Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?

by Tyler, Steven

  Joey was one of the reasons why I wrote the song “Big Ten Inch Record.” I guess it was always wishful thinking. And when it comes to rumors, while we’re on the subject of phallic nobility, here’s one more. . . . I’ve come to find out, as the years roll by, that everybody seems to think that in the middle of “Big Ten Inch Record,” I say, “Suck on my big ten-inch.” I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard this from—engineers, producers, disc jockeys, and, of course, fans . . . from all over the world. Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but the song is about a big ten-inch record, and in the middle I say, “ ’cept” (like except) for my big ten-inch. How do you get suck on from ’cept for? Again . . . wishful thinking.

  B.J. (aka Billy Joe Reisch), who was one of the crew in the seventies, used to make jokes on the backstage passes. He’d print them up in the dressing room and laminate them. Like: THIS BACKSTAGE PASS AUTHORIZED BY MONDO. OR DEATH BY VALIUM . . . with a drawing of Kelly crucified on Joe’s amp stack. There’s an old blue Aerosmith backstage pass somewhere showing me pissing on it.

  I kept my medicine cabinet onstage, in a fourteen-inch drum head, the bottom of which contained Jack Daniel’s and two Dixie cups: one Dixie cup with a straw and blow in it and the other with Coca-Cola and Jack Daniel’s. From behind the amps, I’d put the towel over my head and put my nose over it. The straw would be sticking out of the cup, as if it were a drink.

  I wanted an onstage dressing room where I could snort drugs. The idea was a small movable sentry box that we could put at the back of the stage. The towel over my head routine was starting to get risky and a bit obvious. So, sometime in ’76, we ordered a small dressing room from Tom Fields and Associates, a theatrical lighting company that also builds sets. We gave them the plans and the size: thirty-six inches deep by thirty-six inches wide by six feet tall. But when it showed up it was thirty-six feet by thirty-six feet. They called it “Mondo’s Condo.” It was such a monstrous-sized fucker it showed up on a huge flatbed truck. It was like the Stonehenge prop in Spinal Tap, only in reverse. We sent it back. We wrote on it, “Sell it to the Stones,” and I think they did.

  Joe had vials of coke with straws in them at the back of the stage, and when the lights would go out he’d go over there like he was checking something or making a guitar change and Kelly would put the straw in his nose; he’d take a hit, then the lights would come on again. The coke bingeing got so bad and blatant to where we just laid out lines on top of the bass amps on the left side of the stage.

  One of the things we always put in our riders was that the promoter had to provide in the dressing room a full-length, six-foot-long mirror. I would take the local promoter’s rep into the dressing room and he’d say, “Well, there’s the six-foot mirror you requested, Steven.” And I’d say, “I can see the mirror all right, but where the fuck’s the three-foot razor blade?”

  The crew used to strew the stage with bizarre, arousing, and strange objects to startle, amuse, and titillate the band. For a while they put a scale model of the Starship Enterprise onstage and moved it around. Elsewhere, they’d scatter Polaroids of naked girls from the night before across the floor, and then there was the pièce de résistance: Nick Spiegel’s artificial vagina.

  Nick Spiegel was an Aerotech, and we made fun of him when we first caught him playing with a latex pocket pussy. Kelly decided to get him a deluxe model. He went to this porn store, waited until nobody was around, and pointed to this top-of-the-line artificial vagina . . . a realistic-looking latex rubber job with a receptacle inside and some plastic pubic hair on the outside. It looked like they’d taken the sweepings off the barber shop floor and glued them on with Super Glue. But this was definitely the item, so Kelly said, “Let me see that one.” “Will that be all?” the clerk asked. “That’s okay, just wrap it up.” So on the way out, the guy’s going, “Oh, have a nice night, sir!” And Kelly says, “Oh, it’s not for me. . . .”

  Unlike the other bands I’d been in, with Aerosmith the band members were willing to go the distance. The thought that we might not make it never occurred to any of us. When a band has doubts or thoughts that they have other options and tell themselves they can become accountants and Realtors and carpenters and whatnot—they’re going to fail. And when the guys in those bands give up, they become bitter. They’re all schoolteachers and cops on fucking meds.

  I think this is a good time to address a matter of great political and social import, that being the scaly truth about LSD (no, the other LSD) . . . otherwise known as Lead Singer Disease. Jimmy Page allegedly coined the term in less-than-endearing homage to his raspy-throated front man. LSD is a not-much-talked-about syndrome defined in the Mondo Manual of Psychiatric Disorders as “Bone-gnawing, spleen-curdling jealousy of the lead singer in a rock band on the part of other members of the band, erupting in violent blaspheming and tantrums by such members whenever the lead singer’s image appears on the cover of popular magazines.”

  Being the lead singer of a successful band, there’s jealousy up the wazoo. And my big mouth just makes it worse. I will just come right out and say shit that people would never utter on their own because they’d either get fired or they weren’t asshole enough to do it. I am definitely known for not being the shrewdest fox in the forest.

  Jealousy, animosity . . . the lead singer is the dancing bear, the cash cow, and sometimes that’s hard for band members to handle. They know that there’s no getting by without the front man. They sure have had fun making fun, but every time they point a finger at me, there’s three of them fingers pointed right back at them. As Terrible Ted says, “They can roast marshmallows out of the flames of my ass.” As long as they share ’em with me! Musical s’mores . . . a rectal delicacy.

  And what about the LI3? That’s how Tom, Brad, and Joey referred to themselves in a Rolling Stone article . . . initials proudly standing for the Least Interesting Three. Well, let’s go there for a moment. Take Tom Hamilton, for instance. Three years ago, we’re on tour, and one night I go, “Tom, it’s been thirty fucking years. Have you ever talked into a mic?” The answer was a resounding . . . never. “Don’t you think you should break the silence? Just go over and say anything. I’ll introduce you. Just do it so you can say you did.” And he did it. And never mind the night I took a black marker and went behind Tom and outlined his fucking shoes and when he came to the front of the stage, I said, “Guess where you’ve been standing for the last thirty minutes?” And he fires back, “Where?” So I point to the floor. “There!” And Tom, like his legendary predecessors, Bill Wyman and John Entwistle . . . never moved from his spot, like a stoic still life. But he did move twenty thousand fans that night with his magical intro to “Sweet E.” Or what he could do to a fretless bass in “Hole in My Soul.”

  I live on the tail of a comet, and I must admit that with all the me that’s me, I know in my heart of hearts that I would not be HERE if it weren’t for those around me. They called themselves the LI3, I didn’t. I took a risk and decided to be the poster boy, the magnet for other people’s fears, doubts, and insecurities. It’s all part of a delicious statement that all those people in my life do have something to say about me, but they aren’t me and they don’t know where I’ve been or what it took to get to that nasty, mean, maniacal behavioral place that everybody hates.

  When you’re in a band, fans are always giving you presents, yeah? At customs, when the gent in the uniform says, “Sir, there seems to be a packet of tinfoil in your luggage containing a contraband substance and we’ll have to throw you into one of our dungeons for ninety-nine years,” you can say, “What’s this, then? Never touched that stuff in my life. Oh, one of our overzealous fans must’ve put it there.” That’s how we transported our rocket fuel. Throw a half ounce of coke in an envelope and on the outside write in big scrawling Crayola crayon letters, “YOU ARE THE SHIT! AEROSMITH FUCKING RULES! THIS IS JUST A TOKEN OF MY AFFECTION. [SIGNED] DWAYNE,” and slip it in the drum kit. How we do love our fans.

  C
HAPTER EIGHT

  Ladies and Genitals . . .

  I’m Not a Bad Guy

  (I’m Just Egotestical)

  JON CRYER: I just wanna say, I’m a huge fan. Um, I lost my virginity to you.

  STEVEN: Really? Well, you know, there’s a lot of the seventies I don’t remember.

  FROM TWO AND A HALF MEN, SEASON 4, EPISODE 2

  Wow, it’s funny, you look back now and the New York Dolls had that reputation for being over the top? Sure the Dolls were in the way-out-o-sphere, but we were in our own orbit. My mind was on the dark side of the moon, as Clapton said in his Bangladesh documentary. But back then everyone in the rock elite was livin’ on the edge and right out of Zap Comix, except for Zappa, who may have had one foot in the way-out-o-sphere, but the other was firmly planted up the ass of the Carl Sagan school of reality.

  I spoke to Frank once on the phone, having heard he was sober. Talk was he’d take out a whole floor of rooms for those on his crew who shared his passion. “What the fuck are you talking about, Steven?” he said. “I don’t have a problem with drugs; I’ve never done drugs!” “What?” I said flabbergasted. “But seriously,” I said, “you’ve never even smoked pot?” An emphatic no followed. Who would have ever thunk that the Mother of Invention had no intention of dancing with Leary, swapping spit with Kesey, or . . . If Ever However I’m Hearing He Never . . . EVER . . . made sweet love to Don Juan, the Yaqui warrior of the peyote button tribe, then how the fuck did he ever write Over-Nite Sensation or Weasels Ripped My Flesh? This was a wake-up call to a guy whose Alice B. Toklas imagination sprouted from the same soil as the trippin’ troubadours of the sixties. I thought he was one of us—the lost, the damned, the terminally unique ones. He was. He just didn’t use.

  But why was it so wrong for me to think that Zappa wrote such euphoric musical prose . . . and that it wasn’t based on some euphoric narcotic substance that might have helped get him there? And even if he never took a drug (in the literal snort, puff, or swallow sense)—he felt love. Love IS a drug (I knew that even before Bryan Ferry told me). Frank felt pain and anguish and sadness, and those are drugs of sorts. In fact, when you get scared out of your mind, your body releases drugs—endorphins and adrenaline—and just look at the molecular structure of adrenaline. It’s about four notches away from what cocaine’s made of. Endorphins—four notches from heroin.

  This was a new truth for me. Frank was only high on music. Is it Lao Tzu’s belief that it’s not the walls but the space between the walls that defines the room? WOW! Or my belief that it’s not the notes but the space between the notes that defines the song?

  In 1975, the year Toys in the Attic came out, we played with the Dolls at Max’s Kansas City. I knew something was going on when we were received at Max’s like Broadway Joe at the Super Bowl. There was so much magic in air, Lou Reed looked like Houdini. Aerosmith and the New York Dolls—it was the perfect marriage. David was me on steroids and nine-inch heels. The Dolls were OTT (over the top!). What I took from Johansen was his flamboyance and a wise mouth full of sass. But don’t gimme no lip . . . I got enough of my own. I never wanted to wear lipstick onstage or high heels. Maybe I should have worn heels—my feet wouldn’t have gotten so fucked-up ’cause I couldn’t have moved around as much. I loved playing with the Dolls and the wow factor they possessed. The punch, the titles of their songs. But I thought that there were more toys in our attic. They would flame out magnificently while we were still setting a fire.

  When you’re a teenager, masturbation is more about doing it fast and not getting caught and less about doing it right and making it last. Later on, I’d cum to find out that the best thing about masturbation is that you didn’t have to look your best. The Dolls were wearing Glam to the Nines. That described the smoky din of Max’s on any given night. It was musical socialism: there was no formal headliner. The bathroom was full of blow, and the lineup of bands was whoever got their line first got to go onstage. Aerosmith, the Dolls, and Wayne County. And oh yeah, those fuckin’ chickpeas they put on every table. They were more of a weapon than an appetizer. Wayne would have a toilet onstage where he’d reach down and grab a handful of dog food from the bowl between his legs and rub it all over himself like he was smearing his body with shit. We only played for one thing back then, and we all played for the same reason. We came to fly our freak flags. I called it Veni, vidi, vici, veni redux. Latin for: “We came, we saw, we conquered—and we came again.”

  I’d get so hammered when I hung with the Dolls. Johnny Thunders, who was one of the guitar players, used to go out with a twin named Lisa whose sister, Teresa, was very sweet. She and I dated long enough to eventually marry and have two beautiful children. Twins again. Ain’t it funny?

  Johnny Thunders was so out there. His addictions took him to graffitiing the ceilings of his hotel bathrooms with his own blood. His girlfriend had stories about walking into hotel bathrooms and seeing his initials on the ceiling. I call that dancing with the devil. He’s died since, as have quite a few members of the band—they were hell-bent on self-destruction. Unlike the Dolls, we came up for air once in a while. At least early on.

  It took us a few more years to implode, but even then we kept on going. Music was our fuse, and drugs were the match. Like a Roman candle that would shoot out seven flaming stars, each one an album for us, we were used to living and surviving the cosmic sway. Drugs to me were like a black hole . . . I was attracted to it and wasn’t afraid to have it take me to the other side.

  Around this time an unearthly creature came into my life. I first met Cyrinda Foxe when I was cruising the streets of the lower Village with David Johansen. She was gorgeous and glamorous, white hot (with a whisper of Norma Jean) with candy-floss blond hair. She was married to and consumed by David but devoured me with her eyes. I would sit there and watch her and wonder, “What the fuck is going on with these two?” This insatiable fox named Cyrinda was best friends with Joe’s wife, Elyssa, who knew exactly what was going on between us and invited her on tour with the band.

  While all this was going down, Cyrinda played lovely Lolita and we played cat and mouse for months on and off tour. She wouldn’t let me near her. You want it? Can’t have it! She was interested in my rock star catnip.

  As the fame got more chaotic, we needed to get more organized. We used to keep all our expensive equipment in our Mr. Natural truck and leave it out on the street, which wasn’t such a great idea. After a while, Ray found us a building for forty thousand dollars and we bought it to store our equipment, record in, and turn into Mission Control. Ray ran all the merchandise and mail order and fan club stuff out of there. It was in Waltham, Massachusetts, right next to Moe Blacks, and we called it the Wherehouse. Raymond was always thinking ahead, perhaps sometimes with the wrong head, but a head nonetheless.

  On Halloween, he put a party together for the grand opening of the Wherehouse and invited everybody who was anybody and anybody they knew. We set up the loading dock like a Moulin Rouge street scene. . . . French maids waiting on tables in fishnet stockings, berets, and long black cigarette holders and an entourage that included a midget in a skunk suit claiming he was Pepe Le Pew, just to piss off the party crashers. Ray’s office, upstairs, was ground zero. In that room alone, we snorted half of Peru.

  The Wherehouse was so big you could park cars in it, which all of the band did. It was big enough to house a tractor trailer, which is exactly what we did. We brought in the Record Plant’s mobile unit, and that’s where we recorded Rocks, our fourth album.

  During the recording sessions, a guy from Columbia Records always had to be there. He wore a white jacket and was supposed to be like an engineer. The union forced us to have him there for the sessions. “Pandora’s Box,” from that album, is the one song I wrote with Joey Kramer. It was inspired by a friend’s house in Woodstock, New Hampshire. A river ran through the property with giant rocks on either side. The girls that hung out there would bronze their naked bodies on the boulder
s like a string of candied pearls. We’d always get to the water hole late, knowing they’d be posing like girls in a Vargas calendar. Now, you’re probably expecting some huge erotic revelation from me, but that’s not gonna happen. I will tell you this—if I had an extension cord long enough, I would have recorded the entire album right then and there, and in the heat of love, I would have screamed every vocal from the mounds of their Venus.

  Meanwhile, back at the garage, Joey’s strumming a guitar we found in a garbage can and starts playing this cool riff he’d gotten from the black soul bands he’d played with before Aerosmith. The riff was so inspiring, I wrote these lyrics . . .

  When I’m in heat and someone gets the notion

  I jump to my feet and hoof it to the ocean

  We find a place where no one gives a hoot

  Nobody never ever wears a suit

  The ladies there you know they look so proud

  That’s ’cause they know that they’re so well endowed.

  I nailed that verse in an hour. Joey, you’re the man.

  Then we went into “Nobody’s Fault.” This was one of the highlights of my creative career. If you listen really close to the front of “Nobody’s Fault,” there isn’t an intro to the song. I suggested to Joe that he turn his amp volume to 12 and the volume on his guitar off. Since the key of the song was an E, I suggested he start by fingering a D chord, and then turn the volume knob all the way up slowly. I told Brad to play an A chord, same dealio as Joe. Then Joe played a C, did the same thing—Brad played a G, Joe played a B-flat, Brad played an F, Joe played an A-flat, Brad played an E-flat, and then Joe and Brad both played a D chord. And when they played that D together, rolling the volume knob up with their pinkies—and holding it for a second—then the band came in on a crashing E chord like Hitler was at the door. I looked over and Jack Douglas was internally hemorrhaging with bliss.