Behind the Music

Episode 174: Aerosmith

September 1, 2002 • 60 min

Think that Aerosmith had an easy time climbing to the top of the rock 'n' roll mountain? Dream on...In a 30-year career, the Boston-based group has hit the highest highs and the lowest lows -- and lived to tell it all. VH1's Behind The Music: Aerosmith profiles the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame rockers in a special two-hour episode.Behind The Music: Aerosmith features footage from a trove of several thousand hours of original and archived film and video (much of it never seen before), plus exclusive new interviews with Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer, plus actress Liv Tyler and many more. And in this first-ever two-hour BTM episode, complete access on the band's Just Push Play tour in the US and Japan -- with cameras everywhere from backstage, to the hotel suites, to the tour buses and the private planes, and occasionally in the bathroom -- lend a voyeuristic present-day perspective rarely seen.For over 30 years, Aerosmith has been a rock tour de force. Spanning several generations, their appeal is just as strong today as it was during their mammoth initial success in the 1970s. Through their very own brand of raunchy blues swagger, arena rock anthems and gutsy power ballads, the Bad Boys from Boston have become a worldwide phenomenon.But along the way Aerosmith had to survive every rock 'n' roll test imaginable. Years of drug and alcohol addictions, financial woes, fading record sales, sour times with ex-managers, friction with ex-wives, near-death car crashes, on-stage collapse and mental breakdowns are just some of the hurdles they miraculously overcame. But perhaps the biggest obstacle they overcame was each other: Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer have co-existed as "brothers of choice" for the greater part of their lives. And like any family unit, it hasn't always been easy.Aerosmith discuss in bone-chilling detail their struggles with drugs, detail the ego battles and personal disputes among the band members and their wives that led to their nasty breakup in 1979, and speak out bitterly about their former managers and how financial mismanagement and drug binges left them in the poorhouse -- until their massive comeback in the late '80s:Lambasting former manager Tim Collins, Aerosmith relate how he moved them towards life-saving sobriety, only to attempt to take them down once again through power-hungry manipulation.Steven responds angrily to well-publicized rumors that he had a drug relapse in the late '90s.For the first time on television, Steven Tyler and actress Liv Tyler discuss the discovery of their father/daughter relationship after eight years of separation.