Circus, December 5, 1978
"This blows, this really sucks," says Joe Perry, Aerosmith's lead guitarist, whose dark brown bair is streaked a sickly yellow. "One hour you're on- stage, you're happy, the road crew's happy. . . then as soon as you walk off, you fucking start hating it all over again, until the next town and the next show. Man, I hate this shit."
Perry, ordinarily a rough-hewn sort, is even more cantankerous than usual after six weeks (22 dates) on the road. The old Aerosmithth would have considered six weeks a cakewalk, but the superstar variety Aerosmith tires more easily. As disconcerting as it was, New Jersey is still far better than Billings, Montana. "What a town!" says Perry. "I figured I'd take my wife, Elissa, out for a bite, so we go to this place and order fish, and they've got to fly the fucking fish in from Seattle. . . the only food they've got in Billings is steak. There's one rotten movie, The Swarm...we sat through half of that, and went outside In the parking lot with the rest of the band and got drunk."
Aerosmith once rocked away the nights--a couple of hundred a year--on tiny stages for a few hundred 'luded youngsters. Now they rock in selective 80,000-seaters for semi-spaced-out oldsters. The crowds have grown up with the band over the years, and the significance of that has not been lost on Perry or lead singer Tyler.
"It used to bother me," says Tyler, an exuberant yet street-wise 26-year-old. "All the kids with no respect for human life swaying together in front of the stage like an obscene wave. Now the crowds are older, in their 20s, and they blow more pot and don't cause much trouble."
Perry and Tyler, however, still bear the mental scars of the 1977 Philadelphia firecracker incident that almost terminated their careers. "It's like riding a horse," says Tyler philosophically. "You get thrown but you get back on."
In New Jersey, out of the crowd of 50,000 rain-soaked patrons, comes a roll of toilet paper aimed at Tyler's head. It misses, but Tyler is taking no chances. He retreats to the rear of the stage, aware that the next missile could be more lethal. "They're not really throwing it at you," Tyler offers. "They just want to see what happens, how a rock star reacts--if you're a regular human."
Minus the fireworks, Tyler used to do precisely that as a teenager growing up in Yonkers, New York. He would sit upstairs in Madison Square Garden's cheap seats and gawk at Mck Jagger gyrating below. Many years later, Tyler would bitterly resent it when critics would compare him pejoratively to his former idol.
Tyler's schooling came to an abrupt end when a high school nare busted him in ceramics class. So he plunged deeper into his music. In Sunapee, New Hamp- shire, where he spent weekends playing at a local inn, Tyler met Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton. The three formed Aerosmith, recruited drummer Joey Kramer (a former classmate of Tyler's, also expelled in the pot bust), and rhythm guitarist Ray Tabano (later replaced by Brad Whitford).
The group moved to Boston, where they lived in a dank basement and ate subsistence meals. Boston in the early 1970s had already experienced its BossTown rock "renaissance," (which reportedly lost millions for MGM, the record label which had signed many of the unsuccessful BossTown groups), and offered little more to a starving quintet than high school auditorium dates.
In 1972, Aerosmith played at Max's Kansas City in New York, and Clive Davis, then-president of Columbia Records, was impressed enough to sign them quickly. Their first two discs, Aerosmith and Get Your Wings, sold modestly at first. But their third LP, Toys In The Attic, yielded a first hit single, "Sweet Emotion," and carried all three Aerosmith albums to gold status.
During this period, Aerosmith opened for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the Kinks, and Mott The Hoople, all bands that had already peaked commercially and were ripe for the taking. The strategy of Aerosmith managers Steve Leber and David Krebs--getting the band out in front of rock-frenzied audiences and stealing the show from the headliners--worked to a tee, and cemented Aerosmith's reputation as one of this country's premier live hard rockn acts.
Their last LP, Draw The Line, did not detract from that image, nor did the band's rendition of the Beatles' "Come Together" on the Sgt. Pepper sound- track LP.
Now Aerosmith has come to New Jersey's swampland stadium on a wet August day to put the finishing touches on its upcoming live album, which was recorded mostly at small 1977 club dates.
Live Bootleg contains few surprises:
Long, piercing solos, Tyler's incessant
squealing, dueling guitars, and other
elements of stomach-pump rock & roll. The live set Ideks off with "Back in
the Saddle," and includes staples like "Come Together," a live version different
from the one in the film Sgt. Pepper, and "Walk This Way." The vocals are
clearer than on Aerosmith's studio LPs, and the entire album possesses an
immediacy
not found on most live packages. Bootleg is a key release for Aerosmith.
Their last album did not hit the multi-platinum sales of yore, causing some
concern
that their supergroup days might be over.
The New Jersey sun has packed it in permanently as the band winds up its 90-minute set. Two large television screens at both ends of the stadium are focused on Tyler as he unfurls his giant blue scarf. The image is slightly off- synch, and as Tyler wafts into his falsetto range, the effect is like a cartoon. After six weeks on the road, Tyler ,seems more like Mick Mouse than Mick Jagger.
Backstage after the show, the sallowfaced Tyler is sipping a drink and smiling, the black lines around his eyes extending to his high cheekbones. Joe Perry is also smiling as he squeezes his wife's hand. Mark Radice, the affable keyboardist and disco refugee who is sitting in on this tour, says "I'm going home to sleep for a long time."
In a few weeks the band will go out on the road again for a brief fling. "Radice looks like the only guy in the band who's going to live through it," says one observer.
As the three limos exit the underground passageway funeral-style past the waiting line of teenagers, Joe Perry waves limply. Above them, a utility sign offers sagely parting words. "Energy is vital, use it wisely."