Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (20 page)

Speaking of which, remember a little group of nasty girls called the Plaster Casters? There were originally two Plaster Casters, but soon more were needed. If Led Zeppelin were in town, say, and the first two girls were busy . . . well, that night they would send another couple of girls over to do the Allman Brothers. Eventually there were more girls involved at each session: a plethora of plasterers. One cooked up the plaster, the second one did the fluffing, and the third one would cast the mold and put it in her Easy-Bake oven. I never had my plaster casted, ’cause I always believed in mystery meat. I figured if I got the cast, it would wind up on someone’s mantelpiece somewhere, and people would be going, “
That’s
Steven Tyler’s dick?” We’d lost half our audience right there.

The girls are parading around in their outfits, and I’m talking to Strawberry Fields—she’s got my attention—and other parts of my anatomy, too, by now—and she’s telling me all the stuff they do. Groupie Geishas! I wanted to say, “As long as I’ve got a face, you’ll always have a place to sit,” but it came out, “Igloo boffrim modden ginsky” . . . but what I meant to say was “Blahimi auhfern koofnard gynolia?”

“So, uh, you girls, you dress up in different outfits?” I asked.

“Well, of course, we have any kind of costume you want,” chimes Ms. Fields. “Just tell me. We’re here to please.” This was way before you could call a service and say, “Send over a couple of hookers dressed up like Jack Sparrow and Whoopi Goldberg.” Strawberry Fields had the costumes made to order for your particular perverted fantasy—any fucking fantasy your twisted little heart desired. Out of this entire erotic circus, there was one day where seven girls showed up dressed like Joe Perry with tits. No one got laid
that
night.

Penny Lane, the groupie Kate Hudson played in
Almost Famous,
could easily have been based on sweet . . . hell, I’m not even going to give the girl a pseudonym, but that
was
her, my girlfriend to be, one of the six girls in the Little Oral Annie Club we met that night. She was sixteen, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it. With my bad self being twenty-six and she barely old enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. She was a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was my heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.

Early on in the band when I was still Jung and easily Freudened, I’d blurt out my sexual fantasies. I thought I was just being honest and saying what was on everybody’s mind, but I made the mistake of talking this stuff in front of the band’s wives. You know, stuff like how I liked doing it with two girls—twins, preferably. “You’re disgusting, Steve!” one of the band wives blurted out (I hate it when people call me “Steve”; always a tinge of squinge attached to Steve). I’d say, “What? Boys don’t like threesomes? Don’t
all
boys dream about that?”

And did I expect my band mate to say, “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, baby, that
is
my secret fantasy. And, honey, while Steven’s brought up the subject of sexual fantasies, did I ever tell you I’ve always wanted you to dress up in a Nazi uniform and order me to goose-step on your great white plain?” What was I thinking? No man is going to tell his wife what he really likes. Because when he gets home, she’ll Lorena Bobbitt his ass and he’ll never find his licorice nib again.

Any cop will tell you that the things people lie about most are sex and drugs—and in that order—so hypocrisy is the order of the day. I would just sit there, flabbergasted, going, “Oh, really? You mean boys
don’t
like girls going down on each other?” I think I’m on firm theoretical grounds in saying this, but I always welcome other points of view.

Of course, nowadays, in every fuck club or strip joint, it’s fashionable—hell, it’s mandatory—for two girls to kiss and jam out with their clam out. Why did it take so long? That’s how they get your attention; now they
know
.

Can I help it if I was ahead of my time? Back then, I used to say, “Aw, c’mon, all guys like a close shave.” In the year 2011 it’s become fashionable for girls from sixteen to sixty to be cut to the quick. It’s waxed, smacked, and shellacked. Do we need to do a survey? They may have a landing strip, so flight attendants, please remain seated until my face comes to a complete and full stop. I remember one night on the road when Joe and I were sharing a bed with two girls and woke up in the morning with a seafood blue plate special. Crabs for . . . everybody! And I’m the last guy on the planet to use that little Barbie Doll comb that used to come with a bottle of A-200 that would burn the critters out. At one point, I had so many crabs, I used to say good night to them.

My little oral Annie came back with me to the hotel, the Edgewater Inn in Seattle, where we sat in the tub for two hours, naked with no water, when it dawned on me there was an emergency cord in the bus we’d taken to the hotel. So I went down (on my way knocking on Ted Nugent’s door), cut the cord with a pair of pliers I had in my bag, brought it up to my room, attached a fish hook from hell to it, ordered ham sandwiches—which is all you could get after midnight—put the ham on the hook, and dropped it out the window. We pulled up mud sharks and codfish for the next four hours and proceeded to clean the fish and gut the two sharks. Then Ted says, “Check this out.” And lays the two hearts on the sink. “Okay, now go to bed,” orders the madman. Next morning, my phone rings and it’s Ted. “Steven, go into the bathroom and check out the heart.” I touch the sea critter with my finger and I’ll be damned if the heart didn’t start beating . . . nine hours later! Which only proves one thing . . . which I can’t remember just now. “You can’t kill a lawyer,” could that be it?

Nugent suggested we have a fish fry at the gig. So we filleted the cod we caught, put ’em in a cooler, and took ’em to the gig that night with us. I offered him my crabs, but he politely declined.

I was so in love I almost took a teen bride. I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights and her parents fell in love with me, signed papers over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me. My Sweet Eeee. . .

Standin’ in front just shakin’ your ass,

Take you backstage you can drink from my glass.

Talk about something you can sure understand

’Cause a month on the road and I’ll be eatin’ from your hand.

That was her. I lived with her for three years. She was a sweet, mysterious creature . . . very smart, and she knew what she liked and what I liked. We took baths together. She wore skirts with no panties. We did it on the red-eye from L.A. to Boston . . . that kind of stuff. All the things that guys dream about.

We made love in public, in private, and tried positions the
Kama Sutra
has yet to come up with. One time we started out in a hot tub on the roof and wound up in the lobby. We got out of the hot tub naked and into the elevator and dared each other we couldn’t make it all the way down to our room without being seen. We hit every floor starting with the lobby . . . unfortunately, it went there first. It was so erotic and romantic that by the time we got to the lobby, we were coming and going all at the same time. When the doors opened, there was an Amish family staring at us like figures in an oil painting. The door closes, then it opens again, and someone says, “Can I have your autograph?”

That sweet girl used to recite poetry and constantly sing songs to me like my mother did when she put me to sleep. It was an inspiration to my heart. One of the songs she taught me was “We Are Siamese,” which I’m sure you’ll all remember from the movie
Lady and the Tramp.

Like I said, so sweet. Not like me.

At the end of the tour I brought her home to Boston. We got on well for a while . . . we were best friends and did everything together. She even knew how to mow a lawn. That impressed me. There’s a picture of us in
People
magazine sitting on my tractor. But toward the end things started to derail. We got so messed up on drugs and were so out of control that the dark side started taking over. And while I was on the road, our apartment almost burned down and she wound up in the hospital with smoke inhalation. I went to see her in the hospital and that’s when reality slapped me in the face. When you love somebody, set them free. And I just had to let her go. She went back to her parents, but I can still see her in the songs we sang together. And the greatest thing she taught me . . . that
love is love reflected
.

So much to be dealt with when you fall. And I fell hard. And I fell heavy. And I fell so in love. Was it from songs? From my Italian family? From heaven or hell? I’m a breeder. Been married twice. They say never trust a rock musician? We can write songs about love but we’re not allowed to
be
in love. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. I fell in love with you from the side of the stage, surrounded
by other women,
” your significant other would say if she were honest. But they don’t think that. You get
married,
and sometimes you fall from God’s grace. You’re sitting there saying to them, “Yeah, but sweetheart . . . you see the girls screaming at me every night. I don’t sleep with them, I just make love to them through my music. And that stage is my mistress. Why are you angry at
me
?” And, actually, I
liked
it. When I was younger and easily impressed I watched my heroes and I was enticed by that . . . the crowds, the adulation, the sexuality, and the girls that loved rock guys. It certainly wasn’t the money.

You know, guys in rock bands aren’t the only devils. Wives can be just as bad. I’ve known some wives that cheated on the guys while they were on tour and the husbands never knew it! And they said I should be wearing the genital cuff?

I
came up with the second album title,
Get Your Wings,
after reading a book on the Hells Angels. Getting your wings is a Hells Angels thing. If you give a girl head when she has her period, you are definitely one of the guys and, my friend, you’ve got your wings. The album came out in March 1974—and we were on the road again. We toured like gypsy possessed. We opened for Mott the Hoople, Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, the Guess Who, and Kiss. We were on tour continually and endlessly. We made as little as five hundred dollars a night in places where they didn’t know us and almost four grand where they did.
Get Your Wings
was bubbling in the Hot 100. And as a result of our never-ending road juggernaut, it got us our first gold record the following year.

M
e at the Record Plant recording our second album, 1973. (Joe Perry)

That spring we opened for Hawkwind (the Brit sci fi rockers) at Alex Cooley’s Electric Ballroom in Atlanta. Every night there’d be a girl in the front row, very scantily clad, silver glitter spray all over her body, and little nipple cups. And really
hot
. Stone gorgeous. She was the Glitter Queen and she came to every show we ever played in Atlanta.

We did a great show at Cooley’s one night. I was up in the dressing room afterward . . . the backstage was full of people, along with a couple of girls in the dressing room, naked. My old childhood friend Ray was there. He was working his ass off with the band and had a bag of blow. Ray had the greatest connections—the red Lebanese hash with a camel embossed on the bag, same as the stuff he’d scored for Led Zeppelin—oh how they loved that shit!

One of my band mates took a look at the Glitter Queen and he was
gone
! She disappeared and so did he. I think she swallowed him up a couple of times.

The girl standing there in front of me was
hot,
not to mention very ambidextrous. She could bend over backward—my kinda girl—and she had a flat head where I could rest my beer. A little-known quality in those who bend. Later, Ray had this same girl in the toilet stall, she’s standing on her head with her feet up against the wall, and he’s pretending to pour Jack Daniel’s into her ’gynie . . . but actually pouring it into a shot glass and sticking the shot glass into her coo-ha and drinking out of it with a straw. When Ray was done, he poured Jack on his schvantz ’cause he thought it would kill the herpes he was about to get. One snort leads to another, and pretty soon it’s two hours later.