I finally broke down and said to the promoter’s assistant, “Look, I’m in agony, I can’t move, I won’t be able to perform. My back is fucking killing me.” And she goes, “Ah! Shtop right zere!” She knows about everything in München: legal, illegal, hookers, drugs, record albums, Americanisch food.
“Ach, geh scheiss in deinen hut!”
she said. Literally, “Oh, go shit in your hat!” But basically, fuck off! And I said, “Really? Thank you!” But then she took me to this doctor who took care of the Munich football team, huge guys who play in the games against England’s Chelsea Arsenal and all that. I walk in and there are six blondes from hell, German blondes. I went,
Fuck!
In the doctor’s office I’m lying down on the operating table and I say, “Doc, are you fuckin’ kidding with these nurses? How do you work with these gorgeous women?” He goes, “Vell, you should see my vife.” “No, but really, what’s goin’ on with them? Is this—? Are you—? If you’re not careful I’m going to throw ’em in the back room in a few minutes and—” “
Nein,
das ist not so good to do,” he says. “Dis is vat I got here for you.” And he shows me this concoction that he’s going to use to take care of my pulled back. “I deal vith dis all za time. In two ho-wars it vill be all ofer.” I said, “What?” “Yah, two ho-wars. I just came from America doink the seminar and I showed zem za procedure but zer insurances wouldn’t allow it, because ve do injections in your backbone. Zere, zere, zere, zere, zere, und zere.”

He’s pointing to the bottom of the spine, on each side of the spine, close to the spine itself. You put a needle in a quarter inch, because the spinal cord’s
inside
the bone. There’s a little divot there before it goes to your rib cage, a little bit of meat. I’m a little scared and I say, “Can you show me the bottle?” “All right. Read zis.” So he goes out and takes care of another patient, and ten minutes later I’ve read the whole back and it’s a bizarre concoction, a mixture of ground-up liquid rooster comb, shark cartilage, stuff like that and another chemical, butopinexopropophine or something. Shark cartilage, rooster, whatever, but that fleshy substance—that’s the shit! People swear by shark cartilage here in America. Buto-whatever had helped me out for a while, it’s a supplement for cartilage, for back pain, knee pain, joint pain, basically a joint pain supplement. But now I’m getting the great kahuna of all supplements: the cockrilcombsharkcartilegebutoprophine shot. I was scared shitless.

I was very much in the middle of should-I-do-it-or-not, and just at that moment I said, “All right, fuck it, do it!” He comes in and he gives me a series of twelve shots, on either side of the backbone, like L–9, L–10, whatever. A shot of Novocain first, then the injections after. Then they brought me into another room that was like a closet with a really soft doctor’s table and a bottle hanging from the ceiling. “What’s this?” “Oh, don’t worry. It’s amino acids. It helps in healing.” Well, that’s
another
thing America doesn’t do. A half hour, forty-five minutes later, I’m peeing in the bathroom and I noticed my back was still a little tight, but it didn’t hurt. Back to the hotel room, watched some TV, went to bed, woke up the next morning . . . pain gone. I’m telling you,
gone
.

B
ack problems seem mild compared to our days of yore, the Aerosmith days of rape and pillage through Europe. I remember one time in the late seventies when we so destroyed a hotel in Germany that Interpol was waiting for us
in the next country.
We were in Rotterdam and it was “What seems to be the problem, officers?” “
Us,
international fugitives? What do you mean?” Send lawyers, guns, and money. . . .

No back problems among the savage roadies in those days, either. Once when we were in Paris the crew were caught in a traffic jam with a bus full of gear. A Citroën had overheated and was smoking in the middle of Rue Foche or some such froggy place, so the roadies just lifted the car up bodily, put it on the sidewalk, and proceeded to the concert site without missing a beat.

Of course in those days they were superhuman, fortified by chutzpah, lust, and pharmaceuticals. When a doctor came backstage at an Aerosmith concert in those days, they’d say, “Trapper’s here!” And a handful of the crew guys would go over to him, get their teeth taken out quick, and go, “Oh, man, my tooth fell out yesterday!” Bloody their mouth up a little and get OxyContin prescriptions! They’re a fucking bunch of carneys, me included. But I’d get the bill and it would be for six hundred bucks.

What’s right down from Russia? Ukraine? No, Keep going. Toward England. Yeah, Finland.
“Hello Finland!”
We played Helsinki and a bunch of other provinces around there. In the Eastern Bloc, I’m looking around and it’s like girls from hell. High cheekbones, blond hair, natural blondes—dirty, but not sewn in and not stripperlike. Real dirty blond hair with rug to match and you just wanted to get down and root for taters. These girls were
gothic.

There’s a name for a girl that shaves her puss because she’s that sexually active and it’s called “Please, Will You Marry Me.” It’s the ones with the tattoo down there, the tramp stamp, the Aerosmith logo with the wings, that are really hot to trot. Or else that have a tattoo with Chinese characters that you don’t know what the fuck it says.
Harder,
maybe?

If someone did a study of rock stars . . . Perhaps I should create a chair of Rock Star Sexual Studies at some university. Have them write papers on the sexuality of Keith Richards, Slash, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Janis. The boys that Janis loved—and the girls. You’d find that all these rock types have a certain kind of overzealous DNA, a bug-eyed hairy monster gene that leers out of their mom’s pussy the moment they’re born. Hey, we grew up on R. Crumb. We have that head space.

Everyone wants to see other people naked. I just don’t want to see my schlong on YouTube. I have a guy, Juan, do my dressing rooms because there’s a camera in the wall somewhere waiting till I take my pants off. Fuck yeah!

Okay, put on our next CD . . .
Just Push Play.

I
t’s 2001—the new millennium, the New! Improved! Aerosmith! I’m writing “Jaded” with Joe. I’m in Joe’s basement, recording, and I ask him, “What’re we doin’ this weekend?” Now, Joe, because he doesn’t get thick into lyrics and write melody, says, “I’m taking a break. My wife and I are going to the movies.” And I think, well, shit, Teresa is going to be fucking furious with me because we’re
not
going to the movies. I can’t just stop writing lyrics in the middle of a song. I can’t sing,
“Hey, jaded, you got your mother’s smi-ile, but your”
—and then answer the phone and just resume what I was writing:
“You’ve got your mother’s style, but you’re yesterday’s child to-o me-e, so jaded. . . .”
It’s like climbing a rope out of a well—do you stop halfway to answer your cell phone with your foot?

When you’re in a train of thought like that, you want to keep going. So I went up to Sunapee with my friend the songwriter Marti Frederiksen and left Joe and Billie at home to go to the movies. Then I have to deal with Teresa yelling at me about if they’re taking the weekend off, why don’t you? There’s a little bit of that sideways anger I have toward Joe and his wife leaking out. But it’s just what I have to walk through to get that song out.

I’m with Marti Frederiksen, we’re out on the lake in a canoe, and we’re writing “Jaded.” Monday we come back, we start in with the band again, and Joe realizes that I’ve written the song without him. Marti was staying at his house and someone in the family read Marti the riot act for being a traitor and writing a song when Joe wasn’t there. But, you know, behaviors can be forgiven and you got to forgive them, they were high.

Little did I know at the time that Aerosmith’s fate depended on that song. According to Donny Ienner, if we hadn’t come up with that hit, Sony was getting ready to drop us. Period. He said those words to me: “If you hadn’t had that song on
Just Push Play,
we would have dropped you.” That’s pretty heavy. Shit. But stop me! I can’t write from anger. I’m trying to be the lovely
sober
Stevie that’s glowing, the placenta waters pouring over me.

With songwriters, when one of you comes up with a line, a riff, the other guy doesn’t go, “Oh, shit, he’s getting all the credit for this.” Someone picks a little bit of inflection that you said and says something that you would have never thought of, and that propels you, the song builds, you climb up another rung. You’re a man possessed! You can’t even stop to wee-wee! Writing “Jaded”—was it out of anger?

When you write a song with somebody you’re evoking the spirits of a moment in time, flecks of words, tunes, riffs hovering in the air, trip wire, seconds where you sing. When I heard Joe play that riff, I knew where to hang my hat.

Hey j-j-jaded, you got your mama’s style

But you’re yesterday’s child to me

So jaded

You think that’s where it’s at

But is that where it’s supposed to be

You’re gettin’ it all over me X-rated

My my baby blue

Yeah I been thinkin’ about you

My my baby blue

Yeah you’re so jaded

And I’m the one that jaded you

C
yrinda died on September 7, 2002. Let a song go out of my heart.

When bad things happen, people tend to go, “God. It’s God. God did everything. There are no coincidences, and everything that happens happens for a reason.” Well, I sure don’t think Cyrinda should have died from a brain tumor! Was it me? Should I have made my first marriage last, no matter what, till death do us part? Should I have made that work? Well, sad to say I’m not a good candidate for saving a bad marriage. I could barely keep my head above water myself in those days. Or should I have, when I was in rehab, forced her to go into rehab with me? “Your toothbrush is packed and you’re leaving tomorrow.” That one really haunts me. I told her, “I’ll send the plane,” but Cyrinda did not want to go. Who does? I should have gone and gotten her myself. That might have worked, but I don’t know. Until people are ready to stop, it doesn’t work. And even then it rarely works.