Steven Victor Tallarico (born March 26, 1948), known professionally as Steven Tyler, is an American singer and songwriter. Tyler is best known as the lead singer of the Boston-based rock band Aerosmith, in which he also plays the keyboards, harmonica, and percussion. He has been called the "Demon of Screamin'" due to his powerful high screams and his wide vocal range. He is also known for his on-stage acrobatics. During live performances, Tyler is known for dressing in colorful, sometimes androgynous outfits and makeup with his trademark scarves hanging from his microphone stand.
In the 1970s, Tyler rose to prominence as the lead singer of Aerosmith, which released such hard rock albums as Toys in the Attic and Rocks as well as a string of hit singles, including "Dream On", "Sweet Emotion" and "Walk This Way". By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tyler had become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and the band's popularity waned. In 1986, Tyler completed drug rehabilitation and Aerosmith rose to prominence again when Tyler and Joe Perry joined Run-DMC for a re-make of "Walk This Way", which became a Top 5 hit. Aerosmith subsequently launched a comeback, and its multi-platinum albums Permanent Vacation, Pump, Get a Grip and Nine Lives produced a combined thirteen Top 40 singles and won the band numerous awards. In 2016, Tyler released his debut solo album, We're All Somebody from Somewhere, a country rock album that included the single "Love Is Your Name".
Tyler is included in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Aerosmith, In 2013, Tyler and his songwriting partner Joe Perry received the ASCAP Founders Award and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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Early life and education
Steven Victor Tallarico was born on March 26, 1948, at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in Manhattan, New York, and moved to the Bronx when he was three years old. The family relocated to 100 Pembrook Drive in Northeast Yonkers in 1957 when he was about nine years old. Tallarico is the son of Susan Ray (née Blancha; June 2, 1925 – July 4, 2008), a secretary, and Victor A. Tallarico (May 14, 1916 – September 10, 2011), a classical musician and pianist who taught music at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx.
Tyler's father was of Italian and German descent, while his mother was of Polish, English and African-American ancestry. He has claimed on a number of occasions that his maternal grandfather was Ukrainian, and changed his surname from "Czarnyszewicz" (from Polish: czarny, lit. 'black') to "Blancha" (possibly from French: blanche, lit. 'white'). Genealogist Megan Smolenyak established that Steven Tyler's grandfather was Polish, born Felix Czarnyszewicz in 1892 in Klichaw, in today's Belarus. In 1914 he emigrated to the US and changed his surname to Blancha. There he married Bessie Elliott, with whom he had four children, including Steven's mother Susan. Felix's brother was Florian Czarnyszewicz, a well-known Polish writer who emigrated to Argentina. Florian Czarnyszewicz is best known for his novel Nadberezeńcy which describes the fate of Poles living in the lands between the Berezina and Dnieper rivers between 1911 and 1920.
His paternal grandfather, Giovanni Tallarico, was from Cotronei, Calabria, Italy. Tyler learned on the genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? that his maternal great-great-great-grandfather Robert Elliot was part African-American and part European-American. Steven has one older sister named Lynda.
Tyler attended Roosevelt High School on Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers, New York, which was about a mile from his house, but was expelled from the school just before graduation due to marijuana use. He later graduated from Quintano School for Young Professionals.
At 17, Tyler spent time in Greenwich Village, New York, the highlight of which was seeing a Rolling Stones concert. Tyler states that he and his friends "hung around for a while, buzzing like crazy just because we got to touch them." He added, "Everybody told me that I looked just like Mick Jagger with my big lips and Keith Richards basically was the music I used to love more than anything." A photo in the band's autobiography Walk This Way shows Tyler standing behind Mick Jagger outside a hotel.
Career
The Strangeurs
In 1964, Tyler formed a band called the Strangeurs—later Chain Reaction—in Yonkers, New York.
Formation and success of Aerosmith (1970–1978)
Before forming Aerosmith, Tyler wrote what would become one of Aerosmith's signature songs, "Dream On". In 1969, Tyler attended a local rock show in Sunapee, New Hampshire. While there, he saw future bandmates Joe Perry (guitars) and Tom Hamilton (bass) playing in a band called the Jam Band. Tyler later stated he was struck by their raw power and attitude.
Around 1970, Tyler, Perry and Hamilton decided to form a band. Tyler, who had played drums in many of his previous bands while in school, insisted that he would be the frontman and lead singer. Joey Kramer, an old acquaintance of Tyler's from New York, was recruited to play the drums. Driven by a collective ambition to launch their careers as full-time musicians and hopeful recording artists, the band moved to the Boston area.
The band moved into a home together at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, where they wrote and rehearsed music together and relaxed in between shows. The members of the band reportedly spent afternoons getting high and watching Three Stooges reruns. One day, they met to try to come up with a name. Kramer said that, when he was in school, he would write the word "aerosmith" all over his notebooks. The name had popped into his head after listening to Harry Nilsson's album Aerial Ballet, which featured jacket art of a circus performer jumping out of a biplane. Initially, Kramer's bandmates were unimpressed; they all thought he was referring to the Sinclair Lewis novel they were required to read in high school English class. "No, not Arrowsmith," Kramer explained. "A-E-R-O...Aerosmith." The band settled upon this name after also considering "the Hookers" and "Spike Jones". At some point prior to the weekend of December 25, 1971, they were known as "Fox Chase".
Soon, the band hired Ray Tabano, a childhood friend of Tyler, as rhythm guitarist and began playing local shows. Aerosmith played their first gig in Mendon, Massachusetts at Nipmuc Regional High School (now Miscoe Hill Middle School) on November 6, 1970. In 1971, Tabano was replaced by Brad Whitford, who also attended the Berklee School of Music, and was formerly a member of the band Earth Inc. Whitford, from Reading, Massachusetts, had played at Reading's AW Coolidge Middle School. Other than a period from July 1979 to April 1984, the line-up of Tyler, Perry, Hamilton, Kramer, and Whitford has stayed the same.
Decline of Aerosmith (1979–1983)
As the decade wore on, the fast-paced life of touring, recording, living together and using drugs began to take its toll on the band. Tyler and Perry often were called the Toxic Twins for their legendary intake of stimulants and heroin.
Night in the Ruts was released in November 1979, but managed to sell only enough records to be certified gold at the time, although it would eventually sell enough copies to be certified platinum by 1994. The only single the album spawned, a cover of "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" by the Shangri-Las, peaked at number 67 on the Billboard Hot 100. The tour for Night in the Ruts commenced shortly thereafter, but the band found themselves playing in smaller and smaller venues than before because their popularity was beginning to wane. Tyler's drug issues were starting to affect his performance and songwriting, and he reached rock bottom in 1980 when he collapsed on stage during a show in Portland, Maine and did not get up for the remainder of the set. Also in 1980, Aerosmith released their first compilation album, Greatest Hits. While the compilation didn't chart very high initially, it gained popularity later, and went on to become the band's best selling album in the United States, with sales of 12 million copies. In the fall of 1980, Tyler was injured in a serious motorcycle accident, which left him hospitalized for two months and unable to tour or record well into 1981.
Rock in a Hard Place was released on August 27, 1982. The album reached number 32 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Only one single charted, the aforementioned "Lightning Strikes", which peaked at number 21 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. As with the tour for Night in the Ruts, Aerosmith was unable to book larger venues, and instead had to rely on filling clubs and theaters. At a homecoming arena show in Worcester, Massachusetts, Tyler and Perry got high backstage before the show. Tyler was so intoxicated that he collapsed onstage again.
In 1984, Aerosmith embarked on a reunion tour called the Back in the Saddle Tour, which led to the live album Classics Live II. While concerts on the tour were well-attended, it was plagued with several incidents, mostly attributed to drug abuse by band members. With their drug problems still not behind them, the group was signed to Geffen Records and began working on a comeback.
In 1985, the band released the album Done with Mirrors. While the album did receive some positive reviews, it only went gold and failed to produce a hit single or generate any widespread interest. Nevertheless, the band became a popular concert attraction once again, touring in support of Done with Mirrors, well into 1986.
Comeback and superstardom (1986–1999)
Permanent Vacation was released in August 1987, becoming a major hit and the band's bestselling album in over a decade (selling 5 million copies in the US), with all three of its singles ("Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", "Angel", and "Rag Doll") reaching the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. Tyler revealed in his autobiography that the album was "...the first one we ever did sober." The group went on a subsequent tour with labelmates Guns N' Roses (who have cited Aerosmith as a major influence), which was intense at times because of Aerosmith's new struggle to stay clean amidst Guns N' Roses' well-publicized, rampant drug use.
Aerosmith's next album was even more successful. Pump, released in September 1989, featured three Top Ten singles: "Love in an Elevator", "Janie's Got a Gun", and "What It Takes", as well as the Top 30 "The Other Side", re-establishing the band as a serious musical force. Pump was a critical and commercial success, eventually selling 7 million copies, spawning several music videos that were in regular rotation on MTV, and achieving four-star ratings from major music magazines. Pump ranked as the fourth-bestselling album of 1990. The band also won its first Grammy in the category of Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, for "Janie's Got a Gun". In addition, the video for "Janie's Got a Gun" won two Video Music Awards and was ranked as one of the 100 greatest videos of all time by Rolling Stone, MTV, and VH1. In support of Pump, the band embarked on the 12-month Pump Tour, which lasted for most of 1990.
On February 21, 1990, the band appeared in a "Wayne's World" sketch on Saturday Night Live debating the fall of communism and the Soviet Union; they also performed their recent hits "Janie's Got a Gun" and "Monkey on My Back". The appearance of the band in the "Wayne's World" sketch was later ranked by E! as the number-one moment in the history of the program.
On August 11, 1990, the band's performance on MTV's Unplugged aired. In October 1990, the Pump Tour ended, with the band's first ever performances in Australia. That same year, the band was also inducted to the Hollywood Rock Walk.
The band took a brief break before recording their follow-up to Pump in 1992. Despite significant shifts in mainstream music at the beginning of the 1990s, 1993's Get a Grip was just as successful commercially, becoming their first album to debut at number 1 and racking up sales of 7 million copies in a two-and-a-half-year timespan and over 20 million copies worldwide. The first singles were the hard rocking "Livin' on the Edge" and "Eat the Rich". Though many critics were unimpressed by the focus on the subsequent interchangeable power-ballads in promoting the album, all three ("Cryin'", "Amazing", and "Crazy") proved to be huge successes on radio and MTV. Tyler's daughter, Liv Tyler, was featured in the "Crazy" video. The band won two Grammy Awards for songs from this album in the category of Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: for "Livin' on the Edge" in 1994 and "Crazy" in 1995.
Continued success and touring (2000–2008)
The band entered their next decade by co-headlining with NSYNC the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show, titled "The Kings of Rock and Pop", with appearances from Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly.
In March 2001, the band released their 13th studio album Just Push Play, which quickly went platinum, fueled by the Top 10 single "Jaded" and the appearance of the title track in Dodge commercials. They were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame soon after their album was released, in late March 2001. Later that year, the band performed as part of the United We Stand: What More Can I Give benefit concert in Washington D.C. for 9/11 victims and their families.
The band started 2002 by ending the Just Push Play tour, and simultaneously recording segments for their Behind the Music special on VH1, which not only chronicled the band's history but also the band's current activities and touring. The special was one of the few Behind the Musics to run two hours in length. MTV honored Aerosmith with their mtvICON award in 2002.
Aerosmith's long-promised blues album Honkin' on Bobo was released in 2004. This was a return to the band's roots, including recording the album in live sessions, working with former producer Jack Douglas, and laying down their blues rock grit.
In October 2005, Aerosmith released a CD/DVD Rockin' the Joint. The band hit the road for the Rockin' the Joint Tour on October 30 with Lenny Kravitz for a fall/winter tour of arenas in the largest US markets. The band planned to tour with Cheap Trick in the spring, hitting secondary markets in the US. Almost all of this leg of the tour was canceled, however. Dates were initially canceled one by one until March 22, 2006, when it was announced that Tyler needed throat surgery, and the remaining dates on the tour were subsequently canceled.
Tyler and Perry performed with the Boston Pops Orchestra for their annual concert of July 4 on the Esplanade in 2006, a milestone as it was the first major event or performance since Steven Tyler's throat surgery. Around this time, the band also announced that they would embark on the Route of All Evil Tour with Mötley Crüe in late 2006.
Touring, American Idol and albums (2009–2014)
On August 5, 2009, while on the Guitar Hero Aerosmith Tour, Tyler fell off a stage near Sturgis, South Dakota and was hospitalized.
On November 9, 2009, the media reported that Tyler had no contact with the other members of Aerosmith and that they were unsure if he was still in the band. On November 10, 2009, Joe Perry confirmed Tyler had quit Aerosmith to pursue a solo career and was unsure whether the move was indefinite. No replacement was announced. Despite rumors of leaving the band, and notwithstanding Perry's comment as reported earlier the same day, Tyler joined the Joe Perry Project onstage November 10, 2009, at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza and performed "Walk This Way". According to sources at the event, Tyler assured the crowd that despite rumors to the contrary, he is "not quitting Aerosmith."
In 2010, Tyler embarked on the Cocked, Locked, Ready to Rock Tour with Aerosmith, which had them perform over 40 concerts in 18 countries. On September 16, 2010, it was reported he would have his first solo project. He wrote "Love Lives", a theme song for the Japanese sci-fi movie Space Battleship Yamato. The song was based on the English translated script, as well as on some clips of the film itself. The single was released on November 24, a week before the movie was released.
On September 22, 2010, Fox confirmed that Tyler would replace Simon Cowell as a judge for the tenth season of American Idol alongside Randy Jackson and fellow new judge Jennifer Lopez (who replaced Kara DioGuardi and Ellen DeGeneres).
On January 19, 2011, Tyler made his debut appearance as a judge on American Idol during the premiere of the show's 10th season, which aired through the end of May. On April 2, 2011, Tyler presented an award at the 2011 Kids' Choice Awards. The following day, he performed with Carrie Underwood at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Underwood and Tyler performed Underwood's song "Undo It" and completed their segment with an energetic version of the Aerosmith classic "Walk This Way". On May 3, 2011, he released his autobiography Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, which reached number two on The New York Times Best Seller List in the category Hardcover Non-fiction.
Solo album and touring with Aerosmith (2015–present)
On March 31, 2015, Tyler stated that he was working on his first solo country album. On April 6, it was announced that he signed a record deal with Scott Borchetta's Dot Records (a division of the Big Machine Label Group). On May 13, Tyler released the lead single, "Love Is Your Name", from his forthcoming debut album. He promoted the song on the Bobby Bones Show, iHeartMedia, CBS This Morning, Entertainment Tonight and the American Idol season-14 finale. To increase his exposure to the country audience, Tyler appeared as himself in an episode of the musical drama series Nashville, performing a cover of "Crazy" with Juliette Barnes (portrayed by Hayden Panettiere).
On June 13, Tyler rejoined his Aerosmith bandmates for the Blue Army Tour, which sent the band to 17 North American locations through August 7; this was followed by a one-off performance in Moscow on September 5. From the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, Tyler completed work on his solo album, We're All Somebody from Somewhere, which was released on July 15, 2016. A second single, "Red, White & You", was released in January 2016, followed by the third single (the title track) in June 2016.
Since December 2015, in various interviews, Tyler and fellow Aerosmith bandmates Brad Whitford and Joe Perry all began discussing the possibility of an Aerosmith farewell tour or "wind-down tour", potentially slated to start in 2017. Perry has suggested that such a tour could last for two years while Tyler said it could potentially last "forever"; Tyler and Whitford also discussed the potential of doing a final studio album.
From September through October 2016, Tyler rejoined Aerosmith for a nine-date tour of Latin America, called the Rock 'N' Roll Rumble Tour, preceded by a performance at the Kaaboo Festival in San Diego.
In April 2017, Tyler performed with Aerosmith in Phoenix, Arizona for the NCAA Final Four men's basketball tournament and also performed two solo shows with Loving Mary in Japan. Tyler rejoined Aerosmith for a "farewell" tour of Europe in the spring and summer of 2017, titled the Aero-Vederci Baby! Tour. After the European leg concluded in July, the band played in South America in September and October 2017.
Dirico Motorcycles (Red Wing Motorcycles)
On September 15, 2007, at New Hampshire International Speedway, Tyler announced the launch of Dirico Motorcycles, which are designed by Tyler, engineered by Mark Dirico, and built by AC Custom Motorcycles in Manchester, New Hampshire. Tyler has been a long-time motorcycle fan and riding enthusiast, Tyler also participates in a variety of charity auctions involving motorcycles, including the Ride for Children charity.
Politics
In the early months of 2013, an act was forwarded into the Hawaii legislature entitled the Steven Tyler Act (Hawaii Senate Bill 465). The act would give more privacy to public figures such as government officials and celebrities on vacation. Tyler and numerous other celebrities all lobbied for it. The legislation would give public figures the right to sue paparazzi for taking unwanted photographs. The bill's sponsor is Maui state legislator J. Kalani English. The bill was cleared through the Judiciary Committee on Friday, February 8, 2013.
In August 2015, Aerosmith attended the first Republican Party presidential debate held in Cleveland, as the band was in town for a Pro Bowl concert appearance. Tyler was reportedly a guest of candidate Donald Trump, rather than sitting with the band. Tyler's agent told reporters that he was there to promote his copyright reform ideas.
Personal life
Persona
Tyler has been known to have an androgynous persona both on and offstage such as flamboyant clothes and makeup. In his 2011 memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, Tyler wrote:
I've been misquoted as saying that I'm more female than male. Let me set the record straight -- it's more half and half, and I love the fact that my feelings are akin to puella eternis [sic] (Latin for "the eternal girl"). What better to be like than the stronger of the species?
Family and relationships
Tyler had a brief relationship with fashion model Bebe Buell, during which he fathered actress Liv Tyler, born in 1977. Buell initially claimed that the father was Todd Rundgren to protect her daughter from Tyler's drug addiction. Through Liv's marriage to British musician Royston Langdon and relationship with entertainment manager David Gardner, Tyler has three grandchildren.
In 1978, he married Cyrinda Foxe, an ex-Warhol model and the former wife of New York Dolls' lead singer David Johansen, and fathered model Mia Tyler (born on December 22, 1978). He and Foxe divorced in 1987; in 1997, she published Dream On: Livin' on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, a memoir of her life with Tyler. Foxe died from a brain tumor in 2002.
On May 28, 1988, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tyler married clothing designer Teresa Barrick. With Barrick, he fathered a daughter, Chelsea, born around 1989 and a son, Taj, born around 1991. In February 2005, the couple announced that they were separating due to personal problems. The divorce was finalized in January 2006.
Tyler began a relationship with Erin Brady in 2006. They got engaged in December 2011 but called it off in January 2013.
In 1973, Tyler obtained guardianship of 16-year-old Julia Holcomb so that she could live with him in Boston. They dated and took drugs together for three years. Holcomb was referred to by the pseudonym "Diana Hall" by the editor of the Aerosmith autobiography Walk This Way in an attempt to conceal her identity, but other sources have confirmed her identity. Pressures leading to their split included their age difference (Tyler was 25 when they first met), a withdrawn marriage proposal, a house fire, and a planned pregnancy that resulted in an abortion when Tyler was worried that the smoke from the fire, as well as drugs, might lead to birth defects. Look Away, a documentary about sexual abuse in the rock music industry, features Holcomb's story.
Band member Ray Tabano wrote in Walk This Way that the abortion "really messed Steven up", because the fetus was male. Tyler wrote, "It was a big crisis. It's a major thing when you're growing something with a woman, but they convinced us that it would never work out and would ruin our lives. You go to the doctor and they put the needle in her belly and they squeeze the stuff in and you watch. And it comes out dead. I was pretty devastated. In my mind, I'm going, Jesus, what have I done?" Holcomb stated in 2011 that after the operation, Tyler had informed her that the child "had been born alive and allowed to die".
Health
Tyler and his bandmate, Joe Perry, have been referred to as the Toxic Twins for their legendary intake of stimulants and heroin.
In 1980, Tyler collapsed on stage during a show in Portland, Maine and did not get up for the remainder of the set. In the fall of 1980, Tyler was injured in a serious motorcycle accident, which left him hospitalized for two months and unable to tour or record well into 1981. At a homecoming arena show in Worcester, Massachusetts in the early 1980s, Tyler and Perry got high backstage before the show; Tyler was so intoxicated that he collapsed onstage again.
Tyler recalled, "I made like $4 or $5 million by 1979, and by '83... I lost it all. I remember in the early days looking at another fucked-up rock 'n' roll star and thinking, 'I will never end up like that, man.' They had all these riches and blew it all. That would never happen to me... I forgot about reality and just loved shooting dope and coke. Stupid."
In 1986, Tyler completed a successful drug rehabilitation program after an intervention by his fellow band members, a doctor, and manager Tim Collins.
In 2006, immediately after a two-hour performance in Florida, Tyler got into an argument during which he yelled. He awoke the next morning to find that he had a hoarse voice. On March 22, 2006, the Washington Post reported that Tyler would undergo surgery for an "undisclosed medical condition". A statement from Tyler's publicist read in part, "Despite Aerosmith's desire to keep the tour going as long as possible, [Tyler's] doctors advised him not to continue performing to give his voice time to recover." Aerosmith's remaining North American tour dates in 2006 on the Rockin' the Joint Tour were subsequently canceled.
The cause was diagnosed as a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, which was successfully sealed off using a laser by Dr. Steven M. Zeitels, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation. In the words of Tyler: "He just took a laser and zapped the blood vessel." After a few weeks of rest, Tyler and the rest of Aerosmith entered the studio on May 20, 2006, to begin work on their new album.
Discography
Philanthropy
Tyler launched Janie's Fund – named after Aerosmith's 1989 track "Janie's Got a Gun" – in 2015 to providing protection and counseling for young female victims of abuse, and he has helped raise over $2.4 million for the organization since then. Janie's House, established in 2017 in Atlanta, offers shelter for victims of abuse or neglect, with space for 30 live-in clients and 24-hour medical facilities available.
Awards and nominations
Emmy Award nomination in 2011: – Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program – for playing the Mad Hatter on Wonder Pets: Adventures in Wonderland
