Q&A: Steven Tyler

Early next year, Aerosmith will release Honkin' on Bobo, which, in addition to being a sexual reference, is an album of covers of classics by bluesmen such as Blind Willie McTell and Sonny Boy Williamson. "We wanted to do a blues album five years ago," says Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, 55. "Then Clapton did it, and it blew our novel concept right out of the tree." Aerosmith will preview a couple of these tunes on Rocksimus Maximus, their thirty-six-date co-headlining summer tour with Kiss. "With Pakistan and North Korea, the world's going to hell in a handbasket," Tyler says from his home outside Boston. "But Kiss and Aerosmith are gonna prove that two superpowers can make it together."

Growing up, what were you listening to on the radio?

In 1956, I got a little radio and ran the wire up to the top of the apple tree in New Hampshire. On those crisp New England nights, I picked up stations in Florida and WOWO from Fort Wayne, Indiana -- stations that were just playing country & western -- and a station in New Orleans, which played the Everly Brothers and a bunch of weird stuff.

Who are your favorite white blues singers?

I'd have to say Johnny Winter. Pound for pound, he kicks major ass. Then there's Stevie Ray Vaughan and Janis Joplin. I saw her -- I think it was at the White Plains [New York] civic center. I came out of the concert and listened to people talking in the parking lot. It was such a spiritual rock & roll come-together-type thing. I remember thinking, "That's it, man. That's what I want to do." Y'know, we actually toured with the Beach Boys back then.

And the Byrds, right? What odd pairings.

What about Kiss and Aerosmith? What about Jimi Hendrix and the Monkees? We're all a bunch of carnies, man. But tickets are selling like crazy, whereas Lollapalooza isn't. It's like foreplay: You start with a Kiss and end with Aerosmith.

What was your first impression of Kiss when they broke onto the scene in 1972?

I didn't know what to think. It was kinda hard to see them through all the makeup, y'know? It was a comic-book thing. Then we toured with them. We must have played two or three shows before one of their road crew pulled a knife on ours. Then we said sayonara. But back then, it was all about who could blow who offstage.

So you blew them off?

You always like to think you did.

Have Aerosmith ever been blown off?

Yeah, before I was married, by two girls: Missy and Charla from Michigan.

Looking out into an audience, what's the most amazing thing you've seen?

Someone waving a wooden leg. The girl with three tits, or two girls making out. Six-year-olds, sixty-year-olds. People watching Joe Perry with their jaw open. On the last tour, we went out with a long ramp so I could run way out into the crowd. I like to get out there amongst the sweat and the babies being born and people getting fucked up. All the good stuff.

Why does cocaine seem to fuel great records?

Drugs get you out of your own way and help you get to another side of yourself. You just don't want to get caught up doing them all the time, because then you lose the original force of creativity. I wrote a lot of great songs high, and I wrote better ones sober.

What, in your opinion, does rock & roll smell like?

Stale beer, cigarettes, pot and cheap perfume.

Was it an easy decision to license Aerosmith songs for commercial use?

Of course. What am I going to do, tell you that I'm Bob Dylan and that my songs are so credible that they can never sell a Buick? A song is a song. Once they come out of your body, they get to live the life they want to. It's not selling out.

What's your favorite young band?

I've had my head under the covers for a long time, but I'm big on the White Stripes. And I'm big on Radiohead. They're great live.

Dylan has been in the news for cribbing lyrics from a Japanese novel. Every great songwriter pinches a line here or there, right?

You betcha. Amateurs borrow, pros steal. As John Lennon said, and I believe he got it from the Indian Sanskrit readings the Upanishads, there's not a word that's never been said and not a sound that's never been heard. I mean, I stole "The light at the end of the tunnel may be you" [in "Amazing"]. Some guy wrote that in a book, and I stole it.

You're fifty-five. How old is too old to be a rock star?

How long are you going to jerk off? Till it doesn't feel good anymore.