Free Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir by Steven Tyler

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    He wore pseudomod clothes, and in person he was just as over-the-top as he was on TV. “Come on back to my house, darlings,” he said. “I really got some shit goin’ on there!” We get to his place and there’s two Great Danes, a chimpanzee, and a defanged cobra—but it still bit you. Oh, and never mind the fucking freak folks that were there. Here we are, pubescent punks coming down from Yonkers. We hadn’t a clue. Debbie Benson was gorgeous, we were cute kids, and here we were among these flaming queens . Someone starts passing around handfuls of Placidyls. “Here, have some of these!” They were fucking paralytic downers, sleeping pills. Monty had a hot tub in his living room. I ended up knocking the plug out of his tub. After the water drained out, I threw some pillows in and slept there.
    “Jim’ll be here soon,” Monty said. Jim fucking Morrison was coming over? We all awaited his arrival like that of a god. He came late, and by the time he got there, we were so wasted we thought it was Van Morrison. We were in some place where words melted into sounds, and Jim was out there . . . even further! It scared the shit out of us. We were so terrified, we hid in the bedroom, then wound up getting under the sheets with a candle, just shaking because we were so fucking stoned. It was all so freaky; we were scared what the chimpanzee might do to the Great Danes, let alone what Monty had in mind for Morrison.
    We were in no shape to walk or talk. We took more Placidyls and fell out around two in the morning . . . totally zonked. Around 5:00 A.M . we woke up. Debbie was crying. “These aren’t my clothes,” she said. “What do you mean,” I said. “You’re wearing the same dress you had on last night.” Her eyes were glassy. “But these aren’t my panties !” Omigod! I looked down and thought, what the fuck? “You know what? These aren’t my pants, either.” We were running down the stairs, Debbie crying, “I’ve been violated! I’ve been violated!” Shit, we’d all wanted to take a walk on the wild side, but this was a little bit more than we bargained for.
    T he thing about the British Invasion bands is that they were like gangs—especially the Rolling Stones and the Who. Unlike the Beatles, they looked defiant and menacing, guys you wouldn’t mess with. I’d like to attribute this insight about groups and gangs to the Stones with their collective leathery eyeball, but I’d already figured this out long before the Beatles arrived, when the gang I was in turned into my first band.
    How do you get into a gang? You act tough—and I’ve always been good at the acting part, anyway. I wasn’t tough. I was skinny and scrawny and into my own weird world. Acting tough is easy: you just try and be as obnoxious as you can and get the shit beaten out of you for it. Throw in a few stupid and illegal things—like running across Central Avenue naked, stealing stuff for the clubhouse—and if they’re feeling kindly they’ll let you in.
    At Roosevelt there was this guy Ray Tabano who was to become my lifelong friend. We first became friends from my telling him to get the fuck out of my tree (the one he was climbing). “Stay off my vines,” I yelled. I paid for that a couple of days later when he beat the shit out of me—but it was worth it because I eventually became a member of a gang, really more of a club, called the Green Mountain Boys. With membership in a gang you got protection from the more thuggish elements in high school. It also attracted girls, who are always into that kind of asshole.
    When I was about fourteen, I hung out with Ray at his dad’s bar on Morris Park Avenue in the Bronx. Not bad for a hangout. He would let us drink beer. A local Bronx R & B group, the Bell Notes, used to perform there, and between their sets Ray and I would sing their 1959 hit “I’ve Had It.” We’d also do the old Leadbelly song “Cotton Fields,” but in the collegiate folk song style of