The stupid 2000s TV show that almost split Aerosmith but ended up saving them
Aerosmith might have had their peak in the 1970s, with the release of multi-platinum albums Toys in the Attic and Rocks, but their commercial peak came later, in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, and it was the kind of commercial success that singer Steven Tyler never wanted to end.
The band kicked off the 2000s with a bang, as Aerosmith delivered a historic Super Bowl halftime show alongside Britney Spears, Mary J Blige, and Nelly in 2001, but as the decade came to a close, and the band hadn’t quite reached the glory of their former days, Tyler decided to chase new levels of commercial cultural success on his own accord.
In an effort to distance himself from the band, Tyler joined the television reality show American Idol in 2010, on which he would be a permanent judge alongside ‘It Girl’ Jennifer Lopez. His television debut came on January 19th, 2011, during the season ten premiere. Around the same time, tabloids reported that Aerosmith was set to replace their lead singer and had been holding vocalist auditions.
However, as per Guitar World, Joe Perry refuted the claim as a load of inflammatory bollocks: “There were no auditions. The farthest it ever got was probably a conference call with the three other guys in the band, talking about different options of what to do about Steven’s time with American Idol. We weren’t really sure what our options were going to be.”
Mostly, Perry was pissed that he had found out about Tyler’s move towards reality television via online discourse, like the rest of the Aerosmith fanbase. Things looked like they were manoeuvring towards a fracture point when Tyler heard about the alleged auditions through the rumour mill, too.
Speaking candidly about it, Tyler didn’t mince his words when he admitted, “No one in the band wanted me to do Idol. I was taking another job, et cetera, but I would imagine it was the kind of thing that saved their lives.”
Turns out, Tyler’s American Idol schedule wasn’t all that demanding, despite what the show suggests. When all the sums were added up, he still had ample time to meet his bandmates in the studio and record their next album.
There’s probably another reason that his bandmates ended up coming around to the idea quickly: the show drew in a very young audience, which was, by the majority, female-led. It goes without saying that Aerosmith doesn’t exactly pull in this kind of energy with their style, and after their roaring triumph in the 1970s and 1980s, they’d hit a lull on streaming. No bother: American Idol boosted the band’s catalogue sales by 270% during his tenure. Ka-ching!
It’s pretty cringe to watch back now, what with the icy panopticon of social media shunning every move of the rich and the famous, but back then, Tyler made a fine judge. Beyond his sound taste, on a particularly beloved episode of season ten, he uttered one of the most famous lines in the series’ history: “Well hellfire, save matches, fuck a duck and see what hatches!”
