Steven Tyler: The Biography Read Online Free Page B

Farren, Raymond Tabano on bass, with Steven as drummer and vocalist; in summer 1970 they played regularly at a club in Southampton, Long Island. One evening, mid-performance, the audience was startled by an altercation that blew up on stage before their eyes. The story generally goes that bar staff had to haul an enraged Steven Tyler off Dwight Farren, prising his long fingers from around the guitarist’s throat. Tyler has maintained that he wanted to leave his drum kit and go grab the guitarist by the neck, but in his temper he actually tripped over his hi-hat cymbal and cracked a bone in his leg when he fell, some way short of his intended target. In any event, a crossroads had clearly been reached for all concerned; that night Steven quit William Proud and hitch-hiked back to Lake Sunapee with the express purpose of seeking out Joe Perry.
    He was easily found. That summer, the Jam Band was the house band at The Barn and Perry was dossing in a decrepit old farmhouse near to the venue. The place was draughty, damp and missing several floorboards, which had been ripped up for fire-wood. Perry’s youth and resilience were keeping his ambition warm. Tom Hamilton and he were immersed in listening to the likes of the Yardbirds, Cream, Ten Years After, and were talking of shortly leaving the area to try their wings in Boston. When Steven showed up, it was a meeting of minds, hopes and dreams; the symbiosis between Steven and Joe was immediately evident.
    Perry has likened their incendiary friendship to the core chemicals that create gunpowder - on their own, each element is benign, it is when they are mixed that sparks fly. For his part, Steven recognised Joe as a kindred spirit. Tom Hamilton felt separate from the connection that mushroomed between these two but was not immediately threatened by it. On the contrary, there was a welcome lift to life. The lake shimmered with a fresh clarity and the sun baked down, illuminating a new fork in the road ahead. Gingered up by the prospects, Steven went back to old habits and often took off for the woods and mountains, enjoying communing with nature and recharging his batteries. He knew intrinsically that he possessed what Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton needed, and that the opposite was also true.
    The Jam Band’s drummer, Dave Scott, was too young to up sticks and leave home, so it was Steven, Joe and Tom who headed to Boston when summer was fading over Lake Sunapee. Raymond Tabano came too, because Steven wanted to include his Bronx-born friend in any new band line-up. In September 1970, Perry and Hamilton set off first, on a mission to find an apartment to rent.
    Boston is often nicknamed The Hub, which it certainly became for the fledgling Aerosmith. An old and gracious city with its own identity, it was also culturally rich. The band found a shabby three-bedroom apartment at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay area, and their next task was to find a drummer, which would free up Steven to concentrate on lead vocals. Fortuitously, they quickly met twenty-year-old Joey Kramer.
    Joseph Michael Kramer was born on 21 June 1950 in the Bronx, New York, the first of four children for Doris and Mickey Kramer, an ex-Army man who became a salesman. Like the Tallarico family, the Kramers relocated from the Bronx to Yonkers when Joey was a child, and he also attended Roosevelt High, the school Steven had been kicked out of after being busted for drug taking. Shades of Tyler, Kramer also attended the Woodstock festival and was so doped up that he missed all the action, though he would later state that he remembered seeing Steven at this hippie gathering. Playing drums in a few different cover bands including the Medallions, King Bees, Unique 4 and Turn Pikes, Kramer had caught a couple of Steven’s earliest gigs with Chain Reaction. He rated the band highly, in particular Steven’s vocal skills. His own musical taste centred on The Who, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull, and with music absorbing