Leader’s race – Newspaper Kommersant No. 190 (7391) dated 10/13/2022

Memoirs of Aerosmith vocalist and songwriter Steven Tyler published in Russian. In terms of dynamics and brightness of images, they are not inferior to the songs of the Boston band, believes Boris Barabanov.

After reading Steven Tyler’s memoir, Aerosmith. Is the noise in my head bothering you?” the reader catches himself feeling as if he had listened to five Aerosmith albums in a row. In the manner of presenting events, the leader of the American group adheres to the same rapid pace and the same passionate intonation that are characteristic of the songs of the group and its live performances.

Talking about his childhood, Steven Tyler draws a fantasy world. When he describes how a fox, running past his family’s house, grabbed him, lying in a cradle at the entrance, by the edge of his diaper and dragged him into the forest, you believe it easily and immediately. Just like the rapturous descriptions of hours spent as an infant under the piano while Tyler the father played Chopin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. It is this feeling of “living in notes” that Tyler son considers the starting point for the creation of Aerosmith’s first big hit – “Dream on”. From the same series of half-real-half-fairy-tale images is the blind street composer Mundog, who dressed like a Viking and wore a horned helmet and a spear (a real figure of New York life). From there – magic mushrooms, thanks to which Tyler wrote the hit “Sweet Emotion”. “I read too much,” adds the singer. “I dreamed too much. I lived in a “what if?..” world.

Unlike most autobiographical rockers, Steven Tyler did not focus on certain periods of his life, did not limit himself to a turbulent youth or the most spectacular scenes from his touring life. He managed to describe the old age of the rocker in the most worthy way. Here’s what it looks like: “Do you know what it’s like for me, at sixty, to sit with a bunch of the same sixty-year-olds? “Just think, my wife and I made love to your song, and we got seven nice kids.” Relationships with doctors who dealt with the problems of his limbs, joints and internal organs, Tyler describes as painstakingly, as well as relationships with groupies and managers.

“I went through all these changes from knowing nothing to understanding everything, and now, at 63, I’m back to knowing nothing again,” sums up Steven Tyler. Between the fabulous childhood and the nervous old age of the hero, the story of one of the brightest stadium bands in the history of rock, full of spectacular, hilarious to colic episodes, fits in. Often these episodes are accompanied by an analysis of the substances that accompanied the events. “I will never, ever forget this meeting at Woodstock … we were both in shit” – a description of a meeting with a famous colleague, typical of a significant part of the memoirs.

Nevertheless, the chapter itself about his journey to the Woodstock festival is priceless. There are few places where you can so keenly feel the state of a person who finds himself inside this historical event. And the next chapter suddenly turns out to be a detailed guide for songwriters. There is a large chapter on the relationship between a rock musician and psychotherapists, and in another, Tyler describes relationships with the women he loves in the most touching way (this is in addition to the savory groupie scenes scattered throughout the book). Suddenly it turns out that the hero of a separate story may be a label manager for working with artists and repertoire – such was John Kalodner, the same legend of Atlantic Records as the head of the company, Clive Davis. A description of his work with Aerosmith on the songs for Get a Grip (1993) is a valuable text for anyone interested in the mechanics of the music industry. But there is a chapter in the book, which is one big curse against ex-Aerosmith manager Tim Collins.

Be that as it may, the most drive and precise details are in the chapter “Lost on the way to the middle.” In it, Tyler describes, minute by minute, his experience of being on tour with a big arena band. So much so that the reader seems to see everything with his own eyes through the eyes of the author, intoxicated by the fact that his song is able to penetrate the heads of the listeners: “They begin to sing it! You find yourself inside these people!”

The Russian translation of “The Noise in My Head…” lacks a sufficient number of footnotes explaining musical terms and commenting on references to American cultural phenomena, not all of which are familiar to the local reader. And I want to believe that they “snooped” through the “s” – this is still a typo, and not an imitation of Internet slang that has gone out of fashion. However, the general feeling of an unstoppable rock and roll race has been preserved in translation, and you want to listen to Aerosmith’s albums again – from the very first.

Stephen Tyler. Aerosmith: Does the noise in my head bother you? M.: Bombora, 2022.