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Interview 6

Aerosmith MTV Icon IV "Brotherly Love" - date unknown

Source: http://www.mtv.com/bands/a/aerosmith/news_feature_041702/index7.jhtml

Brotherly Love

Tyler: Joe's really a hard sell. He's always been a loner. I had a relationship with Joe unlike any relationship with anybody else. I dreamt of meeting somebody like this who would have licks that I could throw on top of ... that we could possibly be a songwriting team. It's always been a little sad for me with Joe, in that I get the lick, but I don't get that full-time friend. And he may argue with me to this day about it, but I think Joey had an experience with Joe as well, where he asked, "Why can't we be really close friends?" And Joe said, "Just because we're in a band doesn't mean we have to be best friends." And I have this passion in me that is so much deeper that I feel that in order to get the true value out of a friendship you gotta give the all. Even when the other person doesn't think so.

Perry: Steven's f---ed up. I know where he's coming from and what he's really running. A lot of times he'll come up to me and say something and I'll immediately just say the opposite, whether it's to just piss him off. Then I'll listen to it, think about it. And I'll usually come back and say, "Yeah you're right," or "I thought about it." It's that family stuff. And I'm sure he does the same thing with me. But he's got really good intuition. And a lot of times, I hate to admit it, but he's right.

Over the years, I've looked at the band as a brotherhood. It is a family in a sense. You have to have a bigger vision of what you have. And don't let the stuff get personal. We've made every mistake you can make. We've argued and walked out of rooms and not spoken to each other for weeks. The band broke up. But we've learned over the years how to make it work. Even when we do things to each other that go right to the core, there's still something about having the band that's bigger than that, and we work through it.
 
Kramer: The band is a democracy. I compare us a lot of times to a blueberry pie. If you take a slice of blueberry pie out of the pie and replace it with apple ... APPLE! It doesn't work. How I can relate that to being a democracy is that we're all blueberries. We all work together in that if I have a question about something that I'm not real sure of about myself, I'll go to Tom to ask him, and I'm going to get an honest answer from him because he knows me. Nothing is going to be held back. There's no person that's more important than the other when it comes to treating each other equally.

I think that Steven and I both relate on a very gut level. He feels a lot of the same sensitivity I do as far as emotions. He expresses them one way, I do another. There are times he reads me like a book, and I don't like that, and there are times I do the same to him. We can have a good cry, look in one another's eyes, tell the other that we love him, and be done with it. He can piss me off to the point where I want to hate him for the moment, and I know I can do the same to him.

I think the one guy that probably inspires me to continue being a loving soul is Joe. I can remember when we first started the band — I remember an instant one day when we walked down the street and Joe just said to me, "Why do we have to be buddies to play in a band together?" And for me to hear that was just unspeakable. Because for me, a big part of being in a band was the camaraderie. And having your girlfriends get along and eating together and going to movies together. That's the way I was. So for him to say that to me really threw me off. Now here we are 30 years later, and I can have the same kind of conversation with Joe that I can have with anyone else. I feel closer to this guy now than I ever have in 30 years.
 
Hamilton: My relationship with Joe was pretty difficult at one point because our wives didn't get along at all. And for me, the awkwardness came out of my WASP upbringing, where an awkward conversation is a drag. Every day there was potential for extremely awkward confrontations. "Hey, your wife said this about my wife," or vice versa, so we're not talking to each other right now and petty stuff like that. That's what I worried about. I didn't worry about whether the band was going to make it or not, I worried about, "Oh my God, what if tomorrow when we leave the hotel, Terry and I wind up in the same limo as Joe and Elissa?"

You may be having an argument with this person but yet he's one of only four other people in the entire world that understands how you experience things. With Joe and I, there's a lot of things that are kind of unspoken. Things that we find ironic or humorous about events that come along where you don't have that same reaction to those events as you would with another group of people. So it makes it like a secret society.

One thing that I have had to come to grips with in life is that I don't have that much natural musical talent or aptitude, which makes me feel good because that means everything I've gotten is because of wanting it so freaking bad I was willing to fight for it. There have been a lot of times where getting a musical nod from Steven really feels good. And it really spurs you on. Steven is the kind of person that is so blunt that they are beyond the realm of common courtesy, but that's exactly why they are so filled with value.

Whitford: I can hate these guys one day, or one moment or five minutes, but with the amount of things that we've done together, I love these guys, all of them. I love them deeply. I don't know how or when [Aerosmith] has to end, but when it does end, it's going to be a crushing blow. Because you put in so much time. And you finally learn to live with each other. I think for many, many years we looked at each other and went, "Boy, if I could just change this about him," and you finally realize you don't change anybody. If there's anything in the mix, it's you. That's the only thing you can control. And once you figure that out it makes life a lot easier.

Kramer: In the end, when I'm onstage and I'm looking out in front of me, and I see those four asses in front of me, that's my favorite place to be.
 
Tyler: It is so f---ing hard to come up with a song. It is so hard to be creative. It is so hard to put aside that I missed my daughter's function at her school. What do I say to her? And live the life and balance the two. And deal with managers that go public and say you're stoned again. Or go and tell your wife that you're screwing girls in Florida. It's so hard to keep it all in check and still come out with a song and a dance and want to be onstage. But I look over and see Joe and go, "Wow man, this is my brother." And I see Brad and go, "Wow man, this is the guy I love." And it's really all about those moments. All the rest pales.


 

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