Aerosmith are a favorite of mine and have been for many years. They were a monster of the 70s who have only just hung up their dancing shoes and are one of those rare bands who danced with the devil and survived.

We’ve all heard the legend of the band that wouldn’t die, but just how fucked were Aerosmith in their pomp and circumstance?

There is a infamous story that Aerosmith once decided to change their set list around, to freshen things up. Going onstage and starting with what would usually be the encore, the band allegedly tore through the song and then left, due to being so bombed out of their heads they’d forgotten the change they’d made and thought they’d finished the show.

Surely that shows how wild they were, right? Well, not according to Joe Perry who said of the tale;

“It’s a great story, and it never goes away. Unfortunately, it’s not true. We’ve done some dumb things onstage, but nothing as dumb as that. Having said that, there was one occasion when we played the same song twice because we’d forgotten we’d already played it.”  

But as Steven Tyler admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone that Aerosmith knew how to party to the point that one of the biggest drug bands of the 60s started keeping an eye on them.;

“Jerry Garcia says that we were the druggiest bunch of guys the Grateful Dead ever saw. They were worried about us, so that gives you some idea of how fucked up and crazy we were.”  

In fact, Aerosmith were Spinal Tap before Spinal Tap. According to Tyler when he first saw that movie;

“I was real high at the time, and Aerosmith was sinking – we were like a boat going down. And that movie was way too close, way too real. Our last album was Rock in a Hard Place, which sold, like, maybe ten copies; Spinal Tap did Stonehenge, and our album cover looked exactly like that. I freaked. I took Spinal Tap real personal.” 

And it’s not surprising, considering the amount of Columbian marching powder they would go through, even when they were on stage. I

n his book, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? Tyler wrote; 

“Joe had vials of coke with straws in them at the back of the stage, and when the lights would go out he’d go over there like he was checking something or making a guitar change and someone would put the straw in his nose; he’d take a hit, then the lights would come on again.”  

Adding:

“We were more interested in the finer blends of cocaine from a shipment of dates that came in on the back of some camel with the stamp of a half-moon on it and the star of Lebanon, which by the way was laced with opium. We were real connoisseurs.”  

Now clean for the most part, Steven Tyler has said it’s not a path that anyone from Aerosmith would advise other musicians to take; 

“I talk to some of these new guys who read that we got fucked up and stoned and think that’s where we got our edge. I try to say, ‘Man, you’re wrong. That’s not what made us special.’ I tell them it’s stupid to try to follow in our footsteps because they’ll die trying. What gave us our edge wasn’t anything we put up our noses”  

Whic is sound advice from a man who fronted a band that were, argubaly, the wildest of all time.