Steven Tyler has said that he spent “many years” with anger at his Aerosmith bandmates for sending him to rehab in the ‘80s.
However, the frontman did also say that he then became “grateful” for their decision!
Tyler also said that some of the executives in charge of the band were cool with the fact that most of them were too out of it to ask any probing questions about the revenue stream.
Speaking to Haute Living, Tyler said: “Aerosmith made it from ’72 to ’79 not necessarily stoned, but beautiful … Then we all became very fucked up.”
“There were no such things as rehabs; there were mental institutions. I went away in ’84 and ’86, and I didn’t really get it. The early ’80s were terrible, and drugs took us down. I was the first one to get treatment.”
He continued: “There was a moment in ’88 where management and the band pulled an intervention on me. They thought, ‘Get the lead singer sober, and all our problems would be over.’ So, I got sober, and you know..”
“It took me many years to get over the anger of them sending me to rehab while they went on vacation. But today, because of that moment … I am grateful and owe a thanks to them for my sobriety.”
Concerning his heroin addiction, the singer said, “Yeah, but that’s nothing compared to when a band writes their own songs and plays them and hears them back in a recording studio on these speakers that are bigger than life. Then, you are on the radio … There is no drug stronger than music.’”
Tyler maintains that “never really told the truth” about their negative experiences in the music business. “Do you want to go into it? Or do you want people to just love that album?” he reflected.
“Do you want to make that [album] a big-deal story, or do you want people to know what you didn’t know because you were high on drugs, and your managers and your record label fucking loved that about you?”
He continued: “They loved that about the band. Our first managers loved that we were stoned. Our record label, they loved that we were stoned ’cause they knew we weren’t looking at any of the money transactions. And oh, isn’t that how it’s always been … That side of the music business that is just a fucking dark, dirty, trench of lies, of lawyers.”
