Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir (40 page)

In time

We’re all gonna trip away

Don’t piss heaven off

We got hell to pay

Come full circle

On the next track, “Something’s Gotta Give,” I took two trash cans, drumsticks, turned the cans upside down, and played ’em. First song Joe and I ever wrote with Marti Frederiksen. Next track . . . a ballad, “Ain’t That a Bitch.”

Up in smoke, you’ve lost another lover

As you take a hit off your last cigarette

Strung out, burned out

Yeah you’re down on your luck

And you don’t give a huh!

Till the best part of you starts to . . . twitch

Ain’t that a . . . bitch

“The Farm” is Marko Hudson! He wrote most of that. One of his finest fucking moments. He arranged the orchestra, too.

Buckle up straightjack Insanity is such a drag

Jellybean Thorazine, transcendental jet lag,

Sanity

I ain’t gonna feeling like a piñata

Sucker punch

Blow lunch motherload, pigeonhole

I’m feeling like I’m gonna explode

TAKE ME TO THE FARM

I wrote “Pink” with Richie Supa at the Marlin Hotel down in South Beach, Florida. I’d be writing and go, “Fuck.” I’d turn the lights on when the sun went down. I turned the lights off when the sun came blasting through that big bay window. I loved writing lyrics at night—it was more mysterious than in the day, and I could evoke my demons when no one was around to bother me. The only problem was when normal people got up, like our producer Glen Ballard, who was also a cowriter on “Pink,” they would expect me to go in and do my vocals later that morning, when what I really needed was some shut-eye. So most days at the old Marlin, we started recording at about 1:00
P.M.
, which left me five more hours of daylight before I sat down at the table again to turn the light on—this went on for five months until I started growing neon hair.

M
e and me at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. This is the head they made of me for the video of “Pink.” (Erin Brady)

Pink it was love at first sight

Pink when I turn out the light, and

Pink gets me high as a kite

And I think everything is going to be all right

No matter what we do tonight

Pink you could be my flamingo

Pink is the new conni lingo

Pink like a deco umbrella

It’s kink—but you don’t ever tell her

I threw in that line “It’s kink” because Richie Supa thought I should call the song “Kink.” I said, “Richie, we can’t call the song ‘Kink.’ My life is kink. I am kink!”

When I got hungry and thirsty for some South Beach sustenance, I would go down and have a carrot, an apple, a beet, a stick of celery, and a plug of ginger juice—and as I was told by the young Dave Dalton, who used to be English, that’s what they would stick in a horse’s ass to get its tails in the air and to prance in dressage. So when I drank this concoction that I got from the juice man, it made my ears stick out. What in the what the!!! Anyway, more often than not I would write and sing a scat where there weren’t lyrics yet,
Isha, boo-da-lee-ga / a-moo-shoo-bada / gee-da-la-a-zoo-ba / oobi-doobi-aba
—thank you for the inspiration Louis Armstrong, and fill up what the scat sounded like with lyrics (didn’t often make sense—but who gives a fuck ’cause it’s only rock ’n’ roll). I sang that over the chorus line one day and I went, “Oh! Fuck!”
Hel-loo!
I’m home!

I—want to be your lover

I—wanna wrap you in rubber

As pink as the sheets that we lay on

Cuz pink it’s my favorite crayon, yeah

Pink it was love at first sight

Pink when I turn out the light

Pink it’s like red but not quite

And I think everything is going to be all right

No matter what we do tonight

Veni, vidi, vici.
We came, we saw, we needed a Kleenex! Get the fuck out of Dodge! Songs are stories, didn’t all troubadour stories turn into songs and didn’t all the tales lead to the same thing? Saving the queen? Getting the girl? Wrapping her in rubber?

Glen Ballard started as producer on
Nine Lives,
but Joe Perry eventually threw him out because Glen was working on tracking and vocals and wasn’t paying attention to Joe’s leads or working with him on guitar sounds. I said, “Why don’t you talk to Glen? Ya know it’s
your
guitar . . . get your own sounds.” So along comes Kevin Shirley, who won Joe’s heart by turning his amp up to 11 and who swore he’d rock the album like it hadn’t been rocked before and needed to from the beginning. Kevin loved his rock ’n’ roll so much and his style was so saw-toothed that he was dubbed the Caveman . . . just what Aerosmith needed. The version of “Pink,” bits and pieces of vocals, and miscellaneous trackage was still there from the Florida sessions with Glen Ballard. I had to scrap all the vocals and start over, which didn’t come easy for me. Joe and Tim had talked Sony into thinking the album was jinxed by Glen Ballard since Tom, Brad, and Joey hadn’t come to Florida yet. We were neck deep in the writing process when Glen hired Steve Ferrone to do the drum tracks. So we planned to layer in the guitars once they came down—unlike any other album we’d done yet. But no, I’d already sung all the vocals and harmonies to the album and I was being told we were going to have to rerecord the whole fucking thing . . .
and Joey’s having a nervous breakdown?
Joe couldn’t get his guitar sounds and since Brad and Tom weren’t on it yet, what the fuck, let’s just scrap it and rerecord everything.

All the songs on
Nine Lives
would have been great except Ballard’s guys, who were in the studio during the early recording sessions and looked like zombies because they’d been up all night fixing Joe’s timing on the tracks. Glen had a reason to his rhyme and wanted the stuff put to grid and the last thing Joe wanted was to be told what to do. Another reason why he had him ousted. The funny thing is, Jack Douglas had been adjusting Joe’s guitar timing all the way back to the seventies. It’s what producers did and still do.

I
walk around like a woman during pregnancy when I’m working on an album. I don’t listen to anyone else’s music, I just want to marinate in my own creativity. A song is constructed like a tree—from roots to branches, and when it’s done you hope it bears fruit. You need a first verse, next a second verse, then a prechorus, which is the titillating foreplay, then the cum shot—the payoff—being your chorus line. Then comes the bridge, which should bring you back to the chorus line, then
boo-ya
. . . SCORE! It’s outta the park. So satisfying, because that chorus, when it works, epiphanates everything you ever thought of in your life (or whatever that song made you think about).

You think you’re in love

Like it’s a real sure thing

But every time you fall

You get your ass in a sling

You used to be strong

But now it’s ooh baby please

’Cause falling in love is so hard on the knees

It’s got to pay off so deliciously that you just can’t wipe it off! A little something that gets inside of you and changes your everything—that’s always been my aim. And by the way, there are nine others on that album that are also out of the park. No one can catch you—they’re on the hood of a car on Forty-ninth Street from Yankee Stadium. It went
where
?

While writing
Nine Lives
at the Marlin Hotel, Bono and Larry from U2 came to visit. We played the tracks for them and they were blown away—nice to have a solid wall to bounce your ball off. During the sessions, one of the finer producers on the planet, Tom Lord Alge, was in the studio in the basement of the Marlin Hotel diddlin’ around with a song called “If It Makes You Happy,” which it did, extremely, after hearing it. That night Joe and I went upstairs and wrote “Kiss Your Past Goodbye,” which was a premonition of the coming breakup between Collins and me. When I listen to it now it’s very eerie.

It’s later than a deuce of ticks

Your broken heart, it needs a fix

You’re feedin’ off a high that would not last

And people they don’t seem to care

And sorry just don’t cut it, yeah

It seems to me you’re gettin’ nowhere fast

So kiss . . . your . . . past

Or kiss your ass good-bye

I can pull a rabbit out of a hat by pulling a song out of scat. I hear lyrics in my sleep, little embryonic words poking up out of the scat plasma. This is a pretty different approach to the way a professional songwriter like Diane Warren works. Diane sits down at the piano and out come the words and melody together fully formed, the way you might build a chair. . . .

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing

Watch you smile while you are sleeping

While you’re far away and dreaming

I could spend my life in this sweet surrender

I could stay lost in this moment forever.