Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir by Steven Tyler Page B

it in the freezer? It was blue and it had that terrible smell? “Oh! That tastes terrible!” It was an acquired taste, one that I acquired without too much difficulty. You could eat the paper it was wrapped in and you were fuckin’ forget-about-it.
    I loved Quaaludes, too. Especially when you got too high on speed or blow. Whenever I’d go to rehab, they’d say, “Well, you’re always chasing the drug.” And I go, “Yu-uh!” It’s like having a fast car and you go really fast, but then occasionally you’ve got to stop and go get gas, but while you’re getting gas all you want to do is get back in that fast car. It’s like that time again! You have no blow, you run out, you go to your dealer and get some more, and then you’re in the car breaking the sound barrier and your brains are pouring out of your ears and then someone goes, “Here, check this out!” It’s like ethyl alcohol and you hit this button and your mind chills down.
    The wildest places we played were fraternities. With Fox Chase I played Bones Gate—it was a famous raunchy fraternity at Dartmouth they based Animal House on. At those parties I used to sit under the keg, they’d turn the keg on, and I’d beat everybody out.
    Fox Chase was the last band I was in before Aerosmith. Right before that, in 1969, William Proud went out to Long Island and I was with them there until that fell apart and I went back up to Sunapee.
    I had no money. I was desperate, defeated, doomed. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. William Proud had played every nightclub, grotto, union hall, gym, bar mitzvah, and VFW hall for a fifty-mile radius. We were burned out on the trail. Nowhere left to play. It all came to a head one night at the last incarnation of Salvation in the Village, way out in Southampton on Long Island.
    At the Hampton gig, I practically strangled our lead guitar player, Twitty Farren, to death during a rehearsal. Top that, Alice Cooper! Midrehearsal, I look up and see Twitty—who was a fuckin’ great guitar player, by the way— yawning . I asked myself, “Is it the heat or is it that his heart isn’t in it anymore?” I was high as a kite, and I jumped over the drum set to try and choke his raggedy ass, but I fell over my high hat and cracked my leg instead.
    I ran out of the club, stuck out my thumb, and hitchhiked all the way back to New Hampshire . . . drumless, bandless, hopeless. But still telling my mom, “Mom, I’m going to be such a big star there’s gonna be girls hanging off the rafters, kids coming through the windows, battering down the doors. We gotta batten the place down, put up six-foot fences, put shutters on the windows. We’ll need an intercom and electric gates to keep out the rabid fans. Or else we’ll have to move.” “Of course, Steven.” My mom always believed in me, she was a stone romantic.
    William Proud—Peter Bover, Twitty Farren, Mouse McElroy, and Eddie Kisler—wasn’t really working out. It was still fun, we still got gigs, but it was small potatoes and wasn’t leading to anything. No road to destiny! I grew up in a family where we were all very close, and I was probably homesick or whatever they call that today.
    Summer ended, the town was cold. No one to cop from, no drugs, nothing up here—everyone had left. Oil lamps, candles, winter, the wind whistling through the pines. No band, no plans, no future, and they were starting to roll the sidewalks up. It was my first season of wither. And then, on the seventh hour of the seventh day I heard Joe Perry play. . . .

CHAPTER THREE

    The Pipe That
Was Never Played

    B efore we get started, you’re probably asking yourself, “Is this about that famous pied piper from that children’s story or just another clever drug reference?” Read on . . . seek and ye shall find. . . .
    I’m a great believer in moments arising. You’ll miss the boat, man, if you’re not ready for star time. Then at least you need a brother like the