Steven Tyler: The Biography Read Online Free

preferred to hole up in his bedroom, practising guitar for hours on end, but with a goal in mind. Throughout his teens he became involved in several bands - Flash, Plastic Glass, Pipe Dreams, Just Us and the Jam Band. Joe Perry perhaps did not have the openly irrepressible nature of Steven Tyler, but in his quiet, stubborn way he was also a renegade spirit. A slender, handsome young guy, Joe grew his black hair so long it brought him into conflict first with school authorities, then with employers, but he stuck to his guns and refused to cut it.
    As an eighteen-year-old, Joe swapped Hopedale for summer at Lake Sunapee with his family, where he took a job in a café-cum-ice cream parlour called the Anchorage at Sunapee Harbour. His tasks there included anything from sweeping the floor and washing dishes to frying chips and hamburgers. In the bustling kitchen he kept up with the latest sounds via the radio; he also kept tabs on a local rock star - Steven Tallarico. Chain Reaction singles featured on the jukebox at the Anchorage, and he could not help but notice Steven around the resort. For one thing, the New Yorker dressed very trendily and was not shy of lapping up the local hero status his band acquired through playing gigs at The Barn. Steven would frequently barge into the Anchorage with his mates and take over a booth, where their high-spirited capers sometimes got a bit out of hand - food would end up flying through the air - and their general exuberance could annoy other patrons. Joe said years later: ‘I guess that’s how you were supposed to act when you had a rock band - dress like you came from Greenwich Village and be loud.’ As soon as Steven and his crowd dispersed, Joe would emerge from the kitchen and watch the guys heading off as he cleared up the mess they had left behind. At this time, Joe was plugging away with the Jam Band, comprising drummer Dave Scott and another friend and future Aerosmith member, bass player Tom Hamilton.
    Blond-haired, brown-eyed Thomas William Hamilton was born on 31 December 1951 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to George and Betty Hamilton. Because his father was in the air force, Tom and his three siblings moved house quite a lot. Suffering a serious brush with scarlet fever and falling prey to the odd boyhood accident, Tom was a cautious sort who took time to develop a more outgoing attitude to life. Overawed by his father’s military exploits as a World War II pilot, he very much looked up to him as a role model. A love of music then kicked in and he began to teach himself the guitar at the age of twelve, quickly switching to bass.
    The following year, by now living in New London, New Hampshire, seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show sent his passion for music into overdrive. ‘I used to go to bed imagining myself as one of the Beatles, up on stage, singing those songs,’ Tom recalled. Like Joe Perry, however, Tom’s focus shifted towards a rockier sound; the hypnotic heartbeat of some of the Rolling Stones’ early rhythm and blues-influenced numbers strengthened Tom’s attraction to bass guitar. In his teens, Tom joined a variety of bands with weird and wonderful names before teaming up with Joe Perry - whom he had met at Lake Sunapee - in Plastic Glass, Pipe Dreams and the Jam Band. By this time Tom had acquired a rather lurid local reputation, having been busted for dropping acid. It was later claimed that this brush with the law was the first acid bust in that particular part of New Hampshire. The local notoriety this incident brought Hamilton in such a small town left him feeling uncomfortably like public enemy number one; this outlaw image was only enhanced by his avid interest in the nubile young ladies around him in class. Years later, with brutal candour, Tom confessed: ‘I was just about the horniest little bastard you could possibly imagine.’
    Ploughing his pent-up energies into playing gigs with the Jam Band, he especially enjoyed nights at The Barn.