In a 2012 interview just published for the first time, Steven Tyler didn’t hold back about one of his lowest moments with Aerosmith. The “Dream On” singer revealed he was using OxyContin, waiting on cocaine, and furious with his bandmates for abandoning him after a brutal onstage injury.
“I was living at [daughter] Liv [Tyler’s] house. She was off doing a movie, so I was in Greenwich Village, working on my book, doing OxyContin and waiting for some blow to come in so I could spend Christmas there and do cocaine again,” the legendary rock star said in the newly unearthed interview with Classic Rock. “The thing is, I heard what the guys were saying about me, and I was mad at them. Listen, I fell off the stage, I cracked my skull, I tore my shoulder, and I was in the hospital. And nobody called me. It really hurt me. It hurt me bad. I didn’t say anything, but I was angry at the guys and I was still high. I wanted to kill them.”
The moment that sent everything spiraling came in August 2009, when Tyler fell off stage during a performance in Sturgis, South Dakota. He suffered a broken shoulder and a cracked skull, which forced Aerosmith to cancel the rest of their tour with ZZ Top. Rumors began swirling that he was leaving the band.
A few months later, during a show in Abu Dhabi, Tyler gave an interview and said he needed time to focus on “Brand Tyler,” a remark he later said referred to the public persona that eventually landed him a spot on American Idol. However, his bandmates took it as a sign he was going solo, and he began hearing whispers of the group looking for a new frontman.
Instead of simply calling Joe Perry and the rest of the original lineup, Tyler decided to show up unannounced at Perry’s show in New York.
“I figured an hour into his set he’d probably be breaking and going into ‘Walk This Way,’” Tyler recalled. “I thought, I’ll go down, walk in and do the encore. And that’s what I did. I looked out at the audience and they roared when they saw me and Joe together. I said: ‘The band is not broken up.’ Then I said some fantastic thing about: ‘Joe, you may wear a coat of many colors but I, motherf–ker, am the rainbow.’ I said something like that. I know it was interesting at the time. It was so off the cuff, but I hated everyone thinking that Aerosmith was over. I knew it wasn’t.”
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