You can’t keep a good band down, even one as intent on self-destruction as Aerosmith. Years of Olympic-standar drug abuse couldn’t do for them. Neither could the departure of guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford in the early 80s (both came back). Nor some unseemly, turbo-charged friction between frontman Steven Tyler and his bandmates at the end of the 2010s. Even an aborted farewell tour, cancelled after Tyler suffered seemingly irreparable vocal cord damage, hasn’t stuck – the onetime Bad Boys From Boston have announced their return to the stage for the first time since 2023 with a pair of all-star shows at the Hollywood Bowl on October 29 and November 1, which will see them joined by Guns N’ Roses, The Black Crowes, Heart and countless other famous friends and fans.
It’s a two-way fight between Aerosmith and Kiss for the title of America’s Greatest Rock’N’Roll Band. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have the whole band-as-brand thing nailed, but when it comes to swagger, attitude and malicious intent, The Bad Boys From Boston rule.
Aerosmith’s genius idea was to repackage the Rolling Stones’ pharmaceutical rock’n’roll and sell it back to America as home-made product. The frequently brilliant albums they made in the 1970s were feral and brash, fuelled by a cocktail of bulletproof self-confidence and weapons-grade chemicals. Toxic Twins Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were 70s rock incarnate: cool, charismatic, permanently strung out.
It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. By the start of the 80s, this speeding train had crashed off the tracks, leaving a pile of twisted metal and mangled bodies. But halfway through the decade came an unexpected resurrection. A world-beating collaboration with hip hop group Run DMC on a cover of their own 1975 hit Walk This Way put Aerosmith back in the game, while the subsequent string of multi-platinum albums repositioned them as rock’n’roll’s wayward uncles, the glint of their gold earrings matched by the one in their eyes.
Their second act has been even more successful than the first – 1998’s Armageddon-soundtracking mega-ballad I Don’t To Miss A Thing became their biggest ever hit and the soundtrack to ten million prom nights. Nor has the soap opera surrounding them abated – the last two decades have been punctuated by bust-ups and bitchiness, relapses and rehab that would have put lesser bands out of business.
But Aerosmith aren’t lesser bands, and over 50 years and more they proved over and over that the music and the drama needed each other. Rock’n’roll’s a dirty job, and no one did it dirtier than Aerosmith.
