Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (39 page)

Still, I intended never to return. The era was over. He knew it. So he gathered the band to Boston, in the basement situation room, for an emergency meeting and told them, “Steven’s out of his mind. We gotta get his wife on the phone.”

He went upstairs and proceeded to call my wife. Pure vindictive crap. Joe was shocked that he’d actually done it. He said, “You did
what
? What the fuck?!?!”

Actually I was almost a year sexually sober, so if they told me to go fuck myself I couldn’t even have done that. All this while Sly Stallone was trying to hook me up with the most lascivious, sweetly sweaty, Floridian pulchritude known to man. I would go to clubs three times a week with him. Girls all over the place, boobs and thongs just like in
Girls Gone Wild.
Everywhere. The most I would do is say good night to them. “You’re leavin’ us, baby?” “Well, ladies, you can walk me back to the hotel if you like.” “Okay!” And three or four of them would walk me to the corner across the street from the main entrance of the Marlin Hotel. I would say, “Okay, girls, you have to stay here. I’m going in there alone. So I can get back to writing lyrics to stories yet untold.” A saint, I tell you.

After leaving Tim’s office I stomped out the door and drove to Sunapee to open up the house for my kids, wipe the flies out of the windows—my favorite thing to do. On the way back to Boston I stopped at a tollbooth, pulled over, and called Teresa. She was crying hysterically. “Baby, tell me.” I said, “Why are you crying?” “Well, I’ll tell you why,” she said. “Tim called and told me you were fucking other girls and you’re still on drugs, and that’s why you went up to New Hampshire alone.” That’s how good he was—those devious little details! She just freaked. He had her on the phone for twenty minutes, screaming at Teresa. I had been married to her for eighteen years by then.

When I hung up the phone with Teresa, I called Bobby Hearn (my sponsor in AA). I said, “Bobby, you better meet me at my house in Marshfield and get rid of all the guns or I’m gonna fucking get my gun and shoot Tim Collins. I am so fucking furious!” I mean, I totally went off! I don’t allow myself to get into that state anymore ’cause there’s no one in my life I let do that to me.

Now I had to deal with my wife. It took me two weeks, every day, to get rid of the anger.

Tim called the band into the office after I said it was over. Joe and I had been writing songs without them, so the guys in the band were already angry at me and this gave Tim the power to get the rest of the band on his side.

The next day, I walked into our rehearsal space and said to my partner, Joe, “You fuck! Why didn’t you ask me if I was high? Like we used to talk in the early days.” Oh! See how angry I get now just thinking about it? Wait, it gets better!

When I saw the guys in the band again, I asked them, “What were you guys thinking when you let Tim call my wife? All this stuff he told you, it’s all just fucking hearsay from some friend of Tim’s.” And it was all particularly galling because it was one of the few times in my life that I was not drinking, was drug free, and sexually abstinent.

When I asked the band why they believed I was fucking everything that moved they said. “Oh, Steven! What did we know? Tim convinced us. . . .”

“Fuck you! What if I called up your wife and said, ‘He’s fucking this chick in his tiki hut?’ ”

Tim Collins would get people going with his insinuating little sayings like, “There’s trouble in paradise.” That’s the fucking letter he wrote to my wife.
Trouble in Paradise
. Tim Collins was famous for starting rumors, stuff that he made up himself. He was the fireman who sets the fires. He would go to Joe Perry’s house, light a fire at night when no one was looking, go back to the firehouse, wait for the alarm, rush over there, really quick, quicker than any other fireman, and put the fire out. So he could be a hero. He did that time and time again. And then when the fire was out, he’d say, “I saved your life.”

The very next day he went up to Sony with Bob Timmons to see the president. “So, Tim,” Donnie Ienner asks, “you’re telling me Steven’s back on heroin?”

No hesitation. “Yup. But don’t worry, sir, I’m gonna get him back into rehab, and in a month or two, he’ll be all right again. I’ll get him in the studio, do an album, and everything’ll be fine. Goddamn him! I tried!”

Oh, and it doesn’t stop there! Then he went to
Time
magazine and
People
and
Rolling Stone
. “Aerosmith Lead Singer Back on Heroin!”

J
oe Perry, Tony Bennett, me, and Tommy Mottola the day we signed with Sony, 1991. (Kevin Mazur/WireImage/Getty Images)

Shortly after this I’m out to dinner with Ienner at an Italian restaurant eating capozzelli di agnelli. Capozzelli, that’s a dish of lamb’s head. They bring the whole head out after it’s been in the oven. I’m sitting at the table and I said, “Did Tim and fuckin’ Bob Timmons come down here and tell you I was on heroin?” And he got quiet and he goes, “That’s exactly what they said.” “And you believed him?” “Well, now, Steven, I don’t want to cause any trouble here.” I said, “Don’t worry about that. We just fired him.” “Well, to be honest with you, I was thinking this was a little fucked.” “Oh, really? A minute ago you wouldn’t say anything because you didn’t want to start any trouble.” “Well, Stevie, ya see, I’m one of those people that—” Oh, fuck you and the horse you rode in on!

While all this was going on my daughter Mia called me up crying. She goes, “Daddy, I’m so scared! Are you on drugs again?” I was stunned to hear her so upset; Mia never cries. I took her out and told her, “Mia, I’m not on drugs and I’m not hiding. I haven’t gotten high in nine years.” We hugged, and she’s crying in my arms. We turn the corner and I open my eyes for a second and there’s that motherfucking paparazzi with a lens from here to Connecticut. I thought, God, does it never stop? “Mia, here’s what we’re going to do. Hold on a minute.” I went into a hardware store we happened to be walking past, and asked, “Do you have an umbrella and a can of spray paint—in white, preferably?” I took the can, shook it up, and wrote FUCK YOU! on the umbrella, opened it up, put it behind us, and we walked down the street! Let ’em get a shot of that—all day! I did see it in a few stupid rags, but that was all right.

Tim Collins put a spell on me. Svengali, that’s who Tim Collins was. He would deliberately say whatever was on his agenda in front of groups of people to intimidate them, that way nobody would dare contradict him. It’s like if you had been sitting around with a friend of yours the night before and the next morning you’re reading the newspaper and you go, “Oh, my god, a woman’s decapitated body was found in the woods,” and just then your best friend walks in with a shrunken head. Now you’re going to be real fucking careful what you say about that best friend of yours, not to mention he ain’t your best friend no more.

As I walked out of Tim Collins’s office for the last time, I could see and feel the waves receding like the backwash of a speedboat on a calm lake. I turned around and said, “This is the last fucking time I’m coming here or I’m ever gonna utter your name.” I fell into the wormhole of consuming anger. I could feel the weight of hatred welling behind me. It was like standing at the back of the
Queen Mary
and watching the waves that it throws off.

I didn’t talk to him again until three years ago in the elevator at the Mile High stadium in Denver.

“Mr. Tyler,” he said, “so good to see you. There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for a long time.”

“I know what it is. You want to ask my forgiveness for that remark.”

“How did you know?”

Oh, I knew. When I had last confronted him with all the outrageous things he’s done, he simply said, “I’m sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone who gives a shit.”

I had been devastated. I loved Tim, I trusted him, believed in him, and he let me down. Abandonment and betrayal by managers has been an ongoing thorn in my side my whole career. But why should I be any different from any other performer?

CHAPTER 13.5

The Bitch Goddess
of
Billboard

L
iv called me and said she got offered a part in a movie with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to take it because it was too commercial. “In what way?” I said. Her taste in movie roles was more off-beat and indie, like
Stealing Beauty
and
That Thing You Do,
which she had already done. So she says, “In the opening scene Bruce Willis is teeing off an oil rig and trying to hit the Green Peace boats. And then they go up in space to shoot down an asteroid.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” She said, “I think it’s too mainstream and commercial, Daddy.” “Take it,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with being a household name, baby.”

Meanwhile,
Nine Lives
came out in ’97—that was such a fucking great album. I remember walking around with the finished cassette in my back pocket—felt like a bar of gold. But look at the goop around it! We all got sober. Looking back, I think if we’d have stayed stoned, the band would never have come back and gotten its grip again. I was sober for twelve years. Joe had four. Brad maybe had eight. If he was drinking wine, doesn’t matter. Tom, who knows what he was doing? Joey’s the only one that stayed sober through the whole thing. He’s the only guy in the band who stayed the course.

Some of the lyrics I wrote on the
Nine Lives
album was my rant, my rage. Maybe Tim Collins, Bob Timmons, and all the other sonsofbitches stuck in my craw had to come out.

How can a good thing

7 come 11

Slip into a fare-thee-well

And how can one man’s

Little bit o’ heaven

Turn into another man’s hell

But in the end I came through all the turmoil philosophical and with eyes wide open:

In the old game of life, best play it smart,

with love in your eyes and a song in your heart,

and if you’ve had problems since way back when,

did the noise in your head bother you then?

You know, I hope you see it as clear as I do.

If you’ve been a problem since way back when,

did the noise in your head bother you then?

Forget “fuck me,” “fuck them,” “fuck you,”

does the noise in my head bother you?

Are you fucked no matter what you do?

No. If your life’s been a lie then ask ’em true,

does the noise in my head bother you?

That one I wrote at my kitchen table up in Sunapee. I love tongue twisters, word games, and shit like that:

Well well well

I feel just like I’m fallin’ in love

There’s a new cool

Some kind of verbooty

It fits me like a velvet glove . . . yeah

And it’s cool

Shoo ba pa du ba

She’s talkin’ to me juba to jive . . . yeah

My divorce from Teresa years later, in 2006 (wait, it’s coming), put the song “Hole in my Soul” into my heart’s perspective . . .

I’m down a one-way street

With a one-night stand

With a one-track mind

Out in no-man’s-land

(The punishment sometimes don’t seem to fit the crime)

Yeah there’s a hole in my soul

But one thing I’ve learned

For every love letter written

There’s another one burned

(So tell me how it’s gonna be this time)

Is it over

Is it over

Is it over

’Cause I’m blowin’ out the flame

That kinda defines getting laid out on the road. I finally put into words how fooling around on someone you love back home could kick back on you. The one thing I’ve learned from being a singer and a poet is that it’s often not what’s been said . . . but how you lived it.

I wrote “Hole in My Soul” with Desmond Child. It’s one of my favorite songs. I came to him with the chorus, then went to the band and said, “Tom, what if you played this on a fretless bass?” I asked him to please,
please
get one. “
There’s a HOLE in my soul that’s been killing me forever
. . .” What a chorus that is. With every album we ever did, I tried to dig out the parts with the other members of the band to perfection. Listen to Tom’s bass and Joey’s snare and foot from
Pump
on up. I pushed the rhythm sections up louder than they’d ever been. I worked on parts for Tom that I knew would pop out, and when it came time to mix, I pushed those parts out and added 3k to them, so they stuck out like the hard nipples that were about to listen to it.

P
hoto shoot for Chrome Hearts, 2006. (Laurie Stark/Laurie Lynn Stark Photography)

While we were tracking
Nine Lines
, the end of “Hole in My Soul” was playing . . . Chelsea and Taj walked into the studio with Teresa. I looked over and I said to them, “Good night, Chelsea. Good night, Taj.” It’s whispered at the end of the track.

L
aurie from Chrome Hearts took this picture of Chelsea and Daddy in 2006. (Laurie Stark/Laurie Lynn Stark Photography)

Ten years prior to making
Nine Lives
I’d been listening to the sound intro on the THX commercial that always plays: “
The audience is listening
.” Joe had bought this fucking guitar that would tune itself. It was a computerized Les Paul or something. So I took the guitar and I
untuned
it, all over the fucking planet. I said, “Put that over on the left side of the studio,” and he hit the button and it went
wwwooowwww
trying to retune itself and wound up back in the key “Taste of India” started in
.
Then I said, “Can you control the time it takes to get to the chord . . . slow it down?” And he goes, “Oh yeah,” so we slowed it down to this intro, ten seconds, and I took that guitar, detuned the whole thing again, and put it over on the right side . . . then we did it again and panned it over to the right side, and when we played ’em altogether we got this incredible sound that was the equivalent of
shuuuu, the audience is listening
but even better than the commercial THX. Then we added this loop that producer Glen Ballard had lying around from Alanis’s
Jagged Little Pill
and I went, “CAN I USE THAT?” And he said, “It’s yours (if you pay for it).” We added a track of this Indian singer, and that’s the music behind the opening verse of “Taste of India.”

God I love the sweet taste of India

Lingers on the tip of my tongue

Gotta love the sweet taste of India

Blame it on the beat of the drum

God I love the sweet taste of India

Lingers on the tip of my tongue

Gotta know that what’s gotten into ya

Any cat man do when it’s done

Now she’s got that kind of love incense

That lives in her back room

And when it mixes with the funk, my friend

It turns into perfume

Then you get to the next verse and listen to what the drums do . . . EXPLOSION!

When you make love to the sweet tantric priestess

You drink in the bliss of delight

But I’m not afraid when I dance with a shadow (BOOM!)

I went to an antiques store and I found this little red church about a foot high and half a foot wide. It had a crank on the side of it and I went, “What’s this?” The shopkeeper said, “Crank it.” It had three harmonicas and a bellows. We used it at the end of “Full Circle.”

Time

Don’t let it slip away

Raise yo’ drinkin’ glass

Here’s to yesterday