by Joe Perry
It was a miracle that all of us got sober. I never thought I’d ever be able to play without something in me. Steven’s sobriety was especially miraculous. Here was a guy who, back in school, used to get high by sticking the teeth of a comb into a cigarette and smoking the plastic. He was hard-core.
Our sobriety was a great thing, strengthened by the fact that we did it together. We helped one another by example. There was peer pressure, but in many ways the peer pressure was positive.
Yet this new arrangement, spearheaded by the wildly ambitious and always brilliant Tim Collins, was not without a corrosive element. Within a few years that element would undermine our progress and create new havoc for the band. In the mid-eighties, though, I didn’t recognize that element. I had Billie; our new son, Tony; and Aaron. Fortunately, the visits with Adrian had smoothed out. The family I had always wanted had come together. I was reunited with Aerosmith and blind to the ways in which my bandmates and I were being manipulated.
VACATION IN VANCOUVER
My sobriety had a positive impact on much more than my music and the eventual resurgence of Aerosmith. Sobriety led to a renewal of a spirit that had long left me. I was able to renew my relationship with those essential elements—the woods, the water, the wonder of science, and the mysteries of nature—that had consumed me as a child. With clear eyes, I was now able to view these phenomena again, only this time as an adult. The wonder was still there. And my passion for music was stronger than ever.
In good faith, I can’t completely decry drugs. Drugs brought me excitement and at times fueled my creativity. But when they stopped working, they destroyed my peace of mind. I looked downward, not upward, ignoring the stars at night. Once I was free of drugs, the simple pleasures returned: I was able to appreciate a day of blue sky, an afternoon walk in the woods, holding my infant son Tony in my arms, holding the hand of my beautiful wife, renewing my fascination with the sea, snorkeling, fishing, and hunting. I began thinking of things I’d wanted to do since childhood—like commanding a prop plane over a New England landscape when the leaves turn red and gold in fall. I took flying lessons and went on ski trips and diving excursions, all of which were more enjoyable with a clear mind and an open heart. Mostly, though, I was focused on two primary goals—working hard to help bring Aerosmith back to the top, and enjoying a stable and happy family life.
Aaron’s dad moved down the street from us to help Billie care for their son, now a teenager. So when we traveled, Aaron stayed with his father and continued his schooling, occasionally visiting us on the road. As soon as we came home, Aaron moved in with us.
The fact that Elyssa had taken Adrian, at age six, and moved to California really messed up my relationship with my son. She seemed bound and determined to keep us apart. A clause in our divorce agreement gave me the right to make them stay in Boston. But given how we were always on the road, I knew that wouldn’t stand up in court. As Adrian grew older, he’d spend a few days out of the summer and holidays with us. I’d also see him when I came to L.A. But the separation between father and son deeply hurt us both.
The band got into the touring groove. We sold out two nights at the Greek in L.A., a milestone in our comeback. It was great to see attendance increasing. The Run-DMC thing was also great, although we saw it as a side adventure. Even if it hadn’t happened, we would have kept touring. But when we realized that this was the first time MTV had put rap artists in heavy rotation, we were especially gratified to be part of a positive historical change. We also didn’t understand the boost it gave to our career until we got to Europe, where many fans thought this was our first single ever! Who knew that this little riff that had come to me in Hawaii would still be making noise a decade later?
The success with the reworked “Walk This Way” was tremendous, but we needed a fresh hit. Done with Mirrors just didn’t have it. It sounded like we were warming up. It contained no smashes and caused no stir about a new and improved Aerosmith. We had to create that stir. So when John Kalodner suggested a new paradigm for recording and producing our new album, I listened. Given John’s track record, I’d have been foolish not to give his suggestions my full attention.
It wasn’t that the band didn’t argue with Kalodner. We argued passionately, especially when his ideas seemed to be taking us away from the essence of who we were—hard-core rockers. But at the same time, John was connected to the marketplace in a way that we were not. He knew what was selling and which producers and studios had the magic touch. So when he suggested that we go to Vancouver and work with the team assembled by Bruce Fairbairn, who had just produced Bon Jovi’s mega-selling Slippery When Wet, it didn’t take long for us to decide to go.
I loved Vancouver. It’s a world-class city surrounded by miles of forest and mountains and populated by beautiful people. As a creative hub, it had a great vibe, like a kind of Canadian L.A. Along with Billie and little Tony, I arrived two weeks early to get a sense of the studio and the people I’d be working with.
I was a little apprehensive about writing and playing completely sober. So when the riff to “Hangman Jury” came flying off an old funky Silvertone guitar I had found, I was relieved. The music was there. The music was always there. The music for “Hangman” reflected the rapport I’d always felt for Taj Mahal’s deep-rooted blues. I knew we were off to a good start. I kept telling myself that, as a sober kid, I had loved music. The excitement and drive were built in, not supplied by a bottle or a drug.
Bruce Fairbairn was an odd duck. He seemed to own only two pairs of pants and one shirt, which was decorated with a pattern of flying mallards. He wore dorky shoes and seemed pretty straight—at least, that was the side of himself he revealed to us. He was a stamp and coin collector who took time off each week to either buy new stuff or organize his collections. Little Mountain Sound studio, with its SSL soundboard, was funky but comfortable. You’d start on time—1 P.M. every afternoon—with Bruce exerting a quiet but firm control over the proceedings. I saw him as a coach. We had the energy, but he had the skill to harness it. He also had no fear of standing up to anyone—including Steven.
I went over to Jim Vallance’s studio to start work on new material. Jim was Bruce’s childhood friend and roller-skating partner from their days of busking together. He could play virtually any instrument, but he was primarily a songwriter. Over the coming years we’d wind up writing many songs together. When Steven arrived, it was Jim who helped us find the final form to “Hangman Jury.” Writing with Vallance was fun. He was one of the first guys I knew to use an Apple computer, generating all sorts of electronic sounds that kicked my creativity into high gear. With his late-model drum machine spitting out rhythm after rhythm, I found it easy to write riffs. It was a lot like when Steven would play drums in the early days.
To get the hits we were all looking for, Kalodner wanted us to work not only with Fairbairn and Vallance but with the same writer who had cowritten those smash songs I had heard in rehab—“Livin’ on a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.” That was Desmond Child, a charismatic guy who had put together Desmond Child & Rouge, a pop band, in the seventies. Kalodner’s idea was that Desmond could help Steven with his lyrics. Not all that willing to reduce our ownership of the songs with a third partner, we fought the idea at first but eventually decided to give Desmond a chance. Good decision. Desmond was a skilled tunesmith.
In the case of the breakout cut from this record—“Dude (Looks like a Lady)”— Desmond served primarily as song doctor. After I’d composed the AC/DC–inspired music for “Dude” with Steven, Desmond came up with the great title that triggered Tyler’s cross-gendered story. For the first time, we’d been fooling around with a sampler—that’s how we created the truncated sound that starts off the track.
There were long discussions about sharing ownership. Finally, Desmond’s logic made sense to me: If you have a giant factory that breaks down because of one missing part, what is the worth of that part? A great deal. Desmond provided that par
t and wound up owning a third of the song. But the money was the least of it. Our reluctance to let an outsider dilute our sound with their influence was mostly an ego thing, especially for Steven. I had no problem coming up with riffs and music, but it just seemed to get harder for Steven to settle down and write lyrics. In the end, because “Dude” became one of the biggest in our history, we appreciated that Desmond had helped get our factory up and working again.
Up until this point Steven and I had been a two-man songwriting team. I concentrated on finding riffs that would inspire Steven. I was always there to support him until he came up with the lyrics. But after finishing “Dude,” we felt more comfortable working with outside writers. That dynamic changed, though, when I walked into the rehearsal room as Steven and Desmond were finishing a song that would become “Angel.” I was stunned. I would have expected Steven to have called me and said, “We’re working on something. Come on over.” But no. The song was completed without me, setting a new precedent that has continued until this day: Steven and I were a songwriting team only when it was convenient for Steven.
When Steven didn’t get around to helping me finish the lyrics for a piece of music I had written, it was Desmond who stepped in to complete “Heart’s Done Time,” a song inspired by my love for Billie.
“Rag Doll” was born out of another collaboration. Steven, Vallance, and I had the song written except for the title. Holly Knight came in and named it. Again, we willingly shared credit evenly, not only because Holly earned it, but because the machine was humming along so efficiently. If you had something to do with the writing of the song, it was split evenly. That took the pressure off any credit disputes and let the creativity flow. And since the band would ultimately play the song, no matter how it started, it always ended up sounding like Aerosmith.
One of our most successful collaborations yielded the final track, “The Movie,” an instrumental jam I initiated from a guitar synthesizer. When I was fooling with the synth, in my mind’s eye I was imagining a film—a moody thriller shot in Sweden or Poland, one whose language was not my own but whose narrative had me enthralled. The resulting song was an example of what we could produce when everyone in the band—including Steven on keyboards—worked together on a single vision.
Collins was a neophyte in the music business, but he had a brilliant mind for knowing what he didn’t know. He surrounded himself with people who had the knowledge he lacked. He called them his Brain Trust. Keith Garde, for example, who had begun as Tim’s assistant, rose to the position of virtual co-manager. Keith was brilliant, especially when it came to videos and new technology. He also had great expertise in dealing with the press. The office staff claimed that the originality of Keith’s ideas was co-opted by Collins, who, due to his insatiable ego, required all the credit. The co-opting was done subtly and without our knowledge. But then we heard Keith was doing the same with ideas from the staff under him. Already, things were getting weird on the management side. Ego, raising its ugly head. Also, Collins’s original partner Steve Barrasso’s name mysteriously came off the door of his office. Collins explained that the pressure of managing us was too much for him, and he decided to leave the company.
Another key member of the Brain Trust was Marty Callner, the director who made certain that the video component to Permanent Vacation was as strong as the music itself. If Kalodner was the main impetus for our new crop of hit songs, Marty was the man behind our new crop of hit videos. To make it back to the top, we needed both components. Before Marty, we thought we could do it all by ourselves—write, produce, and direct. But our self-styled video for “Let the Music Do the Talking” from Done with Mirrors was probably not shown more than twice. No doubt, we needed Marty.
Marty had experience with hair bands like Whitesnake and knew what it took to create an MTV-friendly video. The process would start with all of us sitting in a room and kicking around concepts. Marty wasn’t big on specifics; he was a broad-strokes painter; no storyboards or outlines. But there was a willingness on his part to involve us in every aspect of the video. His thing was, Let’s just get out there and shoot. And man, did he love to shoot film—rolls and rolls of film. He shot “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” the first single, in a concert setting with dozens of takes, including one with Steven in drag. In another shot, long-bearded John Kalodner trades in his all-white suit for an all-white bridal gown. Billie once again took on the role of the saxophone-playing blonde. The theme, of course, was switched-up sex roles, narrated with humor and high-powered energy.
“Rag Doll,” another high-priced Marty Callner video from Permanent Vacation, had us winging down to party in the bordello-happy ambience of New Orleans. We wore Mardi Gras Native American headdresses while scantily clad pretty young things ran around the French Quarter. At four in the morning, I was sent out into the middle of Bourbon Street to play my guitar. MTV played the shit out of the video, and thanks also to “Dude” and the perpetually popular Run-DMC/Aerosmith “Walk This Way,” we were on TV screens all across the Western world.
These were the days when videos were starting to cost a million bucks to shoot. Neither MTV nor the label paid. We paid. MTV, who had no qualms about exploiting their monopoly, got free programming; the label got free ads; and, ultimately, if the video worked, we saw an increase in record sales. If we were going to compete in this new age where jewel-boxed CDs and splashy videos were all the rage, we had no choice but to absorb the costs, though it did seem that the network was ripping off the bands. What’s new . . .
In the winter of 1987 we hit the road. With these new songs from Permanent Vacation getting strong radio and television attention, the press began talking about our rebirth as an accomplished fact. It felt great to perform in front of big crowds that included both older and newer generations of fans.
But it didn’t feel so great to have Collins monitor us as if we were schoolchildren. We understood that sobriety was now part of the band’s narrative. We saw that nearly every press report included the story of Aerosmith getting clean. That was fine. We recognized the importance of staying on the straight and narrow. But Collins’s need to control every aspect of our lives was becoming apparent. When we played L.A., he’d book us into a hotel down in Laguna Beach. If we stayed on the Sunset Strip, he feared we’d be too close not only to the party people, but to managers whom he saw as his competition. He and his minions—especially our road manager, who acted as a Collins spy—were constantly monitoring our attendance of twelve-step meetings, cleaning out the minibars in our hotel rooms, and making sure that there were no drugs or alcohol backstage. Our every move was being watched. We didn’t need to hear Collins continually say, “If you don’t stay sober, you’ll ruin everything.”
We knew full well that we had regained our financial and creative footing. But because we didn’t want to lose what had been tough to regain, we probably didn’t want to recognize the fact that we were in the hands of an overly controlling manager whose machinations were slowly creeping into our private lives. Our minds were being conditioned. Without such a strict program, we feared that this sensational comeback would crumble. We saw the statistics. The odds of one person staying sober were small. But five guys? Unheard-of. We were doing something no band had ever done before. Dozens of groups had died or faded away. In this business, no one gets a second chance. Yet we were more successful than ever.
We were also back into the rhythm of the road, where things happened fast and furiously: performing before huge crowds, flying from city to city, being interviewed, applauded, and congratulated. It felt great that we were able to put the past behind us. Our focus was on our day-to-day work. The five of us had reclaimed the Aerosmith magic.
In the summer of 1988, the story took another twist when we learned through Collins that David Geffen and John Kalodner wanted Guns N’ Roses to open our shows. Their first album, Appetite for Destruction, out on Geffen Records, had begun to sell. The video for the single “Welcome to the Jungle” was explodi
ng on MTV. I heard the band as balls-to-the-wall rock and roll. I was blown away by their sound and flattered when they talked about our influence on their music. Slash talked about Rocks as the seminal album in his life. Axl praised Steven to the sky. If they represented the next generation of rock, I was gratified because that put us squarely in the continuum. Beyond that, I liked the guys and was glad to have them on the tour.
But then the bullshit started. We started hearing stories that we insisted they could have no booze or drugs. Maybe our manager made that demand, but we never did. We didn’t presume to have dominion over any band other than ourselves; what they did was their business. We treated them like adults, even as our management was infantilizing us. I wasn’t embarrassed or shy about my sobriety. But I also wasn’t a braggart or a Bible thumper. I don’t believe in trying to convert the world to my way of life. The last thing in the world that baby bands like Guns N’ Roses want to hear is preaching. Besides, preaching doesn’t work. Just as the addiction drama suffered by Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix or Keith Moon had not straightened me out, I lacked the ability to straighten out anyone else. You learn through living, not through preaching.
In short, although we were sober, we were hardly sobriety Nazis. And to see us described as such in press reports, with Collins leading the charge, really pissed me off. Guns N’ Roses could get as fucked up as they wanted—and with no repercussions from us.
Billie and Tony came with me on tour. I was into a whole new way of dealing with the road. No more crazy man looking for new highs, just a crazy rock and roller passionate about music. Billie and I were also passionate about raising our son right. Because the Aerosmith plane was too small to accommodate our families, Billie and Tony had to take commercial flights to keep up with the band. It was rough traveling; Billie worked overtime to make sure that things ran smoothly at home while making the transition to life on the road with our boys.