Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (22 page)

Another time we were opening for Bachman-Turner Overdrive and they sabotaged the scrim that would fly the Aerosmith wings. Their roadies rigged the cables holding up the flag of the Blue Army so that when Kelly pulled on them, the fucking pipe bent and the wings crashed. We learned that the best way to beat sabotage on the road was to just kick ass every night . . . and that’s just what we did.

Marko Hudson told me a great story about David Coverdale when Whitesnake was opening for Ozzy Osbourne. Coverdale supposedly showed up at the venue on more than one occasion with a pair of hookers wearing white fur coats and toting two Afghan dogs. Ozzy hated it. He called him a “prat.” The crew was instructed to lay down silver duct tape that would lead Coverdale to his dressing room. One night, before Sir David arrived, Ozzy took the tape up himself and redirected the trail—to the boiler room.

We were playing in Lincoln, Nebraska, one time. That’s where Joey and I got busted for throwing firecrackers out the window of a Holiday Inn. The bill was Aerosmith, Kansas, and the Elvin Bishop Group. Elvin Bishop had that hit single “I Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” Crazy Raymond or “Ray Gourmet” as we called him at the time, had it in our contract rider that we had to have a
turkey-on-the-bone
dinner every fucking night backstage after the show. Not turkey loaf, not turkey roll, not pressed turkey, but a fresh fucking turkey-on-the-bone dinner, even though we never ate it because everybody was so out there all the time and just wanted to get out of the venue and back to the hotel. Nine out of ten shows, we’d get turkey roll with bubbles in the meat or some mystery meat that looked like hockey pucks and tasted like a Frye boot. And that’s just what we got in Lincoln. I lost it. We gave the stuff to Kansas. They ate it and loved it. I guess that
futuristic
meat was one of the reasons why they were a great prog band.

Speaking of meat, I found out years later (through a crew member confessional) that when the techs would get pissed off at the band, they’d wipe their ass with the bologna and put it back on the deli tray. Come to think of it, I always thought the bologna on tour had an anal tinge.

Being on tour with Jeff Beck was one of the highlights of my career. One time we were performing in Chicago at Comiskey Park and Jeff Beck came out and played “Train Kept a-Rollin’ ” with us. It was incredible. Then the stage manager comes running right out onstage and yells, “You’re burning the building down!” We thought he meant that the band was on fire. Joe and Brad have been known to rip some pretty hot leads. But the building was really burning. The asphalt and tar on the roof caught fire and the place was going up in flames. That night, we burned the house down . . . twice.

We always knew that our old manager, Frank Connally, was hooked up with some shady characters. But now Frank’s old business partners were coming home to roost. A big boxing promoter (we’ll call him “Tony Marooka”) claimed he wasn’t getting his share and came to collect. “Frank told me I’d be taken care of,” he said. “I’ll break fuckin’ Steven Tyler’s legs if you don’t do right by me.” David Krebs went into the Celtics dressing room with Marooka and there was a powwow. Krebs took care of it by laying some dead presidents on him. I had no idea this was going on; one of those rare transactions where I was glad to be out of the loop.

J
anuary 1975 . . . in the midst of a spine-chilling, ball-freezing New York winter, we began work on our third album,
Toys in the Attic.
I came up with the title because of its obvious meanings and since people thought we were fucking crazy anyway, what did it matter? I wasn’t hip to the 1960 Tony Award–nominated Broadway play of the same name or its 1963 Oscar-nominated film adaptation. Didn’t matter if I had been. This was Aerosmith’s
Toys in the Attic
. . . singular, sexy, and psychosensational.

My creative chi ebbed and flowed from tongue in puss to tongue in cheek. I’ve always been tactile and oral. Maybe too much love from my mother? But it became obvious to me in later years that the passion I had was unlike that of other males, and unfortunately, on various occasions, that passion wasn’t shared by other members of the band.

I’ve been misquoted as saying that I’m more female than male. Let me set the record straight—it’s more half and half, and I love the fact that my feelings are akin to
puella eternis
(Latin for “the eternal girl”). What better to be like than the stronger of the species? I mean, women are the superior beings, are they not? Sure the male brings the food home, but can they birth children and feed them from their breast? Woman has compassion, which man lacks. I feel I was born with those same feminine compassions.

People wind up stashing their memories in the attic, a traditionally nostalgic place—your old teddy bear,
Archie
comic books, Slinkys, family heirlooms, a favorite moth-eaten sweater, photos of childhood, your old roller skates, tickets to a Stones concert, Mia’s crib. . . .

The other reason I came up with
Toys in the Attic
was that I knew we’d made it. I was the kid who put my initials in the rock ’cause I wanted the aliens to know I was there. It’s a statement of longevity. The record will be played long after you’re dead. Our records would be up there in the attic, too, with the things that you loved and never wanted to forget
.
And to me, Aerosmith was becoming that. I knew how the Beatles, the Animals, and the Kinks did it—with lyrics and titles. I saw reason and rhyme in all the lunacy that we were concocting.

Leaving the things that are real behind

Leaving the things that you loved remind

All of the things that you learned from fears

Nothing is left but the years

Joe was jamming a riff and I started yelling, “Toys, toys toys. . . .” Organic, immediate, infectious . . . fucking amazing. Once again, the Toxic Twins ride off into the sunset . . . this time, the sunset of the attic. Joe’s been my inspiration on more songs than I would ever tell him. Sometimes, just his presence in the room is enough to inspire lyrics to the greatest melody. It’s proved itself on every record we’ve ever done. I’m friends with some of the best . . . but I’m partners with almost none. He’s so much more than the real thing. Coke has nothing on Joe Perry. Like leaves on an artichoke, the more layers you peel off, the closer you get to the heart. Guitar players jam

Toys, toys, toys . . . in the attic!

I just started singing and it fit like chocolate and peanut butter. Joe plays his ass off on that song. He used to sprawl across the couch with the TV on and play guitar at the same time. I’d come in and say, “What are you doing?” and he’d say, “I’m just watching TV.” “No you’re not. You’re writing a song,” I’d fire back. And all I can say is, Thank you, Thomas Edison for inventing the tape recorder. Joe played stuff unconsciously. It didn’t matter what key or tempo. That came later. Just playing; just feeling; just being Joe fuckin’ Perry.

Tom Hamilton—same thing. He’s come up with these slippery, slimy, melodically delicious out-of-the-blue bass lines from practice. He’d play stuff so down and dirty just from warming up, and it would turn into a song. Like “Uncle Salty,” actually written on
his
guitar. Movie stars wanna be rock stars; guitar players wanna be lead singers; bass players wanna be guitar players.

Now she’s doin’ any for money and a penny

A sailor with a penny or two or three

Hers is the cunning for men who come a-runnin’

They all come for fun and it seems to me

That when she cried at night, no one came

And when she cried at night, went insane

Here I was thinking about an orphanage when I wrote those lyrics. I’d try and make the melody weep from the sadness felt when a child is abandoned. I pretended to know the headmaster to get inside his head and what I heard was

Uncle Salty told me stories of a lonely

Baby with a lonely kind of life to lead

Her mammy was lusted, Daddy he was busted

They left her to be trusted till the orphan bleeds

Inside was hell or barely tolerable, but she sang, “
It’s a sunny day outside my window . . .”
because I’m a sucker for a happy ending.

The song title “Walk This Way” came from the Mel Brooks film
Young Frankenstein . . .
secondhand. Jack Douglas was discussing how Marty Feldman’s scene went, where he utters the (now) immortal line. It was hilarious and it stuck. I’d actually finished the song the night before our recording session and kept it in a bag that had all the other lyrics I’d written for the
Attic
LP. Arriving that day at the studio at 4:00
P.M
., I got out of the cab and realized that I’d left the bag in the car! Gone. Two hours later, I went upstairs. I sat down on the steps with my pen and wrote the words to “Walk This Way” on the wall. As I rewrote each line, the words all came back to me. Never saw the bag again.

Backstroke lover always hidin’ neath the covers

Till I talked to your daddy, he say

He said, “You ain’t seen nothin’ till you’re down on a muffin

Then you’re sure to be changin’ your ways”

I met a cheerleader, was a real young bleeder

Oh the times I could reminisce

’Cause the best things of lovin’ with her sister and her cousin

Only started with a little kiss

Like this!

Walk this way!!!

Toys in the Attic
came out in April 1975 and went gold. The rest of the year we spent on the road. This was the year it all changed for us. The album got good reviews and people started taking us more seriously—about fucking time! We toured with Rod Stewart and Ted Nugent. Ted is the definitive Paul Bunyan with an SG guitar—a man’s man. His music is in tune with the times, but his values are as old-fashioned as Davy Crockett’s coonskin cap. He’s so far to the right, he runs over his left! And if looks could kill, his wife would slay us all.

T
our managers had it good back then. We didn’t know it, but every person they let in the back door, they got a gram of blow from. “You wanna come in? Cost you a gram, man! Ounce of coke! An ounce of coke’ll get you up close and personal! Yup! I’ll give you all the tickets you want. But make sure you got an ounce. And dude, it’s gotta be just like that last shipment.”

The Aerosmith crew were ruthless extorters of blow. I met these guys later on—we’d go back to the same cities ten more times and they would all come out of the woodwork and go, “You know, when I used to come here, Kelly would charge me in coke. The last time I saw you it cost me a fucking eight-ball just to get me in!” First it was a gram. Then it went up. Even among hustlers and dope fiends, there’s inflation. And that’s what they did; that’s why Jimmy, Kelly—whoever—were nowhere to be found. And the more famous a band got, the more blow. And who did we buy our blow from? Kelly!

We drank a lot because of the blow and we got blown a lot because we drank a lot. My favorite cocktail was a Rusty Nail . . . Drambuie mixed with the finest Scotch and a twist of lemon. I found out later on that Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr were fellow Rusty Nailers. It’s a good thing we set that glass down or it would have been the rusty nail in all our coffins.

Kelly had a monstrous appetite for coke, and I say that from the point of view of one who had a pretty ferocious appetite himself. He was a human vacuum cleaner. Fort Wayne, Indiana, we got into town and the crew would introduce the infamous Kelly to the local stagehands. “Listen, sons . . .” Kelly could snort a week’s worth of their blow a foot from the baggie through midair. The guy would go, “What the fuck, man?” And Kelly would look at me and go, “Aaaahh—coke etiquette, Jack.” He had so much residue in his nostrils, he made it into Ripley’s Believe It or
Snot
!