Speaker 1: All Right, everybody, welcome to the Shirley You Can't Be
Serious Podcast. We are here today to discuss two great
albums from the nineties. These are former seventies rock stars
who are regaining their crown as being the godfathers of
hard rock. But before we do, do you have got
a question for you?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: What does Garth Brooks, ace Ventura, Wayne and Garth and
Batgirl have in common?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get in it today when we talk about
Aerosmith get a Grip album.
Speaker 3: All Right, I'm ready to see you tie all of
those crazy random things together.
Speaker 1: Hang with me on this because it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 3: This episode, these two episodes that we've got are going
to be fantastic because, as you mentioned, these two groups
guys were icons in the seventies drugs and life events,
and they fell apart in the eighties and then they
revvd back up and here we are talking about the
albums of the nineteen nineties that blew our doors off.
Speaker 1: Drugs and bats and spilled milk. The stories are going
to be amazing with these guys.
Speaker 3: Well, let's jump into it.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, So we begin in New York in nineteen
forty eight, where a young Stephen Victor Tallarico was born.
Speaker 3: So he started life living under piano. His dad was
a classical, classically trained musician, played with big bands, just
like the Van Halen brothers. Dad John played with big bands.
So he grew up his first years of life being
surrounded by the sounds of the piano. And as he
grew up, as you can imagine from the way he looks,
he got made fun of a lot when he was
a kid.
Speaker 1: Kind of skinny, big lips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so as a way to combat that, he
decided to start playing the drums. And he realized, hey,
when I get on the stage in the cafeteria, the
girls that were running away from me are now walking
my way. But yes, thank you, thank you very much.
I'll be here all night. Tip your waitress. So he
gets this band together, and the band's name is Chain Reaction,
Chain Reaction, and Chain Reaction actually does pretty well. They
record some albums. They've got some songs on the jukebox, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, like legitimate records on the jukebox.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And a couple of guys that are interested in
this band are Anthony Joseph Peare I don't know how
to pronounce that last name. I'm glad he went with Perry. Yes,
and Tom Hamilton Yeah, when they became interested. They were
at that point too young to get in the clubs
that Steven was playing in. So Joe and Tom decide, Hey,
we're gonna put our own band together. They call their
band the jam Band.
Speaker 1: The jam band.
Speaker 3: Because they're not the creative members of this quintet.
Speaker 1: That is as boring as Joe Perry is.
Speaker 3: Uh Joe Perry. Now, Joe Perry strikes me as the
guy that when you're like, hey, how's it going, that
he's like yeah, and he starts to tell you how
it's actually going, and it's not interesting, and you're like,
I was really just making small talk. I don't really
care about your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a very serious looking guy. He does look
like a rockstar though, I mean he's oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he's got the abs. I mean he's a
mad Yes. Yes, Jed Adams at forty eight. In nineteen
sixty nine, Steven's band had broken up and he was
back at home mowing his grass. Joe Perry is the
guy who pulls up in the MG and says, hey,
how you doing. Steven says, I haven't seen you in
a while. Joe says, hey me, some of the boys
are play at the barn tonight. What are you doing.
Steven says nothing, Maybe I'll come see you, And as
Joe is about to drive off, Stephen says, hey, maybe
we'll play together sometime.
Speaker 1: Pretty important sentence in the history of rock and roll
right there, right.
Speaker 3: So he goes to the show that night and he
listens to them play and he thinks they're awful, and
so he is about to get up and leave, and
then they start playing a song that starts out well.
Speaker 2: If you want to rock, and it's slow and it's sexy,
and Stephen is transfix He is amazed at the dynamics
of this song.
Speaker 3: He's thinking to himself, Oh my gosh, the classical music
of my dad and my lyrics and this type of
sexy song. We could actually make something out of this. Yeah, yeah,
you know a song as they were playing, what is it? Okay?
So it's a song that we talked about in the
skid Row episode, kind of song that we talked about
in the Motley Crue episode. Because they both have songs
on their albums that have the same name, but it's
not a Motley Crue song, and it's not a skid
Row song. It's a Fleetwood Max song. You call it
Rattlesnake Shake nice.
Speaker 1: I did not know.
Speaker 3: That's why I am here, man. I am here to
give you information that will blow your mind.
Speaker 1: You're blowing my mind.
Speaker 3: Steve and Joe and Tom move out to Boston in
nineteen seventy just to try to put something together. They
come across this drummer named Joey Kramer, and they think, man,
if we could get this guy, we're gonna be set.
They come across another guy who's a really good guitarist
named Brad Whitford.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Brad is one of those guys. I mean, he
looks like Santa Claus right right, He's like a long
white beard, and he looks so disinterested in all those videos.
Speaker 3: I don't you look at that group and you're like,
how did this guy sneak into the band? It's like,
did they get is one of the guys sick?
Speaker 1: Did they get a lady?
Speaker 3: Did they get a roadie to come in here and
play guitar?
Speaker 1: We bring in more hot girls. Brad's not smiling yet.
Speaker 3: He's got dry, krusty, banged hair. But he's a good guitarist.
He's a great guitarist and one of the members of
the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: So Joey Kramer came up with the name of the band. Hey,
what do you think about Aerosmith. Yeah, So they start playing.
They start rocking out Boston so hard that some music
managers named Steven Lever and David Krebs notice them and
they're like, we got to put on a show for
these guys. So they do this showcase show for them
in October of nineteen seventy one. If you're paying attention,
that's fifty years ago. Wow.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 3: Wow. They bring in the president of Columbia Records, mister
Clive Davis, who instantly fell in love. As a matter
of fact, he came down and said, I'm gonna make
you a star that every rock's.
Speaker 1: Singer wants to hear in the star.
Speaker 3: Could you bring out the standard rich and famous contract?
Speaker 1: What are we gonna do them movie?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, we need to Okay. So the first
success that they have is a song off their debut album,
also called Aerosmith. It came from a melody that Steven
Tyler had written back when he was only seventeen years old,
and the name of the song is dream On. Oh
my gosh, when I went to the pizza inn as
a young kid, and I mean the pizza parlor that
had the video good the pizza parlor that had the
little TVs, the little black and white TVs that you
could put a quarter in and watch TV while you
ate your pizza.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: But on the jukebox, you were going to have another
one Bites the Dust or We Will Rock You. You
were going to have another Brick in the Wall or money,
and you were going to have dream On.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most iconic rock songs of all
time and probably the grandfather of every Power ballad that's ever.
Speaker 3: Been made, arguably. And then I would get done with
my one piece of pizza and say, can I go
play Miss pac Man.
Speaker 1: That's a good night right there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, dream On and Miss pac Man Little Tabletop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to take just a brief moment and
mention there is a version of dream On that is
on the Last Action Hero soundtrack that came out in
ninety three. It's a live version that's actually conducted by
Michael Kahman, the same guy who did the music for
Leith the Weapon and Die Harden, Highlander, Highlander, countless movies.
And it is an amazing version of dream.
Speaker 3: On, one of their most iconic songs. However, it's not
a big success.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: The album barely sold over one hundred thousand. How does
that happen? I don't know, but with a showing that poor,
the record label said, your next album better be a
major success or you're going to be done. And so
they went back in the recording studio with producer Jack
Douglas and a copious amount of cocaine, and they produced
their second album called Get Your Wings Nice nineteen seventy four.
Get Your Wings went gold. But at this point the
animosity starts to begin and build between the key members
of the band, the Toxic Twins Joe and Steve Yes.
Because of his intrusive and strong willed girlfriend and ultimately wife,
Joe Perry started spending less and less time with the
band and more and more time with Alyssa. Stephn Tyler
said he didn't really down to write a song about her,
but you're going to recognize a lyric that he said
is unquestionably referring to her.
Speaker 1: Talking about things that nobody cares.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that lyric was inspired by Alyssa Perry. The
next album that they recorded was Toys in the Attic.
It's the same story that we've told multiple times. Now
we're almost done with the album.
Speaker 1: It's the same old song and dance.
Speaker 3: Way to go. They're almost done. They don't quite have
a hit song on the album yet. Joe Perry is
fiddling around on the guitar and comes up with this
little thing that goes and then Steven Tyler drummer, yes,
sits down and it's like and suddenly they can tell
this song is a hit. All they need are lyrics.
Where are the lyrics? We can't think of the lay're
pulling their hair out.
Speaker 1: Come on words, words, words, words.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, they weren't coming right. And so after several hours
of I'm about ready to tear my hair out, can
we do some more cocaine, Jack Douglas is like, guys,
just take a break, you know, walk across the street,
watch a movie. It'll be fine. Well, the movie that
happened to be playing across the street, this movie.
Speaker 1: Called Young Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: And so they go in and they laugh their butts off,
specifically at one line by Marty Feldman, this no this way.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, this song was almost called abby Normal.
Speaker 3: This song was almost called what Knockers? Oh my gosh. Yes,
So the song walk the Way was born at a
magical moment from the movie Young.
Speaker 1: Frankly, that's really cool. What a great story.
Speaker 3: So another cool story around this time, the band was
driving to one of their gigs together and they get
pulled over by a police car and the officer finds
one seed as seed, not even multiple seeds, but as
seed of marijuana, and handcuffs everybody and takes them all
down to the station. And so they're sitting there and
you're thinking, well, what story about there's a seed? I mean,
what are you gonna do with a seed? Right? Well,
the problem is is that Brad Whitford had two bags
of marijuana inside his pants. What if your drugs were
on fire?
Speaker 1: Impossible, sir. They're in Whitford's underwear.
Speaker 3: So they're sitting there waiting, knowing that the bags of
marijuana are just in his pants, and Stephen Tyler looks
and sees that the door next to them is open,
and the room that it goes into is dark and
so he grabs the marijuana bags, throws them into this
empty room, and the officer walks in right after it happens,
doesn't know what's happened, and they have managed to make
it to the show in time.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So Walk this Way finds its way into the top ten.
So they start recording their next album, Rocks.
Speaker 1: You know, before you go any further, we did a
pull on our Facebook page and on our Twitter Pageah,
we just put it out there and we said, what's
your favorite Aerosmith album of all time? Toys in the
Attic really was the overwhelming favorite by most people, but
Rocks kind of finished second.
Speaker 3: Rocks has been cited as the inspiration to start playing
music by Nicky six, Slash, James Hetfield, Kurt Cobain, and
according to one story Eddie Van Halen's that they got
their big break by touring the LA clubs playing Arismith songs. Now,
of course that story came from Joe Perry, so you
don't know how good that story is. But anyway, yes,
so Rocks was a huge inspiration to a lot of folks.
So at this point they're headlining tours and they are
filling up stadiums now. Also during this time, Stephen Tyler
starts dating a playboy model named Bebby Buell, and he
takes her to Germany with them on tour and they
have a nice little romance for about two and a
half weeks, and then they're done and she goes back home.
But then a few months after that, he finds out
that she's pregnant and he's not sure if the baby
is his or not. And she's rekindled her relationship with
another rock musician named Todd Rundgren, and she doesn't want
the baby to be Stephen Tyler's, so she and Todd
raise Live as their own Ye Live, And not surprisingly,
Steven Tyler doesn't just go try to find his hardest.
He's not in the best spot in his life to
go be a dad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, cocaine is more of his thing at that moment.
Speaker 3: Right by the way, Todd Runger lives surrogate dad for
the first you know, half of her life. Yeah. Is
not only a musician, he was producer as well. He
produced Straight Up by Bad Finger, He produced We're an
American Band by Grand Funk Railroad. He produced New York Dolls,
by New York Dolls, Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf,
and this Are you ready? Yes, all right? In nineteen
eighty one, he created the first color graphic tablet software
for personal computers that was licensed to Apple, called the
Utopia Graphic Tablet System. So, just to be clear here,
Todd Runner Live Tyler's step dad, was the guy who
created what would ultimately become the iPhone and the iPad.
Speaker 1: That's freaking amazing.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: You're blowing my mind.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you're blowing my mind. Also, around this time,
March of nineteen seventy seven, they start recording Draw the Line.
At this point, their drug use and psychotic behavior had
become so far gone that they were no longer musicians
who did drugs. They were drug addicts who occasionally played music.
And so at this point their live performances really started
to suffer. And it wasn't because they were drugged out
that the performances were bad. It was when they weren't
drugged out. They had become such addicts that when they
weren't on drugs, they dope sick. Yeah, they were dope sick,
and they couldn't they couldn't put on a good stage show,
and the animosity between Joe and Stephen like climax at
this point, and it was largely over drugs, Like Stephen
would have drug and Joe would be like, can I
have some drugs? And Steve would be like, no, they're
my drugs. Right, So that's that's the way you get
How can you be such a hateful friend not to
give me some of your death drugs? Okay? So then,
as bad as it was, things got worse when Steven
started dating a friend of Alyssa Perry, Joe's wife named
Sirrenda Fox, right, not Samantha Fox, not Samantha Fox, but
both Foxes. Yes, And he did start dating her despite
the fact that she was married at the time to
another musicians. Okay, she had set her sights on him,
and I guess forgotten that she had, you know, sworn
an oath to stay true to somebody else. And she
started to get more and more attention. And because of
the attention that she was getting, Alissa was no longer
her friend. She was her friend of me. Yep, she
was just her enemy. Actually, they just she started to
hate her. And this this angry Alyssa made Steven Tyler
so happy that he married, Sir.
Speaker 1: I know what, I'll really drive it crazy.
Speaker 3: We'll get married. Yeah. So at this point, all of
the wives would sit backstage and just despise each other,
and at some point, a glass of milk is thrown.
Speaker 1: Yes, Alyssa Perry throws a glass of milk at Brad
Whitford's wife, and that's when it. The whole thing blows
up and literally Aerosmith breaks up over a glass of
spilled milk.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Alyssa was the one who threw the glass
of milk. But Joe is the one who comes to
the band and says, I've had enough, maybe I should
just split. Their only response is to nod in agreement. Yeah.
So Joe went out on his own and did the
Joe Perry Project, you know, the big famous Joe Perry Project.
Yeah no, no, I'm not really no, right, So Aerosmith
replaced him as a guitarist. But Magic's Gone. The album
that came out after that was Rocking a hard place.
It took them over two years to put that album together,
and at that point Brad Whitford had decided I'm tired
of waiting for it, and he quit the band, and
he put together his own band, which of course is
big and famous.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, no one.
Speaker 3: Either, all right, So they replaced him with Rick de Fay,
and the band that was once filling stadiums could now
no longer fill like a thousand seat clubs.
Speaker 1: While they were playing, you could hear people yelling where's Joe.
I saw another deal where Steven Tyler was dopsic on
stage and he goes to lean on I think Tom Hamilton,
Oh yeah, and Tom Hamilton's like, dude, get off me,
and it gives him kind of a little shove and
Steven Tyler goes down and can't get up. Literally, he's
fallen and can't get up. That's just disastrous.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so it's at this point that Rick Defey,
the replacement guitarist that they had brought on, says the
obvious thing, you guys need to get Joe back in
the band, right. Not surprisingly, Joe's band was not doing
so great at this time either. He needed money to
despite the fact that he was a world famous musician.
Since his management took half of the money that the
band made, he had no more money left, and so
he sold his nineteen fifty nine Les Paul. That's the
guitar that had the Dennetteananena riff coming off of it.
He's like, so done with that band, I don't care.
A few years later, he's like, I missed that guitar.
I wonder if I can find that guitar. And at
this point he's got people and so it puts, you know,
puts the feelers out, and somebody gives him a call
and says, hey, check out the latest spread and Guitar World.
He opens it up and it is a guitar collection
that has his nineteen fifty nine Les Paul right in
the middle of it. And whose guitar collection is it?
Speaker 1: Slash of Guns N' Roses.
Speaker 3: And so he gives Slash a call and he's like
hey man, and he's like, oh, hey Joe. He's excited.
I mean, we know, like Joe's the inspiration for him
getting into music right right, and so he's like, so
you've got my guitar and Slash is like, oh my gosh,
please don't ask me what you're going to ask. Please
do not say what you're going to say. And he's like, man,
I'd really love to have that. He's like dogs He's like, man,
I can't. I can't part with this. This is like
the jewel of my collection. And Joe's like, okay, man,
just think about it and keeps calling him every once
in a while to kind of hit him up about it,
and eventually Slash stops taking Joe Perry's phone.
Speaker 1: Call your Heroes on the line again, tell him I'm
not here.
Speaker 3: So Joe realizes that he's been cut off, and so
he gets he makes contact with him. He's like, man,
I don't want to split up our friendship over this.
I will never say another word to you about my guitar. Okay,
my that I love my baby.
Speaker 1: I will not bring up my baby anymore.
Speaker 3: And so he lets it go. And then a couple
years later, on his fiftieth birthday, he opens a present
from Slash and it's his nineteen fifty nine lasts. Yes,
that is awesome. So both Steven and Joe find new
stable spouses at this point. Yeah, they both are good
about helping them get their act back together, and ultimately,
in March of nineteen eighty four, they get the band
back together. Yeah, they change management, the change record labels.
The next album that they had was called Done with mirrors.
The drug use was still heavy, the inability to get
things done was still there, and so they were still
struggling for a couple of years. Yeah, until a moment
of magic. In March of nineteen eighty six. They get
a call from mister Rick. And if you don't know
who Rick Rubin is, his album production is so voluminous
that I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface. He
is an icon and he says, I'd like to re
record one of your biggest hits with a rap group
called Run DMC.
Speaker 1: This is a huge momentous event, not just in Aerosmith history,
but in rock and roll and hip hop history.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. To say that the mashup of these two bands
is revolutionary is an understatement. Doctor Dre described it as
a breakthrough moment because it was the first time hip
hop was getting played on MTV. It's really cool moment, right.
It brought them back into my mind. I remember as
a little kid here in dream On on the radio
and some of those other songs, but they were absent
from my developmental years for news. But then in eighty
six when that video came out, I was like, Oh,
I know these guys where do I know these guys
from And that's kind of the way that everybody else reacted. Absolutely,
So suddenly they have got an appeal for a whole
brand new audience, and so they've got new management who says,
this is our moment, this is our moment to grab.
We can get a new audience from this MTV craze.
We just have to fix the drug prop yep and
so that's that's what they do. They force them into
rehab and it takes five years a lot of hard work,
but eventually all five members of the band are sobered together.
And during that time, Steven Tyler finds out that he
has a nine year old daughter named liv.
Speaker 1: Imagine we're going to talk about her here in just
a few minutes.
Speaker 3: That'd be good.
Speaker 1: So Permanent Vacation comes out in eighty seven. Desmond Child
is brought in as an outside rider to help them
with some of these songs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Permanent Vacation was their first drug free album, and
it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great one.
Speaker 3: It was during that time that they mistook Vince Neil
as a hot girl in a bar, and then not
too long after that they their management convinced them to
bring in a songwriting partner, Desmond Child, we talked about
in our bon Jovi episode. Desmond Child is you know
who's Desmond Child at this point, right? The guy just
a guy. So you wrote a few bon Jovi songs.
Good for you? Like literally, this is you all happening
at the same time. And so he asserts himself quite nicely.
He comes in. They're playing a song and they've got
this lyric that they're working.
Speaker 1: With CUsing for the ladies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so they say what do you think and
Desmond Child says, I think that sounds like and they're like, oh,
thank you, okay, I appreciate that. Yeah, and so he's like, well,
I got my work cut out for me, and they're like,
a the who whah who flow. So let us tell
you what the original lyric was. How about the line
dude looks like a lady? And Desmond Child goes, now
you've got.
Speaker 1: To hit yeah, yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he comes up with the first line.
Speaker 1: Cruising two a bar on the shore.
Speaker 3: And Steven Tyler follows it with the second line, her
picture grates the grime on the door, and suddenly Stephen
Tyler realized he did not have to do so much
hard work writing songs.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a great song. Someday we need to do
permanent vacation.
Speaker 1: I would love to do permanent vacation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: After the dude looks like a lady, they released a
song called Angel Yes, which is a power ballad, Yeah,
softer power ballad.
Speaker 3: Like it's not dream On, it's a it's a much softer,
slow dance kind of song.
Speaker 1: It's on the Makeout List of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: And Tom Hamilton's like, I don't like this. This is
this is not us. This song is wimpy and mushy,
and I don't like it. This is we're rockers. I
don't know what this is happening. And then literally moments later,
some dudes like in leather jackets with long beards and
biker tattoos go, oh, man, Angel love the song. You
guys could play that anytime, and he's like, well, I
goes my argument. We'll keep writing those kind of songs,
and that's kind of become their thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're lucky he lost that argument, or we
would be without some major Arismith.
Speaker 3: Songs after that, including their number one.
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss a thing of Armageddon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So after that they released Pump and their videos
go to next level to say, okay, let's say that
the videos and the songs might be described as slightly sexual. Yeah.
Loving an elevator based on a true story and experienced
by mister Steven Tyler himself. Yes, I'm not shocked when
I heard thy right, they didn't push the stop button though.
At some point in the midst of it all the
doors opened up and people, you know, some family on vacation.
Speaker 1: We'll get the next week.
Speaker 3: So then in nineteen ninety three, they released the album
that we are here to talk about today, Get a Grip.
Get a Grip, So join us for that. Not next week,
but just in a couple of days. It will be amazing,
it will be crazy. We're gonna be living on the edge.
You'll be laughing, you'll be crying. D get a grip.
Speaker 1: All right, We'll see you guys in two days.