He wears a cross with a small knife around his neck. He decided he wanted his headstone to write: “Here lives Tyler, the Demon of the Screams. He didn’t wake up from a dream he dreamed until one day he drank a magical amount and left this world with a sweet feeling. He couldn’t be confused – with his long hair, his big lips, his make-up and sly eyes, his wild dancing on stage, his brightly coloured clothes, his scarf wrapped around the microphone stand…

As well as being colour-blind, Steve is also always ready to give style advice: “A lot of people would rather feel bad than take a risk. Take more risks because what you’re wearing creates energy and makes you feel special. Do experiment! That’s fun.” Tyler experiments with everything that interests him – music, women, clothes, drugs. He plays piano, harmonica, guitar, basketball, drums, percussion, maracas, mandolin, violin, flute, saxophone.

The DNA and the dust of time

His real name was Stephen Victor Talarico and he was born on March 26, 1948, in Manhattan. His mother was a secretary, of Polish and English descent, with distant Welsh roots. His father is half-Italian, half-German, classical musician and pianist. “Music is in my DNA. I have a brochure from 1912 with pictures of my father, my uncle and my grandfather, The Tallarico Brothers. They got on the train and played in all sorts of glamorous hotels on the forehead, the violin, the piano and the guitar.  And they’ve gone on tours, they’ve had relationships with strange ladies in the lobby, they’ve lived a very different life than ordinary New Yorkers who work from 9 to 5 p.m.” Some of Steve’s earliest memories are from the Bronx. “That’s where I spent my childhood,” he told a radio program, “under my father’s piano. While he was rehearsing for two hours a day, I got so tall I could reach the keys. Then I found some sheets – sheet music filled with dust. The dust of all time – Debussy, Brahms, Bach, Beethoven. This was my introduction to the pain of music if you don’t mind. That’s how I grew up.” He said in interviews that as a teenager he worked in a bakery to make money, but the more interesting thing in his life began to happen from 1969 onwards.

Janice Joplin

Tyler performed at a local rock show in Sunnyside, New Hampshire, and met guitarist Joe Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton. They create a band. Steve wants to be vocal. Behind the drums sits Joey Kramer, the rhythm is held by his childhood friend Ray Tabano. By the late 1970s, they all moved into a shared apartment in Boston. “We lived together even when we had to work. The four common walls obliged us to write music to pay the rent. We smoked a joint at night, talked about how the day went. And there was peace, love, war.  And it was good. We wanted to succeed.” His first girlfriend gave him a record with the words, “Listen to this, it’s very sexy.” “It was Jimi Hendrix’s first album. I’ve never heard a girl say the word “sexy.” Wow!

I wanted to make love to her, but I didn’t know what love was. It turned me on to listen to that music. I mixed it with what my dad was playing, with the feelings and emotions of thinking that now I’m in a band and girls like me, they’ll come and ask for my autographs because I’m kind of like the male Janis Joplin. And ours started to happen. I watched it slowly become a reality. I think about the magic: the great claws of Joe and Tom, and me sitting there, singing the things I’ve written. I never imagined I’d be singing Janie Got a Gun – I wrote it to fill the blanks. He adds: “It’s a bit funny how we broke through. The managers didn’t care, it was enough to bring them money.””

Noise in his head

He says: ‘The first five years were wonderful. You become a rock star. We toured for nine months. We might have had two holidays in Hawaii, but we were constantly treading on new ground. The audience was getting louder, shouting more and more. We made an album. Then again. It was fun. I’d get home and dial 71 to order room service.’ In 1976. Aerosmith began playing big stadiums and rock festivals, Tyler was declared a rock star and sex symbol and was on the cover of “Rolling Stone” magazine. In 1977, the album “Draw the Line” was released and the band embarked on a European and Japanese tour. At that time, along with the growing fame, something was going on, and it was only after the release of Steven Tyler’s autobiography “Is My Head?”

In 2011

After 36 years of silence, the singer admitted to one not-so-bright moment in his life – his girlfriend’s abortion, which he himself attended. “I was in a big crisis. They told me I wouldn’t be able to work if I had a baby and it would ruin our lives… You go to the doctor and they stab something in her stomach and pull the thing out and you watch. And it comes out dead. It was desperate. Inside, I was screaming, “What am I doing, Jesus? What have I done?”‘ According to his friend Ray Tabano, Tyler suffered even more because the baby was a boy. According to Julia Holcomb – his then-girlfriend, named in the book as Diana Hall, the baby was taken out alive. It was a huge drama in both of their lives.

Julia Holcomb

Julia Holcomb talks about it for the first time since her autobiography came out. Thankfully, she’s long been married and has seven children – one of whom was adopted, but when she met Stephen Tyler, she was 15. She went to a band concert, heard their record, saw pictures of Stephen Tyler and wanted to meet him. Thanks to her friend, she got behind the scenes. The meeting between her and the singer continued. There was a “flow” between them and they were together for three years. Stephen, then 27, wanted to be her guardian, asked her parents for that and signed papers for it. Julia’s family was in a difficult time. Her father was briefly in a state of madness, her mother in an emotional breakdown over her brother’s death. Her sister has left home a year ago being 16 years old. And for Julia life ful of parties, sex and drugs and rock and roll starts.

fire

„Steve grew up in rural New Hampshire,” she says, “and sometimes he acted like a farm boy. He wanted to have a family, and after a few months together, he asked me if I wanted to have a child. I was moved by his sincerity and I said yes. I thought that was true love. He threw the pills over the balcony of the hotel room on the street. I got pregnant a year later. When he found out, he seemed really excited and happy. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.” The couple went to report their impending wedding and baby to his parents in New Hampshire, who disapproved of the marriage and convinced their son that both he and his girlfriend were too young. Despite Stephen’s request, his grandmother refused to give his future wife her own engagement ring, because if they divorced, the ring would be lost to the family. Since then, the relationship between the two has changed, according to Julia. Tyler went on tour in late 1975 and left her pregnant in his Boston apartment with no money and little food. He called her every day. One day, he sent his friend Ray Tabano to go shopping for her. And she remembers Tabano coming into the apartment, leaving, and then how the apartment’s front door was on fire and she had nowhere to run. She woke up in a hospital. Stephen was there and urged her to have an abortion. Julia was five months pregnant and wanted to keep the baby. After a long resistance, she agreed because Stephen told her he would break up with her if she didn’t. She couldn’t imagine how she would cope with a baby of 16 on her own, with no home and no support. “They moved me to another ward and gave me an abortion. It was a nightmare. Stephen sat next to me until the operation was over. When the nurse left the room, he snorted cocaine from the table to my bed. He even proposed to me. But I turned around.

I was shocked by his behaviour. I realise that on a subconscious level he may have felt traumatised to witness the death of his unborn son in such a horrifying and direct way. He had watched the baby being taken out and later told me that he was alive and had been killed. I was not allowed to see it. He told me that he felt very, very guilty about what he had done. I didn’t know it could be legal. I couldn’t imagine a world where a baby was born alive and dumped without seeing its mother.’ Not long after, their relationship ended. Tyler begins a passionate relationship with Ford Models model and Playboy Playmate Bebe Buell, while continuing to see Julia. Julia returns to her mother’s home, has suicidal thoughts, but turns to church. She later meets her future husband.

The children

Steve Tyler has four. In 1977. Baby Buell gives birth to first daughter Liv Tyler. To protect her from his drug addiction, she tells him that the little girl is Todd Rungren’s daughter. “When she was little, I wasn’t sure I was her father, but when she was eight, I found out. I saw my features in her and I cried. I started seeing her a lot. I remembered her mother hinting that I was her father, and I said, “Liv, I have to tell you something—I’m your father. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life. I stood there crying like a child when she screamed, “I knew it, I knew it!” I love her more than anything. I have a wonderful relationship with her. We can talk about anything. Liv is my dream daughter.”

Liv Tyler

For Liv Tyler, Stephen decided to quit alcohol and drugs and did so in 1986. In 1978 he married Sirinda Foxy, a former Warhol model, and became the father of Mia Tyler. He married for the second time, to fashion designer Theresa Barrick. They had a daughter, Chelsea Anna Talarico, (1989) and a son, Ty Munro Talarico, (1991). They divorced in 2006. Of all his children, he says: “Their mothers and I cried while we made love, and then we had a baby. Wives may not be forever, he says, “but children are. I’m not that good as a father, but I’m a loving father, I understand them and they understand me. They’ve seen me on stage. They know my passion and they’ve kept me here.”

drugs, alcohol, adrenaline

“I smoked half of Peru, I gave $5 million for drugs,” Steven Tyler said recently. Drugs, in a way, can take you where you’ve never been and try things you’ve never tried, on the other hand, I ride it and ride it like a gypsy rides a horse.  And she takes away my children, my life, my band, my marriages, and puts me on my knees. If you look at how many albums we made in the ’70s, how many songs we wrote, how many territories we conquered… We were like troubadours, going from city to city, state to state. There was no MTV or anything. We were doing three shows one after the other and I needed that cocaine.” His addiction to heroin between 1979 and 1982 was so strong that he roamed the streets of New York looking for dealers. After being treated in a clinic in 1986, he was sober and clean for 20 years. According to members of Aerosmith in 1992 Tyler was no longer on drugs, but he was addicted to sex.

In 2006, he was diagnosed with hepatitis C, possibly caught from the syringes he used during his addiction. Being treated, he became addicted to prescription drugs. That brought him back to old habits. In December 2009, he checked into rehab after overdosing on cocaine and pills for Thanksgiving. Shortly after, he went on to judge American Idol for seasons 10 and 11. “It’s obvious after being in rehab that I’m one of those people who likes to do dangerous things and jump into something new with both feet – I think I’m addicted to adrenaline,” he said.”

LSD

“I love the band,” says Steve Tyler.  “It’s the greatest thing in my life after my kids and a few pieces of land that I call home, but with us in Aerosmith there’s also the battle over LSD,” “Lead Singer Disorder.” In 2010, they continued to play live with Tyler, but things weren’t quite smooth on stage. During their 2010 tour, Steve Tyler hit Joe Perry over the head with a microphone, and at another concert, Perry pushed him and Tyler fell off the stage. The tension between them stemmed from Tyler’s desire for solo projects and intensified over Tyler’s participation on the American Idol judging panel, which he did not discuss with the rest of the band.

The completion of the album “Music From Another Dimension” and the subsequent tour changed the atmosphere in Aerosmith and the tour was described as a “career-saver” by Steve Tyler. “We were pulling together for crazy reasons and I just pulled out to clear my head,” he said. “The funny thing is that we had to go on tour to realise how important we were to each other… Somewhere in there the happiness came back into the band and we thought, “Damn, we need to make another album.””.

where?

“Lately, I’ve been wondering where all those years have gone,” Tyler reflects, “all those millions of dollars. Sometimes I write about what I’m wondering about. And great songs get made. “And while I was wondering, I became a wonder.””

facts

Aerosmith have sold more than 100 million records. They have dozens, dozens of awards, including 10 from MTV, 4 Grammys, 6 American Music Awards, 4 Billboard charts… and more, and more.

They recorded one of the first episodes of Unplugged on MTV.

Their most successful album was “Get a Grip”, 1993, which sold 15 million. It included “Livin’ on the Edge”, “Cryin’”, “Eat the Rich”, “Amazing”, “Crazy” (on which Liv Tyler made her debut). It followed their biggest tour, with 240 shows in 30 countries.

They were named MTV icons.

In 2003. Tyler received an honorary degree from the College of Music at Berkeley and an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 2005. In 2003, he inducted AC/DC into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2006 he appeared in “Two and a Half Men”.

In September 2010, he recorded his first solo project, “Love Lives”, which became the title song of the Japanese fantasy film Yamato Battleship.

His autobiography reached number two on the “New York Times” bestseller list of 2012.

He designs “Dirico Motorcycles”.