BOSTON — It’s back to “home sweet home” for Aerosmith, who perform on July 17 and 19 at the TD Garden. They’re at the mid-point of an 18-concert American tour back from a long hiatus with a youthful vengeance. WGBH’s Emily Rooney talked with bassist Tom Hamilton right before the tour began.
The band is getting serious again about music. Frontman Steven Tyler has left his role as judge on “American Idol” as the group focuses on their new album.
“We finally have an album coming out, which is very exciting for all of us,” said Hamilton. “And I think that’s going to be the thing that really is going to bring us to next level.”
After nearly 30 years, another setback
Aerosmith also known as the “Bad Boys of Boston,” has been together since 1970, and like most rock bands, it’s not been without struggles. All five members have been hooked on drugs or alcohol at one time or another, including Tyler, whose addiction to painkillers in 2009 almost derailed the band after he fell off a stage in South Dakota — forcing them to cancel the rest of their tour.
“We were devastated. I was home recovering from a second bout of cancer when I got that call that the second half of the tour was canceled,” said Hamilton. “The reason it was so devastating is that it has happened over the course of our career so many times. We don’t have 30 more years for everything to come back together.”
But it was the trigger for Tyler to finally seek help.
“Out of nowhere we got the news the same day as the public at large he was going into Betty Ford,” said Hamilton. “I was overjoyed. I never believed we played our last Aerosmith show, but that was as close as we ever came, so I was overjoyed. So it was a relief for me to know he was getting help.”
The challenge of putting it back together
It came at a price. Hamilton and the rest of the guys didn’t speak to Tyler for 27 weeks, saying they had to get a message to him in a way he would understand. But by the time Tyler finally reached out and started talking about another tour, he had a few other projects in the works, including taking a judge’s seat on “American Idol.”
“All of a sudden we’re out there in the middle of the tour, trying to move on our vision of the band continuing intact, and then we found out literally 3 days before he signed that he was going to do it,” said Hamilton. “So there was a real element of shock. I am a happy-go-lucky guy so I didn’t really have a big reaction to it, but we started thinking about what that meant.”
“He can be unreasonable”
They’ve made it work. They are back on tour and the album is due out in October. But it hasn’t been easy, and the fractures may never completely heal.
“Steven can be cruel and he can be unreasonable,” said Hamilton. “It’s like riding the rapids and we’ve learned how to do that fairly well because a lot of times his extremism will result in making something better than anything any of us thought it could be, a song, or a show or whatever we’re working on. … After doing it for so long you start to gain wisdom and you start to know which things you should let bother you and which things you need to listen for the value in what’s being said and move forward.”
And Hamilton felt he knows what makes the band work.
“You need the real flamboyant Steven, you need that ultra-cool flash Joe Perry, that character,” said Hamilton. “These are gems and gems need to be in a setting, so it’s the whole thing, the whole picture that really is the thing that’s gone forward for so many years.”
