Steven Tyler’s not the first rocker who got into trouble for using substances, but his struggle with addiction has been among the most public ones. The singer’s life was there for any prying eye to see and look into. Still, it was not like Tyler had ever tried to hide his struggle with addiction.
Perhaps substance grasped the true spirit of rock and roll for him, or maybe it just became part of Steven’s troubled public image as a rock star. Still, whatever it was, his addiction almost destroyed his reputation as a showman and his relationship with his bandmates. Luckily, it wasn’t all that bad for him in the ’80s, and it was, but there were times when Steven decided to put on a little play with using his addiction.
For instance, when he didn’t feel like performing, it was easy for the singer to embrace his finest acting skills and put on a show by faking a harmless faint or two. In one particular show, he got pretty masterful in fabricating passing out and showed off his acting once again. Maybe it was fun for Steven at the time, but it wasn’t the best era in Aerosmith’s history.
Even though being in Aerosmith and working with Steven Tyler might sound dreamy, Joe Perry of the ’80s might argue with you on that. The guitarist wasn’t pleased with Tyler’s erratic and stubborn behavior caused by his struggle with addiction, so Joe decided to go on his own and depart the band.
Bearing that in mind, with Tyler’s poor performances, Aerosmith started to take the stage in smaller venues rather than selling out in arenas. The other members of the band also started to show their discontent with Steven’s addiction, and at the time, things also didn’t seem bright for the future of Aerosmith.
Perry’s departure, the other band member’s dislike of Tyler, and the singer’s struggle to stand up were like the precursor of the more challenging days to come. On one occasion, Steven didn’t want to perform one night in 1980 and thought faking passing out was the best way to stop the show. So, as Tyler recalled in ‘Walk This Way: An Autobiography of Aerosmith’ in 1997, one night on January 1980, while performing in Cumberland County Civic Center in Maine, Steven just let himself go down.
“I dropped down and faked passing out,” wrote Steven in his autobiography. The singer was proud of his work and discussed how he had faked dropping down from the stage. He shared, “I’m so good at it, I even shook my foot, so it looked bad.”
Tyler knew how to turn things around when he wanted to use his addiction to his benefit. This behavior also made the other members leave the band, and after an actual incident occurred months later when Steve fainted, the act had to quit touring. The singer’s struggle with addiction hurt his music, performance, and relationship with the band, so it wasn’t all fun, as Tyler recalled once.
