The Aerosmith album that almost killed Steven Tyler: “I was dying”
Much of the magic of Aerosmith normally comes down to the internal tension between Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. While they may not be the friendliest people towards each other off the stage, they understand that they have a musical brotherhood that no one is able to take away from them whenever they play live. Although it felt like the band could go on forever with both men at the helm, Tyler had a brush with mortality when working on the album Rock in a Hard Place.
For years, the staple of Aerosmith’s sound was birthed when Perry and Tyler first wrote the song ‘Movin’ Out’. While there were still traces of artists like The Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones on their first demos, this was where everything began to fall into place, as Tyler supplied the lyrics and the melody to Perry’s bluesy guitar riffs.
Although the band struggled to make ends meet on the road, their relentless touring schedule led to them getting in touch with their fans the right way, winning them over with every single show. By the time they had released Toys in the Attic, they had turned that onstage magic into a powerful package on vinyl, turning in their biggest hits with tracks like ‘Sweet Emotion’ and ‘Walk This Way’.
After the band started to indulge in various drug binges, everything hit a wall with Draw the Line. Having been working together for over a decade, the band had nothing to show for it, often feeling like they were pulling teeth whenever they walked into the studio. In the background, though, Perry was already planning on leaving, famously cutting ties with the band after a show in 1979.
As the band struggled to piece together their next album, Night in the Ruts, Rock in a Hard Place was a disaster from the very start. Despite having fresh blood in the band with guitarist Jimmy Crespo, the sessions were marred by Tyler getting more and more blitzed in the studio, not taking care of himself and even struggling to get through songs when performing live.
The sessions got so bad that guitarist Brad Whitford had had enough, quitting midway through and being replaced by Rick Dufay. By the time the tour started, Tyler had turned into a husk of his former self, telling Behind the Music, “I wasn’t eating; I was dying, and it was hiding that fact. People were telling me that I was crawling under the table at a party. ‘You, Steven Tyler, on your fucking knees?’, and I said, ‘Nah’. And it was drugs just putting a wall up.”
After getting on the right track by marrying his wife, Teresa, Tyler started putting the pieces back together when he got together with Perry to talk. There was nothing set in stone, but the bridges had started to mend, eventually leading to Perry’s return to the band for the band’s next album, Done With Mirrors.
While it would take a few more months before the rest of the band got sober together, Tyler never lost his touch as a frontman, continuing to put on the best show he could every time he went onstage. Aerosmith may have been able to weather any storm they could, but Rock in a Hard Place was the moment where it looked like everything could be over in a matter of seconds.
