DISGRACELAND - Aerosmith: Toxic Twins, M-80s, Cocaine Eyeliner, and Living on the Edge

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

At their peak, Aerosmith was sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the flesh, wrapped up in spangly scarves and jumpsuits. They crossed target practice with black tar heroin. Trained roadies how to feed them cocaine onstage. Frontman Steven Tyler claims he spent $6,000,000 on coke alone. Their chemical highs launched them to career highs that were equally staggering, until addictions and attitudes splintered the band into solo projects and a shadow of the band they once were. No group ever lived on the edge the way Aerosmith did – even when they were dangerously close to teetering over it. For the full list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things,

Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Arrowsmith are insane. Their mere presence incited riots and violence among fans.

They mixed target practice with black tar heroin. They trained roadies how to feed them cocaine on stage. Frontman Stephen Tyler claims he spent $6 million on Coke alone. They lived on the edge and nearly teetered over it more times than anyone can count. And at their peak, Arrowsmith was sex drugs and rock and roll, in the flesh and wrapped up in spangly scarves and jumpsuits. Then they swapped some of the sex for more drugs, and at their lowest, they traded their rock royalty status for a few more pills and thrills, and nearly lost their crown in the process. But their inevitable comeback, in decades-long career, transformed Boston into a renowned rock city in a way that none of their predecessors could.

Because Aerosmith made, I can't believe I'm going to say this, great music. There are a few bands out there that I have as much of a love-hate relationship with as Arrowsmith, but I digress. Great music. Okay. But unlike that loop at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Cineepiddy M-K-2. And I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to know more tears, enough as enough,

by another Bostonian Donna Summer and also Barbara Streisand. And why would I play you that specific? A specific slice of breakup disco cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 6, 1979. And that was the day that Stephen Tyler, in the middle of a seizure, had to be dragged off stage again. On this episode, riots and violence, target practice in black tar heroin, spangly scarves and jumpsuits, and arrowsmith. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. You can tell from the audience it was a seizure.

Stephen Tyler spasmed on stage. Dirty movements like an insect stuck on its back. One leg doing the jitterbug, his other limbs limp as a rag doll. Moments ago, he was peacocking, shaking his hips, rib cage popping out through his skin-tight jumpsuit. He was a blur of limbs of feral animal. but somehow, still smooth enough to steal your girl and her best friend. Arrowsmith had barely started their sold-out show in Portland, Maine on December 6, 1979. Stephen was halfway through screeching their new tune, Reefer-headed Woman, when he went from

Energizer Bunny to Dead Meat. About to be dead meat, anyway, if no one did anything fast enough. Arrow Smith guitarist Brad Whitford knelt over Stephen's body as he played on. Not that it mattered if the band stopped. No one knew this fucking song anyway. The lead guitar player didn't flinch. He kept his back turned to the twitching pile of hair and bones on the ground, ice cold. This wasn't Joe Perry. Joe was gone, fired, depending on which band member you asked.

This was Joe's replacement, Jimmy Crespo. Sometimes the kids could get into his riffs, but more often than nod, they heckled the hell out of him. Across the country, they used the same reference. frame. Hey, where's Joe fucking Perry? Actually, where the hell was Arrowsmith? This cluster fuck in front of 6,700 fans couldn't be the same band that gave them rocks just a few years ago. This band was all blow and no Joe. Except for tonight, Stephen's Coke stash ran dry before showtime. He relied on the blow to keep him upright after his ritual of chugging two double beefeter martinis. The booze and the coke at

practically cancelled each other out. But there was nothing soaking up the gin in his stomach tonight. The quadruple dose of bee-feater sank him after only a few songs. Nobody needed to know that right now. Stephen shook, sick as a dog on the floor, and kept up the charade, anything to get the gig canceled, and anything to get high again.

LSD, heroin, speed, quailutes. Every day with Arrowsmith was a day with a buffet of drugs in your face. Even in the early years when they were a pack of young punks performing to city teenagers at high school dances. If you wanted to make it in Boston in the early 1970s, you needed all the help you could get. Boston was not a rock city. It was the opposite of a rock city, so opposite that the genre was literally banned across town during its formative years. Blame that on Chuck Berry and Alan Freed. Instead, nearby Cambridge blossomed as a folk haven, lousy with barefoot people in their mellow acoustic guitarist. And Arrowsmith was none of that. They weren't subtle and they weren't soft. They dressed with shredded rags and tattered scraps of hippie garb and made it all look gritty. They

stomped around, screeched, and made sexual innuendos out of anything that could be measured in inches. Arrowsmith had the songs and the swagger. Some said they were a poor man's rolling stones. For what it's worth, Stephen Tyler and Mick Jagger kind of had the same big lip mug. Another said they were jacking the New York doll stick, and what I said about Mc Jagger is also true about Stephen Tyler and David Johansson. But Arrowsmith was all Boston. They crammed into an apartment together on Com Ave, practiced in the belly of a BU basement, worked on new material in the Bruins' locker room at the Garden. They played in New York City sometime, sure, and that's where Clive Davis discovered them in 1971. But when Columbia Records had them sign along the dotted line,

Arrowsmith didn't bail on Boston. They doubled down and recorded their debut album on their home turf at Intermedia Studios on Newbury Street. Arrowsmith was Boston or Bust, and they had the right treats to keep their trainer rolling towards stardom. Ludes, hash, coke, joints rolled like massive Jamaican spliffs. All of this remained within reach, even when the band was barely scraping by. Reach into the freezer and grab some crystal meth to stick up your nose. knows. Find some LSD to shoot. Yes, shoot. Shooting LSD. Me some pot, have a brownie. Well, unless the dog eats them all and is so comatose, you have to carry him outside so that he can take a piss.

Bomber. Even when Stephen laid down the sweeping Melotron notes, that's right, Melotron on Dream On, one of the band's most endearing songs. He snorted lines of Crystal THC as he played. Arrowsmith had drugs for every occasion. You could count on it. The cops certainly did. Stephen Tyler didn't have time to think. Not that he thought much before he acted anyway. Pts, he hissed in Brad's direction. The entire band was lined up in a New Jersey police station,

handcuffed to a bar in the hallway. Two state troopers found a few joints and potseeds in their van on the New Jersey turnpike. What the cops didn't find was two ounces of weed in Brad's pocket, some roaches in a film canister, and Stevens' hash coffin full of never. Embatol and the final bag of weed, which just so happened to be down Stephen's pants at the moment. The cops would be back and they definitely were going to frisk him again. Stephen could hold his own.

He'd shoved weirder things down his pants before, that's for sure, but those two ounces and Brad's jeans were a dead giveaway. They had to make the pot disappear, pronto. Stephen had already managed to free one hand from his cuffs, and all he needed now was a distraction. cops were suddenly sprinting down the hallway. They grabbed shotguns as they shouted over each other. Something about a Black Panther riot in Newark. Officers poured out of the station in droves.

Perfect timing. Pst. Stephen urged Brad to slip in the bags of weed. Brad didn't have time to argue. He wriggled the bags from his jeans pocket and into Stephen's free hand. Then Stephen tossed each one through an open doorway and into a dark room without thinking twice about it. The band exhaled with relief.

until they were pulled into the fingerprint room. The same room where Stephen tossed the weed. Incredibly, both baggies landed right on an officer's desk. Arrowsmith put on their poker faces. One by one, the band walked right by the bags, acting casual, looking elsewhere. And the cop took their prints and didn't say a word. He was either that blind or that incapable of connecting the dots. Didn't matter.

What mattered was that the band was only born. booked on misdemeanor charges. They'd be speeding down the turnpike again by evening, with just enough time to rush down to Pennsylvania for a gig. Arrowsmith piled back into the van and floored it until they pulled up to the show, strapped their guitars on, stepped on stage in the nick of time, gazed into the audience and saw 12 people. This gig wouldn't even cover the fucking gas money.

But it wouldn't be like this for long. Soon, Arrowsmith would be soaring in front of big crowds. And with some big names, shit, soon Arrowsmith would be soaring above the big names. And money would be the least of their problems. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.

I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else? that you can do rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleepwalking. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, monjeu. Camilla Morone.

Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robé and this is bookmarked by Reese's book club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TVR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brought to you by Cotton, the fabric of our lives. No way we're going to fly this thing. Arrowsmith's head of flight operations. examined the sad excuse of a plane in front of him. A creaky old conveyor, a death trap with wings. Two pilots smoked and passed a bottle of Jack Daniels back and forth in the cockpit. The smell of stale nicotine clung to the cabin. Arrowsmith needed to charter a private plane for touring, but they didn't need it this badly.

The band's accountants snapped back at them. Yes, they were going to fly this thing, because it was going to save them $30,000 on this leg alone. The head of flight ops stood his ground. He was an Air Force pilot. He could smell more than smoke on this convent. He smelled gore. Tragedy. If you're flying them in this airplane, I'm resigning, effective immediately.

Arrowsmith passed on the plane. Leonard Skinnered. Later that year, the same plane went down in Mississippi and took the members of Leonard Skinner with it. Cheaping out was costly in the end. And by the mid-1970s, Arrowsmith wasn't cheeping out on anything. There's drug money.

Then there's designer drug money. Then there's people hired just to serve you drugs money. For years, Arrowsmith just had regular old drug money, enough to keep their fridge stocked with chunks of meth and their noses full of blow. Life's simple pleasures for a little rock and roll band from Boston. Then they made an album called Toys in the Attic and everything changed. Toys in the Attic wasn't Arrowsmith's first album, but it was the first album to give them an international lift-off.

Songs like Walk This Way had fans sprinting to record stores and snapping up concert tickets. The real money started pouring in, and better money meant better drugs. Better drugs made your heartbeat harder and your teeth gnash harder, and they made you rock harder. By 1976, Arrowsmith danced to a whole new beat. It's the year Arrowsmith recorded rocks.

The gritty can of whoopass that straddled the line between hard rock, and heavy metal. The sound was what other people call cutting edge, tough as one of the five glistening diamonds on the album's cover. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, and their unprecedented high on the charts funded unprecedented highs for the band. The kind of highs you never wanted to come down from, the kind you'd do anything to hold onto for a few more minutes, especially when you're shuffling between states and stages on tour. And that's what the roadies were for. Members of Arrowsmith's crew were trained in keeping the band as high as

possible for as long as possible. These guys were full service, highly skilled, always in motion. Stephen's microphone stand must remain wrapped in his scarves at all times, you know, the ones that looked like they were ripped off a hippie's back after a weekend in Woodstock. And that's not just style, that's a fashion stash. Each scarf is laced with little pockets, full of tune-alls and quailudes to pop during the show. Do not remove the scarves. Paste some nudie photos of groupies to the amps. Put a bottle of Jack on the drum riser.

Keep that 150-proof white rum nearby for Stephen as well, even though he'll probably hand it off to the kids in the front row. Those little fuckers have never swallowed rocket fuel like that before, and they'll be puking all over each other in no time, but that's not your problem. You've got enough shit to deal with backstage. This is just the calm before the storm. The storm is already here, though, tearing up the rooms, if said backstage,

it just hasn't blown your specific way just yet. In the background, someone's going to yell Arrowsmith's new catchphrase, and that is, time for a production meeting, and that's just code for time to do some more blow. And boy, howdy, is there blow. Sometimes it's kept in a room with a cop standing guard outside. Can you fucking believe that? A cop guarding a bunch of blow. Sometimes there's a fat fucking amount of it next to the deli platters, but whatever.

Take a breather. Rest. You're going to need it. It's going to be a long night. But fuck these divas. You steal a few slices of deli meat to wipe your ass. with and sneak them back into the spread. And the band is none the wiser.

And they're gacked out of their brains, too gacked to even get laid. And that's good news for you because the ladies are lining up around the block who want to get backstage. Sharing some love is the one way to get a tour lamb in. You know, they can share their love with you. The guy who has the access. The guy who has the access to the rock stars. Anyone in line who thinks they're above this sort of exchange can talk to the tour manager.

But that's going to set them back an entire stash of Coke. First, it was a gram, then an eight ball. Now it's an ounce and not a gram less. and the band has no idea about this particular price of admission, and that mound and catering is supplied by desperate fans and sold to the band at full price. Did you follow all that? I barely followed all that.

Whatever, doesn't matter. As long as you knock bored and comatose. Shit, is Stephen Tyler comatose? The promoter's handling that now. He says Stephen's awake, sort of. He'll need a ride onto the stage, on your back. At least he's lighter than any amp you had to push around. So you sit him down at the center of the stage, prop him up,

guide him to that trusty set of scarves. The lights go up. Showtime. But not so fast, Rudy. Your work isn't over yet. You're Joe Perry's right-hand man. On standby with a cup of blow and a straw. And when the lights dim between songs, that's your cue.

Rush over to him, guide the straw right up to his nostril, and let him take a few toots, and then remove the straw and rush back into your corner. Quick motherfucker before the lights come up. Steven's doing the same on his own. He's got his own, quote-unquote, medicine cabinet at the front of the stage, hidden inside a drumhead. And that's where he keeps his Dixie cups.

one full of Jack and one full of Coke. Not actual Coke, not Coca-Cola, cocaine. He tosses a towel over his head to disguise himself as he slurps and snorts. Not that he's fooling anyone. They don't call Stephen and Joe the toxic twins for nothing. They'll take any drug you put in front of them anytime, sometimes at the exact same time. And that's all right, because the show's running smoothly. So far, Stephen is happy with the sound, which means Stephen hasn't tossed a monitor at a security guard.

No one's hurling any bottles and trash on stage, and that's good, good. Now you just set your flashlight down on this. amp for a moment and shit, you just knocked some fat lines onto the floor. How did you not notice those were there? So, after all that, you're fired. Life on the road with Arrowsmith was so toxic that the band developed two rules. One, except nothing but blowjobs 10 days before the tour ends so you don't take any diseases home to your girls. And Stephen had already contracted the clap twice by 1976 and once shared a nice family of crabs with Joe Parra. and nobody wanted to see or hear about any more of that.

And the second rule was just for the crew. They called it the 24-hour rule. If you hadn't seen a member of the band in 24 hours, you found their hotel room and broke down the door, not to get their ass up to perform, but to make sure they weren't dead. And if you could point to an item on tour, there are usually drugs inside.

Like I said before, Stephen's scarves, Joe's custom suits, arriving with pockets full of blow in them, fake fan mail put together solely to create the illusion that fans were setting the massive quantities of drugs. That trick was particularly helpful at customs, but the truth was that Arrowsmith's fans could be just as dangerous as the drugs. October, 1977, Philadelphia.

A bomb soared toward the stage from the sea of denim jackets. Someone in Arrowsmith's Blue Army just declared war. The M-80 erupted as the band climbed the stairs to the stage for an encore, and the cherry bomb snapped like a shotgun blast. Smoke, then chaos. Stephen Tyler staggered around in circles, one hand over his eye screaming that he couldn't see. Turns out the bomb singed his cornea. Blood was spurting from Joe's hand, spilling from an open artery.

The band packed up without ever starting the encore get a police escort to the nearest hospital. The M80 was a demented welcome to receive from Philadelphia, a twisted taste of Arrowsmith's medicine. Fans didn't need to share stories about the band's bad behavior. They could see it right in front of them. Those towels and scarves weren't fooling anyone. If the bad boys of Boston could break the law in plain view, then their fans could misbehave just as hard. When Arrowsmith performed at Boston College,

fans who couldn't get tickets started a riot and broke into the venue using railroad pins. When dozens of fans were arrested for drinking and smoking in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Arrowsmith announced to the crowd that they'd pay for their bail. But it was Arrowsmith's crew who really paid for the band's bad behavior. Their roadies were dropping like flies, by the late 1970s. One dead from cirrhosis, another took his own life. One of the most trusted crew members left the band because he loved Joe Perry, so much that

he didn't want to be the person who found Joe dead. And if he stuck around, he was sure that that very thing would happen. Arrow Smith was sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the flesh. Emphasis, though, on the drugs. And that meant Arrow Smith was a fucking hazard. They needed to reform. Rehab without the actual rehab. Arrowsmith needed to get away

Before they went away Forever We'll be right back After this world Word, word Your husband is not who you think he is Your body is not what you thought it was Your identity is formed by a secret history

I'm Danny Shapiro And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets And just then we felt the plain turn in the air so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.

My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things.

Tena, Mongeau, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there.

Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the Exactly Right Network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. They called it The Seneca. 300 barren rooms, one chapel, countless cobwebbed fireplaces, shadows of nuns and habits scurried across the peeling walls. The massive former convent branched into wings on a 98-acre plot of rolling plains in New York. Not a soul for miles. Just you and the Holy Spirit. Back in the day, women came to the Senegal to escape from worldly temptation and to look within.

They tuned out all the noise and tuned into the Senacle's divine silence. If you focused hard enough, you might just hear a higher voice being whispered to you, instructing you on how to turn your life around. And all you had to do was commit to change. All you had to do was pull the trigger. Joe Perry rested his time. Thompson's submachine gun down in his lap. He squinted until the target at the other end of the attic came into focus. No bull's eyes. Too bad. He consoled himself with a swig of a double black

Russian, aka breakfast. Well, probably breakfast. It was hard to know for sure. Time didn't exist at the senacle. Only long moments. Stretches of time defined by whatever chemicals you stuffed your body with. Hours of drunken stupers. Afternoons and beds strung out on black tar heroin, days without sleep. Outside of the Senacle, time was still very real. Arrowsmith had six weeks at the old convent to record a new album. In the eyes of Columbia Records, the Senegal would be like rehab without actually sending the band to rehab, a place where the bad boys of Boston would be isolated from the fast life. Rocks already proved how catastrophic, drugs were for the band's creativity. The album sounds flawless, almost too flawless. And that's because

the band was so fucked up that they couldn't get through a clean take of any song. Each track had to be recorded 30, even 40 times, cut up and sewn back together using the best takes. Columbia thought nothing could be more inefficient. Columbia thought wrong. The Senegal didn't isolate Arrowsmith from drugs. It isolated them from each other. Joe's constant target practice with his toys in the attic, shattered the silence more than the actual music did. The band practically wrote and recorded music and shifts. Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer, pulled most of the way. Regular deliveries of black tar heroin were making Joe Perry wilt. He slurred during sessions, his nose running, sometimes puking. Some days he showed up so

incoherent that the band turned him away. He'd crawl back to his room and use the dismissal as an excuse to not reemerge for days. Then Stephen emerged to write some lyrics, or attempt to write some lyrics if he could manage to find the right room and keep his body upright. Gobbling down his daily regiment of Tuanol's left him seeing triple,

if that's even possible. Three pens, three pieces of paper, three versions of each bandmate, nagging him to write down something clever. It was so dizzying he kept one hand over his eye to sea street. And as the band drifted apart, Other characters cycled through the cynical. Joe Perry's buddy, the former New York Dolls frontman, David Johansson, brought dope.

Hired chefs handled the catering and dosed the food. Dealers made regular drop-offs. Stevens guy Raymond brought cocaine straight from New York City. He was the kind of dealer who sampled too much of his own wares. The squealing was coming from Stephen's room. It sounded pained, inhuman. And Stephen's ears perked up as he snickered to a little bit. himself. Everyone in the band had meal time rituals. Joe drank his breakfast with a gun in his

hand. Stephen finished his dinner with two lines of cocaine, which he laid on his nightstand in advance. One day, he caught that guy Raymond with his nose pressed to the nightstand, sucking up a line like a hoover. Who did he think he was? This wasn't milk and cookies left out for Santa Claus. So Stephen left out something special for Raymond the next time he came around. Raymond yelped like a wounded animal. He stumbled down the stairs clutching his nose. Those nostrils were used to inhaling the finest blow money could buy, but tonight's powder dessert wasn't blow. It was decades-old plaster that Stevens scraped off the ceiling. Raymond learned the hard way that Arrowsmith didn't share. They didn't share a vision either, and they didn't share a sound, really, as their new album made

crystal clear. They didn't even share a sleep schedule, and they certainly didn't share their drugs. Not more. Arrowsmith adopted a get-your-own policy, especially Joe. When Stephen's stash ran low, he used to be able to count on Joe to spot it. But ever since Joe got hitched to that Alyssa Jarrett chick, he only shared his stash with her, and Stephen took the rejection personally. All of Arrow-Smith were supposedly brothers, but he and Joe were the toxic twins. And weren't twins supposed to share everything right down to their DNA? Alyssa didn't care if they were joined at the hip, spouses to Trump's siblings.

She happily hogged Joe's drugs and his attention. Alyssa's sway over Joe was strong enough to inspire Stevens Barb lyrics and sweet emotion. Alyssa wore things nobody else did, like cocaine as eyeliner, which wasteful much? She talked about things nobody cared about but still somehow found ways to regularly insult members of the band and sneak in off-color remarks. I mean, what kind of nasty stuff do you have to say to what? fend a man as crude as Stephen Tyler. You'd think two people with big miles would get along, but I digress. The selfishness in the band didn't start with Alyssa, but she certainly helped it spread.

When draw the line hit the shelves in late 1977, fans understood where the band drew the line. In between themselves. Lines between me and you and mine and yours. No touchy, no crossy, and get the fuck away from my line. The record sold 1.5 million copies in the first six weeks, but never cracked the top 10 of the Billboard 200. People assumed draw the line would be Rocks 2.0, but it wasn't. Columbia didn't care. 1.5 million record sales was a mighty number regardless of what the music sounded like.

The band entered the studio, a normal studio, to start work on the next record in 1979. And when they left, they left without Joe Perry. His departure didn't come down to drugs. It didn't come down to the sound or to record sales either. Instead, Arrowsmith ruptured over spilled milk. For real. The band avoided death once when they rejected that sad sack of a plane that took down Leonard Skinner. That didn't mean they wouldn't crash and burn all the same.

Tension fueled Arrowsmith at the 1979 World Series of Rock. Tension over drugs. Tension between Stephen and Joe. Tension between Alyssa and literally everyone else. It hung in the air backstage at Cleveland Stadium like a lot of. a foul odor. Then Tom's wife made a comment that Alyssa didn't like. Alissa kept her mouth shut for once. She threw a glass of milk on Tom's wife instead. The tension lifted. The spark was lit, and Arrowsmith imploded instantly. Stephen shouted at Joe to control his woman. Stephen claims he

fired Joe then and there, and he swore never to share the stage with his toxic twin again, even if it meant worse music. Even if it meant worse music. Even if he said, he said, he was he, he said, he it meant fewer people at shows and more hecklers. Even if that meant that in just a few months, Stephen would be splayed out on a stage faking a seizure, half dead inside, just like his band. Stephen Tyler didn't care if he lived or died. Panic thoughts rushed through his mind, but he didn't say a word. He couldn't. Stephen Tyler had finally shut his trap, because his mouth had the barrel of a pistol inside of it. Another night on the street. shuffling down 8th Avenue in New York City, walking like a shit-faced man on stilts.

Stephen asked the wrong guy if he was selling dope tonight. The crook's finger trembled over the trigger. Give me your money. Give me the fucking rings, too. Stephen considered this for a moment. Giving up his money meant no heroin tonight. And no heroin tonight meant he'd be stuck in a cycle of anxiety for hours on end. Anxiety's so bad it felt like dying.

He might as well take the bullet at a time. Dysery. Fuck that. Stephen silently slid the rings off his fingers and tossed his wallet on the ground. It's not like he had much that people could steal these days anyway. Stephen had a strict new allowance, $20 a day. It was supposed to limit his drug intake. Stephen hacked that real fast. He requested extra cash from his team every day and said it was a tip for the limo driver. Stephen then gave his driver 50 bucks and pocketed the rest. $150, three times as much. It's no wonder that the chauffeur was Stephen's last luxury. His Porsche already went up his nose,

and so did his private plane in his house. $20 million, earned fast and spent just as fast. Supposedly $6 million of that sum was just for cocaine. Stephen devised other workarounds to fund his worsening dependency. Arrowsmith's new album built cocaine into the budget, disguised as funds for 24-track reels of tape. Arrowsmith poured $1.5 million into their first album without all of its original members, and it didn't pay them back.

Arrowsmith's 1982 record Rock in a Hard Place was born out of desperation. No singles, no love from that new craze MTV, and no Joe Perry. The Blue Army dwindled. When they couldn't sell out stadiums, Arrowsmith downgraded to club shows, and then they couldn't even sell those out. Toys in the attic and rocks gathered dust like relics, buried under the face-melting force of stadium-filling bands at the time like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. There was a changing of the guard in rock, and Aerosmith was getting faced out.

They needed something major to amp up their presence in the 1980s. A reunion. No, better. A reinvention. Stephen Tyler wanted to know how the fuck Joe Perry could be working with Alice Cooper. You need to be here, he screamed into the phone. It was true. Joe already agreed to write new music with Alice.

His own band, the Joe Perry Project, was doing just as well as Aerosmith, which is to say it wasn't doing well at all. His 1983 album, Once a Rocker, always a Rocker, couldn't even sell 50,000 copies. It was time to admit that both bands were back at Square One, but they weren't goners, not just yet. The rubble of their former empire was still long. lying around and they just needed to cut the shit and clean it up.

Stephen took his crooked walk to rehab for the first time in the mid-80s. Joe Perry hopped back in the saddle with Arrowsmith around the same time. Joe was in and drugs were out. But it's never that simple. Drugs would have to be kicked out of Arrowsmith over and over again before the sobriety would stick. But when it did stick, supposedly, it stuck to the charts. With records like permanent vacation, home of huge hits, like rag doll and dude looks like a lady.

And then pump, get a grip, Nine Lives, with massive singles like Janie's got a gun, which I actually love, crying, crazy, and I could go on and on, but I won't. But all of that almost didn't exist. All because of egos, stubbornness, selfishness, cheesy rock star behavior, and because some so-called bad boys from Boston

lived a little too close to the edge. I'm Jake Brennan and this. is disgrace land. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rock a roll.

When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific concept, artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move, and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.

Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yelloo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Mongeau. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver. and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.