Last Child, Just a Punk on The Street (C+)3 Out of 5 Stars
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry are the great American rock pairing. Aerosmith may be America's only Great Rock Band. (Sorry, Motley, Kiss.) They had one of the great rise and falls and redemption stories from the 70's to the present time. As Aerosmith's whirling dervish of a frontman, Tyler is a motormouth whose narcissistic personality is outsized but never outsourced, and "Does The Noise In My Head Bother You" is a book that hits the trilogy of Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll at a breakneck pace. Tyler dictates his story to Rolling Stone editor David Dalton in a manic yet entertaining way.
Tyler is a classic frontman; self absorbed, thrill seeking and utterly unable to stand on one place for more than a moment. His book reflects this, from the fact that he was crashing the New York club scenes as a wasted 15 year old to the comment that he probably blew 20 million dollars on drugs. "I snorted my plane, I snorted my house, I snorted my Porsche," he recounts at one point. Like Keith Richards in "Life," Tyler makes no apologies nor excuses for the amount of self-abuse he put his body/brain through, even going into glorious details about what getting high often felt like to him. But he also understands that what he did to himself and his family was pretty horrific, and tries to keep it all in perspective. Disturbingly, he spends some time talking about Amy Winehouse, comparing their addictions and creativity.
His other family, and frankly, the only one he seems to be able to keep together, is Aerosmith. His love/hate relationship with Perry in particular gets plenty of airtime throughout "Does The Noise in My Head Bother You." From the opening comment about Perry being "the creep to my a--hole," it's their creative friction that feeds Aerosmith's energy. (And as anyone who remembers the albums "Rock and a Hard Place" or Perry's solo "Let The Music Do The Talking" can tell you, these two men do need to feed off each other.) That friction also leads to the usual brotherly clashing, leading to two of the books more memorable Aerosmith splits and Tyler's notorious Sturgis stage fall.
No matter what Aerosmith does, though, this book is all about the singer. Tyler even calls is LSD, or "Lead Singer Disease." Tyler is giving till it hurts here, and that means not only hurts him, but anyone he comes into passage with. There are some sexual exploits here that are cringe-worthy, and Tyler excuses his voracious sexism as being part of the job. There's more than a little of the Charlie Sheen Shield of Invincibility around Tyler, which often covers his braggadocio with charm when the going gets a little ugly. Tyler had outlasted his bad boy band imagery to become one of those characters as the Peter Pan in him becomes lovable (which is what made him so much fun on American Idol, which oddly gets next to no coverage).
What keeps "Does The Noise In My Head Bother You Done" from being as utterly cool as its author is a screamingly bad lack of editing. Dates are messed up, as are song titles, picture captions and other facts. While Tyler himself leaps and bounds, at times, from topic to topic without a lot of linear thought, a decent editor could have cleaned up some of this. There are moments of repetitive rambling (especially when it comes to Tyler's thoughts on women and drugs) that could have been excised without any loss to the factual or philosophical content. And there's also periods of time just gone from the history, like the pairing with Run-DMC or the lost years between losing their Columbia contract, reforming and touring without a label, and then recording "Done With Mirrors" for Geffen. In fact, the Geffen period in the book starts with the recording of "Permanent Vacation," which Tyler tellingly mentions was the first time Aerosmith recorded an album as a sober band.
Sobriety is a rare feature in "Does The Noise in My Head." Tyler pinball pings from Rehab to Rehab, including a pretty nasty swipe at Dr Drew and "Celebrity Rehab" shows, kind of forgetting about the wake he's left behind. You do get the feeling he has regrets for some of it (saved mostly for some of his ex-wives, who should be noted, Tyler tends to make indistinguishable from each other, and his kids). At the same time, he has lead the fantasy life so many of us wished for, and the book makes very plain he regrets none of that. Out of or "Back In The Saddle," Tyler is a fascinating and endearing guy, and his book is a very entertaining Rock and Roll read.
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