by Joe Perry
The songs were in place. Steven had been banging those chords to “Dream On” for well over a year. He played them over and again on the piano until we knew them as well as he did. Brad and I transposed the guitar parts from his piano licks. I didn’t know the least thing about voicing. I just winged it. I wasn’t crazy about the song—mainly because it was slow. My attitude was simple: The only good slow song is a slow blues. “Dream On” was hardly a blues. It was a slow song in a genre that didn’t excite me. The five of us worked that song to the point where it became a live showstopper with the right dynamics. So it fit in with the rest of the record.
Tom and I turned Steven on to an album by a band called Blodwyn Pig, formed by the original guitarist from Jethro Tull. Steven had the lyrics and, inspired by that album, finished “Mama Kin.” “Mama Kin” was always around. We all liked it. We knew the material like the back of our hands: “Movin’ Out,” “Make It,” “Somebody,” “Write Me,” “Walkin’ the Dog.” But in recording the songs, something got lost. Steven treated the sessions as if they were rehearsals, going for perfection rather than letting the band cut loose like a live gig. That undercut our spontaneity. It would take us years to understand the vital role of spontaneity in recording.
But Steven wasn’t alone. We were all grappling with our technical demons. None of us knew the mysterious relationship between music and machines.
Our producer was practically useless. He had little input. When I heard the playback, I kept thinking, We’re better than this. We should sound better than this. We’re being recorded wrong. We sound fuckin’ flat. But because I lacked the studio chops to prescribe a remedy, I kept quiet. It pained me, though, that my guitar voice was not cutting through.
Steven’s singing voice wasn’t either. I was surprised that he was so nervous. After all, he’d recorded before. But that didn’t ease his discomfort. His insecurity was forcing him into a different persona. He overdid it and, compared to his natural singing voice, his voice on the record sounded affected.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this first record. There’s magic on it, but just not the magic I had envisioned. It’s an accurate snapshot of who we were at the time—young, hungry, and determined to make our mark.
Unfortunately the packaging was lame. We didn’t even see the cover until the first printing. It was something that Columbia just threw together. We saw that “Walking the Dog” was listed as “Walking the Dig.” The whole thing was sloppy. It marked the start of our education in dealing with labels. Moreover, this particular label had little interest in promoting us compared to Bruce Springsteen, whose debut album came out the same week as ours. Unlike Aerosmith, Springsteen was tailor-made for Columbia. He came out of the Dylan tradition. The label publicists had a field day promoting him. The public was ready for a rock hero with Bruce’s look and sound. We got the idea that Columbia didn’t think the public was ready for us.
If the release of a record is the birth of a band, ours was a stillbirth. We kept running to the newsstand to pick up Rolling Stone and read a review. But Rolling Stone never ran one. It’s one thing to have your debut criticized; it’s even worse to have your debut ignored. We were pissed.
But we knew that we were onto something, because every time we played a new town the audience went wild. And we were always asked back. When we played a venue we had played before, the crowds were bigger. The evidence was right in front of our faces. Fans were digging us.
It was Frank who booked us in Revere, Massachusetts, back then a tough beach town where bank robbers and assorted felons felt right at home. For a time we were the house band at Scarborough Fair, a big rock club partly owned by Frank, where we played two or three times a week. Connected to the club was a bar used as a hangout for local gangsters. During the bleak winter season, Revere became a haven for bikers looking to smash heads.
At one of our shows Steven, not famous for restraint of tongue, had words with one of the biker chicks coming out of the ladies’ room. I don’t know the exact lead-up to the line, but when he said, “Honey, your string is hanging,” I knew trouble was brewing. Her boyfriend was the leader of a murderous biker gang. When she told her honey about the insult, word quickly got back that not just Steven but all of Aerosmith were going to be dealt with.
Frank flew into action. “Boys,” he said, “we must flee, and flee at once.”
First he put out the word that we would be leaving through the rear exit. Then, recruiting his gangster friends from the connecting bar to help, he had us leave through the front door, where a car sped us out of harm’s way. Once again, Frank saved our asses.
Frank had to save our asses still another time. Ironically, our adversary was our friend Gary Cabozzi. We loved Gary. His out-of-his-mind James Brown gyrations to our music will forever be part of Aerosmith folklore. He had been our protector. But as time went on, his protective tactics proved too crude. Frank felt it best that Gary be replaced by John O’Toole. Near as I can recall, I was recruited to tell Gary the bad news. I decided not to do it in person. I knew Gary would flip out and lose it. Better to do it by phone.
“Hey, man,” I said. “It isn’t that we don’t love you, because we do. And it isn’t that we don’t appreciate everything you’ve done for us, because we do. You were there in the beginning and we’ll never forget that.”
“What the fuck are you trying to say, Joe?”
“All I’m saying is that things have changed and Frank wants to streamline our operation. Frank thinks it’s better for everyone if John O’Toole does our road management.”
“I like John,” said Gary. “I’ve been working with him. I’ll keep working with him. What’s the problem?”
“That’s just the point, Gary. There is no problem. We just want to keep working with John and Frank and, well, it doesn’t look like your job is necessary.”
“Not necessary? What the fuck do you mean? Is that what John and Frank said? If they did, I know you guys told them to go straight to hell, right?”
“Not exactly. Actually, we agree with John and Frank.”
“You’re firing me?”
“You don’t have to look at it that way. You can just see it as a change. Things are changing for us.”
“I tell you what’s gonna change,” said Gary. “Your life’s gonna change. Or let me put it another way—your life’s gonna end. And not just yours, Joe, but Steven’s and Tom’s and the whole lot of you miserable assholes. I don’t need to hear this shit, after what I’ve done for your band. I’ve sweated blood for you guys. And now I’m getting that blood back. I’m grabbing my shotgun and I’m coming after each of you lousy motherfuckers and I’m blowing your fuckin’ brains out.”
Given Gary’s nature, I didn’t doubt him. I immediately called Frank, who urged that we all get out of town. With Frank behind the wheel, we escaped to the Sheraton off the Mass Pike, the hotel known to locals as the Castle. We settled in a large suite and sat around debating the seriousness of Gary’s threat. In my heart I did not believe that Cabozzi would murder us in cold blood. But it was Frank’s sense of drama, not my sense of Gary, that led the way. After a couple of hours and a lot of scotches, Frank decided we should go to Giro’s and see John O’Toole.
At Giro’s, the North End steakhouse where we’d met Frank the first time, Connelly was king. He always received a celebrity welcome. Before long the bourbon was flowing and none of us was feeling any pain. An hour later, John O’Toole arrived.
“My good man, John,” said Frank. “Did you remember to bring the hardware?”
I watched O’Toole slip Frank a chrome-plated .44 Magnum. This was no Saturday night special, but the kind of outsize pistol favored by Roy Rogers. Frank stuffed the huge weapon in his belt. As the evening went on, the drinking intensified. With every shot of bourbon, thoughts of Gary Cabozzi faded. We felt safe.
“Look who just came in,” shouted Frank. “My dear friend Ricardo Montalban. You must meet him.”
With that, Frank got up an
d escorted us to Montalban’s table. As we made our way over, however, the .44 Magnum slipped out of Frank’s belt and fell to the floor. All action stopped. Every head turned. But Frank was cool. He picked up the gun, gracefully placed it back in his belt, and greeted the actor with great warmth.
“These are my boys,” he told Montalban, “the rock-and-roll band that will soon be conquering the civilized world.”
No one mentioned the gun, Montalban bought us drinks, and at evening’s end we were all drunk and convinced that the threat from Cabozzi was over. Fortunately, that proved true. Gary’s love for us overwhelmed his rage. Our friendship was eventually renewed.
Our hope was that Leber-Krebs would convince Columbia to put money behind our album. But hope isn’t muscle, and the truth is that, for all their bragging, our managers lacked muscle. The label, deeply in love with Springsteen, saw us as a throwaway. Later I’d learn they almost dropped us, but we were such a low priority they didn’t even bother doing that.
Back in Boston, Frank kept our spirits high. “Boys,” he said, “the battle has just begun. It’s going to be a long campaign and it can only be won on the road. Treat every city, every market, every performance like a battle. This is hand-to-hand combat, gentlemen. This is trench warfare. So eat hearty. Drink hearty. Fortify yourself. Sharpen your swords and steel your determination. There is no going back. There is only forward motion. Victory will not be easy, but victory—bloody and hard-won—will be yours.”
We took these words to heart. The battle plan came down to one thing—the road. If they paid us to play, we’d play. And we vowed to play anywhere, everywhere, all the time, every night, all night, no matter how long it took to get played on the radio, no matter how long it took get people to start buying our record.
Normally we’d go on the road from one to three weeks at a time. Sometimes we drove ourselves—just the five of us. On longer stretches John O’Toole would come along. As 1972 turned to 1973, this was still the era when every city had its version of the Fillmore, old theaters that had been converted to rock clubs that held anywhere from five hundred to three thousand fans. These were fabled venues that excited our imaginations, given that we were rock fans ourselves—the big Masonic Temple in Detroit; the rock palaces of Pittsburgh, Philly, Toronto, and St. Louis. Night after night we played the shit out of our first album. Our live performances were ten times better than the record. The musical energy was high, we were high, the fans were high.
The groupie phenomenon was still in full swing, but given my relationship with Elyssa, I was even less interested than before. If a chick was willing to jump into my bed, that only meant she had jumped into the bed of another musician the night before. Contracting the clap was as common as a hangover. I wasn’t looking to score chicks. I was looking to score fans. I wanted every last person who came to our show to remember us. After the shows, we’d sit in our dressing room and listen to the crowd leaving the venue. If we didn’t hear much noise, we were disappointed. But if we heard fans screaming with excitement—shouting out our lyrics over the sound of breaking bottles—we knew it was a good fuckin’ night.
On a rainy weekend afternoon on our way to a gig, our hearts started hammering when a cop pulled us over in New Jersey. The state trooper didn’t look much older than us. We thought he might give us a break. No such luck.
“Get out of the car,” he said before calling for backup.
The second we stepped out, the rain turned into a torrential downpour. While we stood there getting soaked, I remembered that back in Boston a friend had slipped me a joint that I’d stuffed into my pocket. My plan had been to give it to Brad, who loved weed. As it turned out, Brad had stuck two ounces of his own pot down his pants. When the second trooper arrived, they searched me, but not Brad, and discovered my joint. That gave them cause to haul us down to the local station, where we were lined up and chained by our hands to a wall. After a few minutes one of the troopers started shouting something about a Black Panthers riot in Newark. Just like that, cops were swarming everywhere, grabbing their shotguns, and heading out the door.
In the midst of the excitement, Steven whispered to Brad, “Give me your pot.”
“Why?”
“Just give it to me, goddammit.”
Because Steven was next to an open door, he was able to free his hands and throw the two bags of weed into the next room. In all the commotion, no one saw him to do it. We were relieved until we were unchained and escorted one at a time into that very room—the interrogation room—to be fingerprinted. When I got into the room I saw that the two bags of pot had landed on the corner of a table in full view. Somehow the troopers searching us didn’t see the pot, or maybe they figured it was evidence from another case. Who knows? Who cares? In the end, all they had was my one rain-soaked joint. A court date was set. The day we came back for the hearing, we were huddled around the motel TV watching the Watergate hearings. I said, “And you think we have problems!” Our problem was over quickly. Frank’s lawyer got the charges dropped. There was only a small fine to pay.
It was also Frank who found a pair of brothers with a couple of limos to take us on a three-week run through Ohio, playing every club in the state. Frank also replaced O’Toole with Robert “Kelly” Keller, whose stomach was the size of a small continent. Kelly consumed beer like elephants consume peanuts.
Steven wasn’t really a beer guy—his main things were Tuinals and shooting cocaine whenever cocaine was around—but Steven was competitive. Skinny Steven wanted to go toe-to-toe with fat Kelly. One night after a gig they got into it.
After twelve or more beers, Steven was gone. We put him to bed so he could sleep it off before we went to another one of our rooms to see how much damage could be done in ten minutes. The idea of wrecking a hotel room was a rite of passage. We’d heard that Led Zeppelin had done it and felt obligated to uphold the tradition. On this particular night beds were overturned. Sinks were pulled from the wall. Televisions, chairs, and desks were destroyed. Mission accomplished, we took off in our limo for the next gig. Tyler woke up the morning after to find two state policemen at his door. They weren’t going to let him leave until the damage—caused by us—was paid for. This was never our intention. We were going to send a limo back to pick up Steven and drive him to the venue. He said he climbed down a rainspout and hitchhiked, but with Steven, you never know. I have a feeling he slept off his hangover in the back of the limo like we had planned. He showed up at the gig and sang his ass off.
When you’re a baby band looking to open for a more prominent act, you can’t be choosy. Your hope is that their audience will become your audience. It’s a way to expand your fan base. But in the instance of our first tour with a name band, that didn’t happen. Our managers had us opening for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, whose sophisticated audience had no interest in what we were playing.
John McLaughlin, Mr. Mahavishnu, was an incredible guitarist of world stature, a virtuoso who had helped lead Miles Davis into fusion, a wildly creative meeting ground between rock and jazz. His cohorts—Billy Cobham on drums, Jan Hammer on keys, Rick Laird on bass, and Jerry Goodman on violin—were tremendous technicians. The band bordered on genius. They lit incense and burned candles and, dressed in white, looked like monks. Seeing them live was almost a religious experience. Not that they weren’t loud. McLaughlin had a mountain of Marshalls and let loose a sound you could hear three states away. Their music held nothing for me, but I appreciated their skill. And, unfortunately, their audience didn’t appreciate us. Their audience had come to hear musical masters, not some up-and-coming garage band.
Mahavishnu’s fans would boo us or call out “Vishnoo, Vishnoo, Vishnoo” during the middle of our set. I understood their frustration. But we still put on the best show we could. When we got through and the Mahavishnu men came out, they asked for a moment of silence, as if to purify the air that we had polluted with our rock-and-roll chaos. They then sounded a gong, whose echo was followed by an explosion of thei
r amazing music. Instantly, their crowd forgot that we had even played.
When we finally found ourselves opening for a more suitable act—the Kinks—it hardly helped our confidence. That’s because Ray Davies gave us no respect. He was known for treating his support acts like shit and proved true to form. Usually the headliner has no problem allowing the opening band a sound check. Not Davies. We had to go out there cold. No matter, crowd-wise it was a step up from Mahavishnu. Kinks fans heard what we were doing and liked it.
We had no real fans in the press. Most of the reviews—whether of our record or our live shows—made the Rolling Stones analogy. Mick had big lips and so did Steven. Standing right next to him was the dark, brooding lead guitarist. Only a very few writers took us seriously. Even fewer actually listened to us. The Point, a hippie paper in Providence, put Steven on the cover and wrote that we played like our lives depended on it. And Creem, the Detroit-based rock magazine who’d been hip to the Dolls before anyone, completely got us. They called us the real deal.
At the time of our emergence I wasn’t interested in defining our place in the musical landscape. We just wanted to play for the people. We wanted to work. But looking back, I have a different perspective. I see us as one of the first American bands to grow out of the heady concoction of blues-based English rock that had dominated the previous decade. Like everyone, we knew the Beatles’ and Stones’ stuff, and, like everyone, we absorbed it. But I really cut my teeth on Ten Years After, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, and the Yardbirds. These bands had the live energy that I wanted. Because these groups had either dissipated or moved to the sidelines, I saw a vacancy that Aerosmith could fill. We could put a new slant on the blues rock tradition and start a new fire to dance around. The critics didn’t get that, but fuck the critics. We were playing for the fans and they were getting it in a big way.