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BOSTON’S BAD
BOYS ARE BACK
TO ROCK THE JOINT
by Tom Lounges
(Photos by Niva Bringas / except Joey Kramer photo by Roy Ferrer)
Some bands play
rock ‘n’ roll. Aerosmith IS rock ‘n’ roll and have been since exploding
out of the greater Boston area some 32 years ago.
Like most high schoolers during the mid-1970s, this writer doodled the
band’s logo all over homework papers and rushed out with anticipation to
the nearest record shop when a new Aerosmith album hit the racks.
The doodling phase ended for most of us, but the love of Aerosmith’s
snarly, bluesy rock music remains ongoing, just like the band itself,
which incredibly still retains its entire original line-up.
After teaching us
to “dream on” and to “walk this way, talk this way”, Aerosmith managed
to hook yet another generation with their swagger and sound, making them
one of the most enduring artists of the arena rock era. And to think, it
all started with a little kiss like this...
“The Beatles on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ and The Stones especially got
me,” responded bassist Tom Hamilton
on what first made him choose to take up playing rock n’ roll.
“But they were just the start of things,” he continued. “The band who
probably had the biggest impact on me was Cream. After that, I really
got into the blues. I started going back and listening to all the old
blues artists like Muddy Waters.”
Hamilton picked up playing guitar at a really early age.
“Honestly, I have to give credit to my older brother for that,” he said.
“I remember him standing in the living room playing songs like ‘Peter
Gunn’ and thought it was cool. He taught me my first chords and I’ve
played music ever since.”
When an abundance of guitarist made forming an early high school band
difficult, Hamilton initially switched to playing bass out of necessity,
but has never regretted it nor desired to trade back up from four
strings to six.
“I grew up in New Hampshire and every summer a bunch of kids who would
come up to their family’s vacation homes and we’d put together these
little bands and play parties,” he recalled. “Then in fall they would go
back to where they came from for school and the next summer we’d do it
all over again.”
When Hamilton was about 14, he struck a lasting friendship with up with
one of those “boys of summer.”
Joe Perry was
working a summer job as a part-time dishwasher in a restaurant popular
the area’s teens. Bonded by their shared love of Cream and other blues
artists, the two put together a band they called Pipe Dream. Over time,
members changed and the names changed – Plastic Cup and The Jam Band –
but the two friends stuck together through thick and thin.
It was The Jam Band that first started playing Bean Town night clubs.
That is where they eventually met up with a Yonkers, New York native
named Steven Tallarico.
At the time, the big-lipped drummer also sang lead vocals for a regional
recording act called Chain Reaction, who had released two East Coast
singles that got a little air play.
When Hamilton and Perry agreed to free him from the shackles of his kit
and take center stage, Tallarico adopted the cooler lead singer moniker
– Steven Tyler – and brought in drummer Joey Kramer, a high school
friend of Tyler’s from Yonkers.
When The Jam Band guitarist Ray Tabano was replaced by Boston native
Brad Whitford in 1970 –– Aerosmith
was born!
In the 35 years that have followed, Aerosmith has released 15 studio
albums, four live albums and assorted greatest hits and best of
collections.
Their latest release is Rockin’ The Joint: Live At The Hard Rock Hotel
Las Vegas – a Dual-Disc with one side sporting 12 audio tracks and the
other featuring live video tracks, all captured during the final days of
Aerosmith’s 2002 Just Push Play tour.
“We knew we had this new tour coming up and we wanted to have something
new to offer people,” explained Hamilton on why they opted to go with
another live album. “We thought this was something cool that people
might want.”
The video clips are just the tip of the iceberg of what Aerosmith has in
the can from their 2002 gigs. The group may eventually decided to
release the additional live footage depending on fan response to the new
Dual-Disc.
Though they were
overdue for a new studio album of original songs, Hamilton told how
Aerosmith’s quirky 2004 release, Honkin’ On Bobo, was actually “a dream
project of the band” for many years.
“We’d been talking about doing ‘The Blues Album’ for years and years,”
he said of last year’s blues cover album. With the enthusiastic support
of the record company, we finally just got around to doing it.
“It was just the right time to do the album. We had a six month touring
break and we wanted to make a new record,” he said. “We talked about
what we could do that we could get done in that short amount of time and
we decided to finally go in and make the album we’d been talking
abstractly about for so long. It was a lot of fun for us and we’re very
happy with it and the fans sure seemed to like it.”
Do not expect a new slab of original rock from the Boston bad boys
anytime soon, cautioned Hamilton, because their current “Rock The Joint
Tour”, will most likely will keep the veteran rock machine on the road
well into 2006.
“The future of this tour is just now starting to gel. We’ll be touring
America at least through the beginning of March, but we’re just starting
to get a better picture of how long we’ll be out on the road and if
we’ll be going to Europe, or India or South America, or wherever. It’s
been a long time since we’ve been to some of those places, so as of now,
there’s nothing set in stone.”
Should those proposed and anticipated overseas dates not materialize,
the bass player said the band would most likely start putting some new
material together.
“We haven’t set any goals for the next album yet,” he said. “But we will
get around to doing it pretty soon.”
In the meantime, the band is having a blast being back in front of their
rabid fans –– which now feasibly span three generations, split equally
between the band’s early “drug era” and current “sobriety era” –– and
dusting off some tunes that Hamilton said they have not played out live
in years, such as “Seasons of Wither” and “No More, No More.”
“We’re even having some fun and taking some artistic license with a few
of the songs we do all the time, like ‘Train Kept A Rollin’,” he teased.
In closing, Tom Hamilton declared the Midwest portion of the United
States as being among the most ardent of Aerosmith’s audiences.
He insists that our region in particular is one of the group’s favorite
places in the entire world to perform.
“The Midwest fans are just uninhibited and know how to rock ‘n’ roll,”
he concluded. “Since the very beginning of our career, the Midwest has
always been there for Aerosmith. You guys have never let us down –
ever!”
Aerosmith perform on December 10 with special guest, Lenny Kravitz,
@ The Untied Center in Chicago
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