Free Steven Tyler: The Biography by Laura Jackson

performance and to dissuade the teenagers from harming themselves in their fever to get on stage.
    At the same time, after a period in rock when androgyny had left audiences not sure what to make of sexually ambiguous stars, Steven Tyler oozed full-on heterosexual lust. He has declared: ‘The stage is my mistress and I fuck her to death every night. I do feel sexy up there.’ Sex permeated Steven’s whole life. He wrote about it, adored to sing about it and continued to be insatiable when it came to slaking his desire for women. He saw no reason to limit his horizons. As he plainly put it: ‘It’s a trip seeing girls with big tits and tiny asses just dripping with sex, throwing themselves at you - especially if they’ve brought a girlfriend with them! Man, that’s orgasmic! I haven’t had it [three-in-a-bed sex] as much as I would like but when I have had the pleasure, it has truly been a pleasure!’ One of Tyler’s later regrets was that there had been times when his drug consumption left him flaked out on his back alone in bed, too stoned to get it up.
    But if sex was Steven’s mistress, drugs were rapidly becoming his master. He flatly denounced those who decried drug users as being empty-headed fools, arguing that drug abuse was rooted in the search of feeling great. Comparing the similarities between the molecular structure of cocaine and heroin and that of adrenalin and endorphins, he reasoned: ‘Taking drugs is very akin to feelings that humans get when they are elated.’
    Building a relentless head of steam increasingly resulted in trouble erupting at gigs, bringing with it reports of riots at some venues - just the juicy kind of notoriety that was guaranteed to bolster a band’s reputation. Aerosmith was widely credited as being the hardest-working band on the road in America throughout 1975 - in terms of pulling crowds they stood shoulder to shoulder with Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Queen. The previous year, rivalry had reared between Aerosmith and Queen when both bands had been booked to back Mott the Hoople at a gig at the Harrisburg Farm Arena in Pennsylvania. A row broke out between the two groups as to which should be first on stage. Joe Perry and Brian May wandered off with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, leaving Steven Tyler and Freddie Mercury to go heatedly head to head over the issue.
    In 1975, Tyler had his own take on Aerosmith garnering recognition. He said: ‘This band is like cold butter on hot bread - it sinks in after a while.’ ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Toys in the Attic’ were released from the new album towards the end of the year and did not initially make much of a splash. Rock critics at the time did not give Aerosmith much of a break. Steven let these attacks get under his skin and although a new kid on the block, in the mid-1970s he was not shy of airing his forthright views on reviewers, highlighting examples of what he termed their ignorance. In Melody Maker he blasted: ‘I go through a lot to write lyrics to songs like “Walk This Way” - I’m very fond of those lyrics - and the critics never stopped to listen to the words. They don’t give a shit. So why do I have to respect their opinions?’ With the fans, where it counted, Tyler continued to see proof of Aerosmith’s burgeoning status; by December, Toys in the Attic went platinum and his band was a bone fide major concert draw in the States. For Steven personally, however, the picture was not quite so rosy.

CHAPTER 5
    When The Fur Starts Flying
    IN SUMMER 1975 the tense dynamic between Steven, and Joe and Elyssa worsened. Tyler now felt to an intolerable degree that Elyssa was depriving him of Joe’s friendship and companionship. Her presence in Perry’s life seemed to be all-consuming. The lead guitarist disputed this, in the sense that whenever he was needed for Aerosmith he was there, but the singer clearly hankered for his brother-in-arms. It was not only Tyler who felt this way - other Aerosmith members