Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (28 page)

To make matters bratwurst, I ran out of dope, and Joe conveniently said he didn’t have any. That’s an old story that goes deep with this band, and I know you can’t always get what you want, but you’d think . . . brother, I’m fronting your band, can’t you fucking front me some dope???

The Lorelei Festival was one of the worst gigs I’d ever done and almost put an end to the tour. Over there, it was our first introduction to a German audience, which in this case was half American servicemen. We went on at two o’clock in the morning. It’s on the banks of the Rhine—and it was cold, dark, dank, Eastern European kinda weather. The word
Lorelei
comes from the German river muse whose singing lured men to destruction—and
destroyed
just about described my voice after singing for two hours in the freezing cold rain. I started spitting up blood and damn near passed out onstage that night. Oh how I wished I had a roadie to change my strings and a fraulein to rub my gooseneck. I lost my voice, and we had to cancel our show in Sweden and go back to London. We were going to hell in a handbasket . . . without a handbasket.

Sometimes, being on the long and winding road for what seemed like forever, we’d be in the middle of nowhere, in our rooms and out of our minds from the endless days and sleepless nights surrounded by girls with low tooth counts, missing
anything
American. So like the rock stars we were beginning to think we were, we’d bring the U.S. to us. Wherever we were, we’d send out for egg creams from a deli in New York to be flown to Czechoslovakia, but so much got lost in translation that when they arrived, they weren’t egg creams at all. It was like receiving a box of monkey nards dipped in tapioca from a country that hadn’t been discovered yet.

At this point in our careers, we checked into hotels under pseudonyms. If you used your real name, you’d have a tribute band delivering your room service or a girl larger than your whole family trying to climb through your window. Mentioning the name Aerosmith brought nothing but pain and penicillin. But then what else do you give a band that’s got everything?

So we checked in under names like the Shakespearean Players, Upchuck and the Hurlers, or, my favorite, Six Legs and Four Balls (I stole that one from Peter, Paul and Mary). We’d arrive at the Holiday Inn and they’d say, “Welcome, Shakespearean Players!” We would say stuff like “Thank thee, sire” and “Will thou showest us-eth to our roometh?” (Try saying that with crackers in your mouth.) It was out there, but you know, at four in the morning, anything goes.

M
e and Mick Fleetwood the night he loaned me his balls at the Roxy, 2010. (Erin Brady)

I’d lose more than my mind on the road—like, for instance, in Europe I once left the rock of Gibralter stashed in the curtain of the hotel we were staying in. I kept it there knowing that if we got busted, no one could pin it on me. Any hotel is transient. Could have been the guy from the night before. Don’t blame it on the American. Blame it on some wandering Gibralteronian.

The band always stayed at their favorite bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel when we were in L.A. Mine was Bungalow 12 where I knew Marilyn Monroe had made sweet love to the likes of Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, President Kennedy, and probably his little brother. I heard this from an off-duty officer who drove the doctor away the infamous night she passed. The hotel was a trampoline for the Who’s Who of Hollywood all the way down to the Tinseltown trashy. Sure, there were a few folks that got a decent night’s sleep at the reclusive retreat . . . but it wasn’t me. On any given night the Polo Lounge could be a jumping-off spot for a movie deal, a drug deal, or a cop-a-feel deal. Bunaglow 12 was attached to another room that Joe and I booked as a suite. The only way you knew what bungalow we were in was by the caravan of room service trays lined up outside our door stacked with champagne, fifty-year-old brandy, and enough Beluga and Savruga caviar to embarrass the Great Gatsby.

The place was always good for freakish and exotic sightings, like Michael Jackson having lunch with his chimp, Bubbles; or David Geffen with Cher skipping up the cobblestone path like Dorothy and the Scarecrow. Here I was, the big-time big-mouth rock ’n’ roll singer of Aerosmith, becoming speechless in the face of Lucille Ball, Joni Mitchell, and Lauren Bacall . . . all in the same night on the same path on the way to Bungalow 12.

We were the most decadent, lecherous, sexiest, nastiest band in the land, and yet from time to time I would wonder,
Where are all the beautiful women?
It finally dawned on me twenty years later, after road crews’ stories floated to the surface, that those clever fellows were “protecting” us from the hot chicks, blaming it on the wives of the only two guys that were married. “We couldn’t let them see her, Steven. But
here’s
a girl for you.” She, unfortunately, looked like Ernest Borgnine. Gee, thanks, fellas. With friends like that, who needs herpes? Brings us fittingly back to the first single from
Rocks,
“Last Child,” which I wrote with Brad Whitford.

Yes, sir, no, sir

Don’t come close to my

Home sweet home

Can’t catch no dose

Of my hot tail poon tang sweetheart

Sweat hog ready to make a silk purse

From a J. Paul Getty and his ear

With her face in the beer

It’s true that we were trying pretty hard not to get any on us and, even more important, that we’d make it home with lust in our eyes. This was the band’s rule: you didn’t have sex for ten days before the end of the tour. But the reason was so that you’d be sure to go home (sweet home) with a full cup of chowder. You could pull off the lusty eyes bit, but you could never get away with blowing a cup of wind.

J
une 21, 1977. Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two nights at the Coliseum with AC/DC. First night, I walked from my dressing room down a long hallway with handrails lined with wheelchairs. The second night, walking down that same hallway to a second slammin’ sold-out show, instead of fans in wheelchairs, there were a hundred fans handcuffed to the railing. Some were crying, some were screaming. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. It was like an Aerosmith concert gone police state. I screamed for Kelly. He told me that they’d all been busted for smoking pot an hour before Aerosmith took the stage. So the first thing I did after the opening number, I walked up to the mic and I said, “I just saw a hundred of your brothers and sisters handcuffed backstage and the cops are getting ready to haul their asses off to jail for getting high.” I started calling the cops “scumbags!” and “Gestapo!” It was fucked! The cops told me, “You do any funny business up there, we’ll throw your ass in jail, too, for inciting a riot!” And I go, “But, man, that’s
my job
!”

The crowd went fucking nuclear. “We’re not gonna let that happen.” They screamed even louder. “So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna pay for their bail. . . . Throw me a joint [it rained pot like a Cheech and Chong thunderstorm] and they’ll all be back here before the encore. I promise. We ain’t gonna let this happen. Not no more, no more!” As Joe played the intro and I sang . . .

Blood stains the ivories on my daddy’s baby grand

Ain’t seen the daylight since we started this band

Twenty thousand kids answered with the chorus . . .

NO MORE, NO MORE [even louder],
NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE!

CHAPTER NINE

The Hood, the Bad,
the Ugly . . .
Hammered with
Hemingway

C
al Jam II was held at the Ontario Motor Speedway, sixty miles east of L.A., on March 18, 1978. It was the biggest gig Aerosmith ever did. The thing was Woodstock
huge
. Half a million people if you include the crashers. I knew we were to make history when I looked down from the helicopter five hundred feet up in the air and I couldn’t see land—just a sea of people on a two-and-a-half-mile oval track. A small town. Evel Knievel’s company painted all the vans that we used to get from the hotel to backstage with the
Draw the Line
album cover on the sides.

We were spread out all over the place. The band was at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the crew was at the Hyatt House, and stagehands were at motels in Ontario. But when we all met in the middle—which was the stage—we were like the United Mistakes of America. Powerful, free, and fucked-up. By day’s end, there were seven hundred ODs on angel dust, one rape, and two dozen robberies. Two babies were born the night we played, during what song I’m not sure, but strangely enough, they both resembled Joey Kramer.

We headlined the festival with the top rockers of the day . . . Bob Welsh, Dave Mason, Santana, Heart, Ted Nugent, Foreigner, and Mahogany Rush. We’d observed that if you knew what time the sun went down and it wasn’t cloudy, as the sky got darker, your lights onstage got brighter and more magical as the set went on. If you played it right—and threw in great songs to go along with God’s light show—it was like nothing short of a deity showing up at your gig. All the nuances that a lighting director could never get, that movie crews wait for all day. They call it the “magic hour.” We called ours the “witching hour.”

So let’s for a moment talk about the Scam at Cal Jam. Here I was, waxing on about Mother Nature’s klieg lights, when Murphy’s Law comes along and says, “Hey, Steve, what a great idea. Do you mind if I fuck it up for you?” Ted Nugent has to have an encore; Foreigner gets two. And don’t forget Santana—he gets an encore, too. So by the time Aerosmith got onstage, it was 12:08, eight minutes into the next day. It was so late, even God had left. And the next day a far worse fate befell us—Kelly, having tried to snort every spec of blow at Cal Jam, left Aerosmith.

R
ewind to 1977, Aerosmith goes Hollywood!! “They’re gonna put me in the movies, they’re gonna make a big star out of WE.” Thanks, Ringo . . . I mean, Buck. The movie was
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
To be involved in ANYTHING that was slightly related to the Beatles was a dream come true. But with us, dreams were never quite what they seemed—they were either wet or a nightmare.

“We’ll do it!” I said. Then I read the script. And here it comes: I get killed at the end? And by Frampton?

I talked with the film’s producer, Robert Stigwood, in his office and had to put on my skis just to get to his desk. After three hours of me telling him “I’m not gonna be Framptonized,” they blew smoke up my ass by telling me I wouldn’t die in the movie. They would set my clothes on fire and I’d melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. That was how it was supposed to be.

The most fun I had doing the movie was when I was strangling Strawberry Fields (played by Sandy Farina) with my microphone scarves and she kicked me off the stage and watched me plummet thirty feet into an airbag. Of course I had to do it twenty times . . . just for shits and giggles, ’cause I loved it. Not to mention, as I fell, I could see up Strawberry’s shortcake.

The movie was a Hindenberg at the box office. Wait, the dream come true I left out . . . is I got to meet George Martin. We talked about recording “Come Together” at the Record Plant . . . fifteen minutes about the track and fifteen hours about the Beatles. He said he loved our band and was looking forward to working with us in the studio. We did a badass version of the song. I would have believed anything George Martin said. However, he wasn’t just charming, he was brilliant and beautiful. I could see all that in his eyes. And I must admit that when I was singing the first verse of “Come Together” and I looked through the glass at Studio A, Record Plant east, it was like for that one nanosecond in time . . . I was John.

In 1978, still waiting for Cyrinda to surrender, I was dating Gretchen, a wild blond mama who later on married one of the guys in Blue Öyster Cult. She was feral and perpetually aroused
.
She would have at it with herself and me in the back of the limo, which shocked even Rabbit, who was pretty unshockable (and by the way, fucked like the critter that inspired his name). There was a party for the
Sgt. Pepper
film at Studio 54. Ray and his ex-wife Susan were there and at one point Susan came over to Ray and me and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but Steven’s girlfriend, Gretchen, is flashing her cooha in front of everybody.” I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” She said, “Yeah, she’s walking around with her dress up, and she’s flashing her fish kitten in everybody’s face.” I couldn’t believe it. I went over and confronted Gretchen. She flat out denied it. Gretchen called Susan out. The “fuck you’s” went back and forth like Connors and McEnroe at Wimbledon. Meanwhile, Susan’s brother, Richard Sanders—who started working for Aerosmith and wound up running his own record label—showed up with a copy of a magazine from the East Village, with a picture of Gretchen—GUESS WHAT?—with her dress up! When I saw that I was so pissed off at her that I broke up with her. You know, looking back on that, I can’t believe I left because of her flashing . . . when here I am, humping Joe’s monitor during “Back in the Saddle” every night.

Outside Studio 54, there was such a mob waiting to get in . . . that I jumped up on Kelly’s back and rode him to the limo. The paparazzi were flashing their asses off, and a month later the quasi-photo was there with a caption that read, “Being rich means never having to walk again.”

This kind of story seeps into the Aerosmithsonyian. You know you’ve made it when all your friends have the same story, which goes: “I carried him out . . .
No, I carried him out! No,
we
carried him out! Nooooo . . . wait a minute! He carried us out. Paid for our drinks and nailed us all in the ladies’ bathroom
!” Such was the life at Studio 54.

C
yrinda and I got married on September 1, 1978, at the summit of Trow Hill in Sunapee, after dating for a year. We trudged over the river and through the woods through blueberry wishes to the very top of the mountain. We were up so high that the altitude got us straight. Zunk Buker—the pilot for the plane I owned—had a brother who happened to be a priest. We said our nups, gasped our “I do’s,” and hightailed it over to King Ridge ski lodge in New London. The reception was fairy-tale perfect. Lilacs and gardenias hung from the rafters as my dad played romantic music from the 1940s. The food, my family, my friends—I’d never kissed so many women with mustaches. The Italian and Armenian cultural collision was a success and the honeymoon had already begun.

I’d bought a house the year before and a piece of property right on the lake in Sunapee. On that heavenly body of water, I fell so deeply in love with Cyrinda, I felt for the first time in my life that all my dreams had come true. Three days before Christmas 1978, our beautiful daughter, Mia, was born. I could have wished for nothing more in life.

J
ust married, me and my beautiful wife, Cyrinda Foxe, 1978. Mia and I lost her on September 7, 2002. (Aerosmith)

The winter before we married, I’d taken her up to the family digs at Trow-Rico. Got in the Willys Jeep and drove her down to the lake to show off and show her the house. It was ten below and the lake was frozen solid. I headed for Sunapee Harbor and drove right off the dock and onto the ice. It was dusk and almost dark. A half a mile out into the middle of the frozen lake, Cyrinda’s screaming like she was on the
Titanic
and it was going down. I spun the Jeep around five times and headed for the shore. When we pulled up in front of the house, I turned on the headlights, and when she saw the house sitting on the water like a Christmas card, she started to cry
.

She was a city girl

With no responsibility

A pretty little city girl

All fired up and what’s

Ah what that girl could to do me

We sat there till the battery went dead, and I said to her, “This will be our house.” Then
I
cried.

I know there have been (and I’m sure there will be) more books written about me—from Stephen Davis’s
Walk This Way
to Bebe Buell’s
Rebel Heart
to Cyrinda Foxe’s
Dream On
and Joey Kramer’s
Hit Hard
. Sometimes I feel compelled to read parts of these memoirs so I can remember things about me that I don’t remember. But on occasion when I read on, I find stories that are so outrageously absurd and blown out of proportion for their own benefit and some insulated truth, I have trouble believing these people ever really blew me . . . oops, I mean knew ME at all. Now I’m not saying that I’m a saint, but I do know some things. And the
me
that I ain’t! Probably when I finish writing my memoirs, there will be a million and nine people saying, “I didn’t say that! I never did that!
He’s crazy!
He used me! He abused me!
I love him!
I hate him!
And I wonder if he could loan me some money!” (No wonder Hemingway drank.) In a book, if you want the truth . . . read between the lines! And in music, it dances between the notes.

Cyrinda wrote a ton of fuckin’ things about me—some of which were true, and some of which were lies and kvetching . . . nothing in there that said, “I grew up selling drugs on the beach (I don’t know what I was thinking) . . . my mom had sixteen boyfriends and I wound up in a closet crying till I found speed and I shot up.” That’s what’s too bad. But I’d be the first to admit that I would not be who I am without the good, the bad, and the ugly.

T
hose were the sweetest and the roughest years of remembrance as far I’m concerned: 1977 to 1979. By late ’78 the band had begun to disintegrate. Joe and I were fighting more and more. We fought backstage, we fought on the plane . . . we even fought
on
stage, like good brothers from the Everlys to the Kinks to Oasis. Joe could torment me to death by being so stoned and looking so good. But most of all by playing his guitar on fucking 12. He’d play so loud, even Helen Keller could sing along . . . so loud, in fact, that in order to hear myself, I had to STICK MY FINGER in my ear. Making me so angry, I wanted to SHOVE MY FIST up his ass. From Freddie Mercury to Rod Stewart, they’d all agree that it’s just how we’d want to be seen. On the cover of
Rolling Stone . . .
with our middle finger in our earhole. FUCK ME! That’s why God created monitors, In-Ears, and acoustic guitar players. Thank you, Crosby, Stills and Nashville. LS fucking D . . . ? In-Deed.

A little-known secret about lead singers with LSD: our disorder comes mainly from not being able to hear ourselves. My job is to sing dis thing called the melody. So in ORDER to sing the melody, I NEED TO HEAR MYSELF sing it.

So then I’d wait and go over and push him around while he was playing, and he would hit me with his guitar. The scuffles didn’t start intentionally, but once we got into it, they became an excuse. “You tried to fucking hit me, you fuck.” If I got too close and Joe thought I was upstaging him, that’s when the games began. Then he’d really try to do it back to me. But you can’t reason with somebody when they’re that drunk or high—we would play games. I remember once coming really close to punching Joe, but I’m not that kind of a guy, I don’t punch people. I never even understood the concept of that. Joe and I really did come close to it a few times—three or four times maybe—but we never
deliberately
hit each other. One time Joe stuck the end of a guitar string through my lower lip. I spat blood all over him and ended up with a little hole in my cheek. I honestly don’t know if he did it on purpose or not. You’d have to ask him on his deathbed. Who knows if he’d even tell you then?