PUMP IT UP
So, I asked Steven Tyler and Joe Perry: is it true that you once…
“Yes!” yelped Tyler, an overexcited puppy in violet shades. “All of it!”
What about the time…
“Totally,” said Perry, gunslinger drawl, head-totoe leather.
And…
“More than once,” Tyler said with a grin, pushing back his long tresses to overexpose his pouting-skull features. “And in many more places.”
But…
“We’re not like that any more,” said Perry, barely moving his lips. “We do different shit now.”
“Right, well, that’s that cleared that up, then,” I should have said but didn’t.
It was a sunny Sunday morning in London, late summer 1989, and I was interviewing ‘the boys’ from Aerosmith about the release of their new album, titled simply Pump.
Steven and Joe had just come from the gym where they had pounded through their usual two-hour morning workout. Now they were sharing pots of strong black coffee.
“That’s our high now,” explained Tyler, pouring his third cup. “Beat the shit out of yourself on the rowing machine then drink this. Like a speedball,” he said, and smacked his considerable lips, “but without the come-down.”
“Or the divorces,” said Perry, deadpan.
I had tried getting them to talk about the ‘bad old days’ of the 70s: the days of travelling in separate limos; of downer capsules sewn into scarves, and cellophane bags of heroin the size of bin liners, and cocaine road queens; of long sleepless nights that turned into years then lifetimes, then – bang! Unhappy endings. But they weren’t having it. They’d been asked it all before. A zillion times. Change the record. So I did.
Aerosmith came from an era when the two bands they had always been most closely compared to were the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, combining the swaggering outlaw status of
