I went to lessons at the WWDU. A guy gave me a rubber thing with heavy sticks and I learned my rudiments . . . paradiddles and stuff. I listened to those Sandy Nelson records like the Beatles LPs when they came out. My head practically INSIDE the speaker, hanging on every movement, every nuance of soundage, REVELING in it. But at the end of one album, Sandy had this thing—like a cross between an 007 guitar and surf rock—a Ventures/Dick Dale rata-tat-tat, basically with accents. It’s all accents. He took the drum beat but gave it a twist, and that one thing was the turning point . . . the way he reversed the beat through the accents. I fucking lost it! “I gotta know that!” screamed the mouth within. So, like I said before, I got under the hood and learned it.
The first time I got up onstage to play was at the Barn. It must’ve been the summer of 1963. A group called the Maniacs were playing, and when they’d finished their set, they let me up onstage. “I’d like to introduce . . . Steven Tallarico.” I played the classic drum solo on “Wipeout.” It was just a speeded-up version of a riff from a high school marching band beat but it sounded stratospheric—a pure sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll rush. All right, now I knew. I was making a huge racket with this demolition-derby–driven surfer blast. Everybody loved it . . . I loved it. John Conrad, the guy who ran the Barn, was beaming—I was in the zone.
When I think about it now, forty-nine years later, I still have the same rush of feeling, that same energy and joy of the endorphins flooding my brain. It’s close to an addiction. I close my eyes and I just want to do it. To play that set and sing those songs—those songs were my way out.
I got into street fights in the Bronx all the time—an hour and a half they went on, I’d come home bloody as hell. I was made fun of quite a lot at high school. Jewish kids were constantly picked on—they got to see a side of life the other half doesn’t see. Prejudice. I got spit on in school and called “Nigger Lips.” The kids would snap my earlobes with their fingers, which was especially painful on freezing cold days. Being hassled at the bus stop, however, turned out to be my salvation. Initially I might have been offended, but as soon as I learned how to sing, I was right proud of that moniker, because I then realized that those were my roots, my black roots were in black music, and it was nothing to be ashamed of.
My family history—if you go back two hundred years ago—the Tallaricos were from the boot of Italy, Calabria. And before that? Albanians, Egyptians, Ethiopians. But let’s face it, in the end—in the beginning, actually—we’re all Africans. You can’t grow humans in cold weather. And before we were humans we were apes, and if we can’t take the cold weather, how could a monkey, who doesn’t even know how to buy a coat? So if you go back, you’re black. It’s so stupid to go around saying, “I’m Italian” (the way I do all the time).
My way of avoiding being beaten up at school was to play the drums in a band. My first group was the Strangers: Don Solomon, Peter Stahl, and Alan Stohmayer. Peter played guitar, Alan bass, Don was the lead singer, and I played drums. We would set up in the cafeteria and do a mixer after school. I played “Wipeout” and sang “In My Room.” In high school the key to not being made fun of is to be entertaining, the same way that some fat people become funny, tell jokes, make fun of people, and then they get left alone. I was skinny and big-lipped and pinheaded. I grew my hair and played the drums in a band, and that was my key to acceptance. I knew about music from my dad, and so rock ’n’ roll was a case of please-don’t-throw-me-in-the-Briar-Patch!
I was giddily starstruck. At the Brooklyn Fox I ran up onstage and touched Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the bad-girl group the Shangri-Las. With her long blond hair, black leather pants, and melancholy eyes, Mary Weiss was a teen goddess. She alone was reason enough for making rock ’n’ roll your own personal religion, especially while she was singing “Leader of the Pack.” She was a gorgeous tough girl who later got questioned by the FBI for carrying a gun across state lines. I was completely smitten with her. The next time I saw her it was a little more intimate—but not because Mary Weiss wanted it that way. In 1966 I went to Cleveland with one of my later bands, Chain Reaction, to do this teen dance show, Upbeat. I wanted to sing lead, so I got David Conrad (nephew of John Conrad, who ran the Barn) to play drums. There were no dressing rooms, so I went into the bathroom to change. I heard someone in the next stall. Thinking it was David, as a joke I hoisted myself up to the top of the stall. But when I peered over, there was Mary Weiss, with her black leather pants around her ankles and her patch showing. I got such the boner from that—I fantasized about that for weeks! It got me through a lot of cold winter nights up in Sunapee.
At our house in Yonkers, no one locked their doors, so with the advent of sex and drugs I had to figure something out to stop anyone from catching me smoking pot or rubbing one out or whatever else I was doing up there. A serious problem for a teenager. You had to put a chair in front of the door, but what a drag! From working with traps I knew how to rig things, and I came up with an ingenious way of locking a door. I drilled through the tongue—the metal latch that goes into the strike plate of the door—and put a coat hanger through it, leaving four inches sticking out like a pin on a hand grenade. If you turned the handle the door wouldn’t open.
Then I devised a more fiendish plan. Through the mail I bought an induction coil, which is nothing more than a transformer for an electric train. On your train set you can turn the transformer up to ten, twenty, thirty, forty, so your Lionel train is just whippin’ around the track until it’s going so fast it falls off the tracks. I took the induction coil and attached it to the railing on the way up to my room so that if anyone touched that railing, they’d be zapped right off their feet. I’d be upstairs doing a girl, parents were gone for the weekend, those few, chosen moments when I needed serious warning. And YES, people did get zapped. But only my best friends! I’d go, “Touch that!” and they’d go “Yeeoooow!” Suddenly best friends were so well behaved. I don’t know what happened.
Once I ran a wire all the way down to the basement and up under the couch and the pillows. I undid the wires, stripped about four inches off the insulation, spread them out—the positive and negative wires—and put them under the cushions so that whoever sat on the couch would get zapped. My best friend was down there eating peanuts. “Here, have this beer,” I said. “I’ll be right back!” I’m upstairs in my room, turning the train transformer on, and I get the door open and I switch it on. I’d hear the transformer buzz as it connected. I’m waiting there, listening to hear what happens . . . “Yow!” Just a little evil teenage fun.
When “The House of the Rising Sun” came on the radio, I thought it was the greatest record I’d ever heard. I saw the Animals perform it at the Academy of Music and was so overcome with raw emotion I jumped out of my seat, ran up the aisle, and shook the bass player Chas Chandler’s hand. Then came the Stones. Rock is my religion, and these guys were my gods!
You don’t need to go to the fucking Temple of Doom to find my banter on the Stones or the Yardbirds—what I thought about back then in my sixteen-year-old make-believe mind. It would have been the desire to write a song or be in an English band when the first Brit Invasion came over and—more than anything—fame! Immortality! I wanted to inject myself into the grooves of the record. I wanted dreamy nubile girls to listen to my voice and cry. A thousand years after my death I fantasized that there’d be people in the outer galaxies listening to “Dream On” and saying in hushed tones, “It’s him, the strange Immortal One!”
And then, briefly, I was touched by the caressing hand of fate when, sometime in 1964, I became Mick Jagger’s brother, Chris. Mick Jagger was the baddest guy on the block, and of course I empathetically picked up on all his shit. Mick and Keith and all that—it hit me like a locomotive. “It’s All Over Now” was like a fucking blues freight train coming straight at me.
In the summer of ’64, I went to a lake in upstate New York, Bash Bish Falls or something like that, up near Utica, with a bu
nch of kids from Yonkers. Long hair, sixteen, no band, but somebody said, “Wow, you look like Mick Jagger!” And that was it . . . off and running! “You know what, I’m Chris, Mick Jagger’s brovver. I am him!” And I went with it like mad. Shot off from there to this Limey planet and immediately lapsed into a Cockney accent. I was talking like “Bloody bleedin’ ’poncey wanker, spot of Marmite, darlin’? Care for a leaper, mate? Ghastly weather we’re ’avin, innit?” It’s called, you know, lost days of youth. When you’re a kid you can jump into other people’s personalities like a transmute. I can still relate to that.
In those days of the British Invasion you had to be a Brit to make it. First of all, you had to have a bloody English accent. That was number one. And that I could do. I still have those Strangers clippings at home: “Steven Tyler, his lower lip hanging like Jagger’s, brought the front row to its feet.” They wrote that in the paper. Bought my Mick impersonation lock, stock, and barrel. I couldn’t believe it. But of course, I—more than anyone else on the planet—believed it. I was him. I was barely sixteen but in my mind already one of “England’s Greatest Hit Makers.” Even if the Strangers sounded more like a bad imitation of Freddie and the Dreamers than the Stones. Yonkers Greatest Hit Makers maybe.
In the early seventies I was embarrassed to say I was into Mick, because the press was already harping on the Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler thing and I wanted to get as far away as possible from those comparisons. I was hoping they would find something in my music that would have some merit other than making Aerosmith into some sort of tribute band with me as a mock Mick Jagger.
But yes, he was my fucking hero. There was actually a six- or seven-year period where I was afraid to tell the press that. I was, like, “No he isn’t!” And then, of course, I came out of the closet and went, “Fuckin’ A, he is!” To this day, to this minute, to this second, Mick Jagger is still my hero. I remember being at a club at One Central Square in the West Village in early ’66, turning around and seeing Mick Jagger and Brian Jones sitting behind me. Not a word came out of my mouth.
I didn’t become Steven Tyler all at once. I made him up, bit by bit. He kind of grew out of playing all the clubs in New York and doing acid and hanging out in Greenwich Village and tripping and going to be-ins in Central Park. All that stuff is where I come from. But more than anything I was shaped by the kind of music that I listened to in ’64, ’65, ’66. The Yardbirds, the Stones, the Animals, the Pretty Things and their wild drummer Viv Prince—he was Keith Moon before Keith Moon became the maniacal drummer of the Who. Moon used to go down to the Marquee Club to watch him and pick up a few mad moves. And of course the Beatles, whom I saw at Shea Stadium. They were the musical G-spot.
I’d get all the Brit imports from a record store down in the IRT subway station at Forty-sixth Street. Those Yardbirds 45s: “For Your Love,” “Shapes of Things,” “Over Under Sideways Down.” That’s what I cut my teeth on—not that I was in any shape in 1964 to take all that stuff and run with it. I’d take speed and listen to the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, the Stones. We were what—sixteen? You couldn’t drink till you were eighteen, so all we could do was grass and pills . . . red crosses, white crosses, Christmas trees, Dexedrine, Benzedrine. I’d go up to Sunapee in the winter and sit in the barn—four feet of snow outside—light a fire, and snort speed until I was vibrating at the same frequency as the fucking records.
The Strangers slowly began to get gigs. We played a lot of weird places at the beginning, like Banana Fish Park on Long Island. We even had a slogan: “THE STRANGERS—ENGLISH SOUNDS, AMERICAN R&B.” At Easter my mom drove the Strangers up to Sunapee to perform. We played stuff like “She’s a Woman” and the Dave Clark Five’s “Bits and Pieces.”
My life four years before Aerosmith . . .
with The Strangers.
My motto has always been: “FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.” If you wanna be a rock ’n’ roll star (like Keith Richards says) you gotta get your moves off in the mirror first. The look. Pick up a copy of Rave magazine, see what the cool cats are wearing in Swinging London this month. Rave was the midsixties Brit mag of immaculate Mod haberdashery. Check out Mick’s houndstooth pants. And green shoes. Where’d Keith Relf get those wraparound shades, man? You gotta stay on top of this stuff, you know, if you wanna be a rock star. Gotta be properly attired in the latest Mod gear when the moment arises and the fickle finger of Billboard’s Top Ten touches you.
I scoured the pseudo–Carnaby Street boutiques of Greenwich Village for the genuine article. Collarless shirts, leather vests, and checkered pants at Paul Sargent’s on Eighth Street. Beatle boots with Cuban heels from Bloom’s Shoe Gallery in the West Village or Florsheim Shoes on Forty-second Street. They had the fuckin’ greatest boots, high heels, tight around the ankles—those were the ones I wore onstage. Then there were the Mod shoes, brightly colored Capezio ballet shoes, flowered shirts, and satin scarves—well, okay, the scarves came later (inspired by Janis Joplin). Those I got along with my incense from Sindori (is that what the place was called?), an import store across the street from the Fillmore East.
In the early days, I would put incense all over the amps and in front of the stage to mark my territory. I thought by burning exotic scents like myrrh they’d remember me by my smell, like God in their church. I wanted something other than our bad tuning and my ugly fucking Mick Jagger face to remember us by. It’s like if I were a dog, I would go out to the tip of the stage, lift my leg, pee, and say, “I’d like to leave a little something for you to remember me by.” Dogs piss on trees to mark their territory, so I marked mine with incense and banners—like old Scottish tartans that I found, the ones that held special family colors and crests.
It’s so funny, the obsessive Limey mimicking that went on. Back in 1966, down on Delancey Street, where the blacks got their stuff, you could get a beautiful leather jacket for twenty-six bucks . . . but who had twenty-six bucks back then? I’d hang around Bloom’s Shoe Gallery just waiting to see who would go in. I bought all my shit there, you know, because they did. The Stones, the Byrds, Dylan. Mike Clark, the drummer for the Byrds, turned me on to this place in Estes Park, Colorado, where he got his moccasins, the ones he wore on an album cover. I asked him, “How could I get a pair of those?” He gave me the address and I got me a pair, which I later on brought into the studio where we were recording our first album. I got the rubber-stamp holder with all the different rubber stamps they used to mark the two-inch master reels. The rubber stamps would say “DOLBY OUTTAKES,” “REMIX VERSION. SLAVE, MASTER”—all things that could be done to tapes. I rubber-stamped my moccasins, which I chose to call my recording boots, all over and I wore them till the soles fell off.
Bloom’s Shoe Gallery was where I ran into Bob Dylan. Okay, he was coming out of there and I was walking in. I’d love to have a great story where I told him I was in a band (I wasn’t). I wish I could’ve told him I loved his voice (I did). I used to go down and walk around Greenwich Village, all the time hoping to bump into the Stones, which of course never happened. I never got a chance to speak to Dylan or Keith or Mick to ask them how the fuck they wrote their songs. I assumed they had to get their lyrics from their life experiences. I knew that drugs had something to do with it. I’d heard that Pete Townshend’s stutter in “My Generation” came from leapers, some weirdass British speed. Tuinals, acid, and grass . . . I knew about those. And there was this drug called “coke.”
I had been around the block and I’d done as much crank as anyone, but somewhere along the line I decided to do something else instead of using the speed to go and party in the Village. Fuck that, I think I’ll stay at home tonight and channel John Lennon. I’ll write a song based on my muddled understandings and my profound misunderstandings that’ll change the world. But it took a while to get to that place.
New York City was filled with very odd folk—which I loved. I’d take my mother’s car down to the city, park it on the street, get a parking ticket, throw it away, a
nd drive home. I can’t imagine how many tickets I got. I know I never paid any of them. A rock ’n’ roll Dillinger in the making. Or I’d leave the car in the Bronx at the first train stop, which was past White Plains and Yonkers Raceway, get on the train, and get off at Fifty-ninth Street, Columbus Circle. The Fifty-ninth Street subway stop wasn’t that far from where Moondog would stand with his spear and Viking helmet. He lived on the street, wore only homemade clothes, and thought of himself as the incarnation of the Norse God Thor. He was so noble and mysterious, like a character from mythology come to life on Sixth Avenue.
Clyde and his ride (Honkin’), 2010. (Keren Pinkas)
Moondog wrote “All Is Loneliness” (that Janis sang on Big Brother and the Holding Company’s first album). He’d hang out with a bald-headed guy who would blow raspberries and yell “Fuck you!” at anyone who walked by. He had a ragged and gravelly street voice. Welcome to Freak City! There were freaks on the streets, in the clubs, on TV. There were magnificent misfits everywhere, and you had no idea what they were famous for but they were all famous for something. I loved them. Then I’d wander into Central Park, smoke weed, and catch a sweet Gotham buzz.
On Friday afternoons me, Ray Tabano, Debbie Benson, Rickie Holztman’s girlfriend, and Debbie’s friend Dia would head for Greenwich Village because that’s where the beatniks lived and we wanted to be beatniks. It was the summer of ’64. I was a white boy from Yonkers, trying to get high, trying to get hip. We’d sit in Washington Square Park drinking Southern Comfort or Seagrams 7 (or whatever else we could mooch off somebody) until we were completely shitfaced on booze, pills, and pot. Then we’d go check out the clubs! The Kettle of Fish, the Tin Angel, the Bitter End, the Night Owl, Trudy Heller’s, Café Wha? Those clubs in New York were my education. Later on we played all those joints. The smell of those bars was like a funky nostalgic patchouli. To this day I love the stale smell of cigarettes and beer that you got in those places.
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? Page 5