Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: The Autobiography. Steven Tyler
with their collective leathery eyeball, but I’d already figured this out long before the Beatles arrived, when the gang I was in turned into my first band.
How do you get into a gang? You act tough—and I’ve always been good at the acting part, anyway. I wasn’t tough. I was skinny and scrawny and into my own weird world. Acting tough is easy: you just try and be as obnoxious as you can and get the shit beaten out of you for it. Throw in a few stupid and illegal things—like running across Central Avenue naked, stealing stuff for the clubhouse—and if they’re feeling kindly they’ll let you in.
At Roosevelt there was this guy Ray Tabano who was to become my lifelong friend. We first became friends from my telling him to get the fuck out of my tree (the one he was climbing). “Stay off my vines,” I yelled. I paid for that a couple of days later when he beat the shit out of me—but it was worth it because I eventually became a member of a gang, really more of a club, called the Green Mountain Boys. With membership in a gang you got protection from the more thuggish elements in high school. It also attracted girls, who are always into that kind of asshole.
When I was about fourteen, I hung out with Ray at his dad’s bar on Morris Park Avenue in the Bronx. Not bad for a hangout. He would let us drink beer. A local Bronx R & B group, the Bell Notes, used to perform there, and between their sets Ray and I would sing their 1959 hit “I’ve Had It.” We’d also do the old Leadbelly song “Cotton Fields,” but in the collegiate folk song style of the Highwaymen, who had a hit with it in 1962. Later I would be in a band called the Dantes with Ray that evolved out of the Green Mountain Boys (while still playing with the Strangeurs). The Strangeurs were more Beatlish and pop; the Dantes darker and Stonesier. I played one gig with the Dantes.
Me and Ray Tabano, aka Rayzan the Apeman, around the time we played “I’ve Had It” at his father’s bar, 1960. (Ernie Tallarico)
How the Strangeurs got their first manager and how I became the lead singer of the group also came out of the gang in a way—through Ray and stolen merchandise. I’d been ripping off stuff from the little Jewish corner candy store where I worked as a soda jerk in Yonkers. I’d go down in the basement where I did inventory and grab candy bars and packets of cigarettes and give them to Ray to sell. I then progressed to the Shopwell supermarket on Central Avenue—bigger items, boxes and crates. Peter Agosta was the store manager, and to prevent me from moving stuff out of the back of the store and handing it to Ray, he had me collect the shopping carts, so he could have me where he could keep an eye on me. Why he didn’t just fire me I’ll never know. I told him I was in a band, and he said he’d like to see us play, so I said I’d invite him to the next gig we played, which turned out to be a Sweet Sixteen party for Art Carney’s daughter. It was a gig my dad had gotten us (he taught piano to Carney’s son). Peter Agosta liked the group, but he thought I should be the lead singer—oh yeah! We got Barry Shapiro to play drums.
This was the era of spacey rock. The Byrds’ truly cosmic single “Eight Miles High” came out in March 1966. It vibrated in your brain like you were tripping. It was blacklisted by radio stations because it was thought to be a drug song—duh!—despite Jim McGuinn’s unconvincing explanations that it wasn’t. I’ll tell you what “Eight Miles High” was . . . a stratospheric Rickenbacker symphony!
Soon Ray Tabano and I moved on to other quasi-criminal activities. To support our pot-smoking habit, we began selling nickel bags: buy an ounce for twenty dollars, sell four, keep two for ourselves. This was a cool deal and a cheap way of getting high until . . .
They put an undercover narc (who will remain nameless) in our high school ceramics class. The fucking ceramics class! He popped us eventually, but first he was selling us nickel bags of good shit he got off some other poor fuck he’d popped.
On June 11, 1966, Henry Smith booked us to play at an ice-skating rink in Westport, Connecticut. We rehearsed that afternoon, did a sound check. I hoped some people in town would come, because we had a little following in Connecticut. I’d met Henry Smith, “the Living Myth,” up in Sunapee in the summer of 1965—he became a close friend and a key person in my life. He was impressed with our sound when we played the Barn, where we did stuff by the Stones like “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and all the current hits. Slam-dunk rockers like “Louie, Louie” and “Money.” Henry and his brother, Chris, the band’s first photographer, started getting us gigs in Connecticut.
Outside the rink, on the other side of the fence, was a trampoline center. I had been on the junior Olympic team in high school for trampoline; I could do twenty-six backflips in a row. Not such great form, but I could get height from hell.
For three dollars, you could jump in this trampoline park for half an hour. There was nobody there, and I looked around and snuck over the fence. I jumped from one trampoline to another, and on to the next one. Backflip. I’d probably got through the first six trampolines and on to the next row when I heard, “Hey! Get the fuck off my trampolines!” “Listen, man,” I said, “we’re playing next door—you want tickets?” His name was Scotty. “Oh, you’re in the band that’s playing here tonight?” He loved that. “Why don’t you come up to my house?”
I went over to Scotty’s house. Nice pool and a fridge full of St. Pauli Girl. We’re swimming and throwing back a few beers when these two guys come ripping into the driveway on the two sickest go-carts from hell. It’s Paul Newman and Our Man Flint, James Coburn. Holy shit! “Scotty, what’s goin’ on?” I asked. “Oh, that’s my dad,” he said. “Which one?” “Paul Newman,” he said. “I’m Scotty Newman, pleased to meet you.” “You fucker! When were you gonna tell me?”
Paul Newman was very laid back and as cool as Cool Hand Luke. It was like being in a movie with him. I went into the sauna with Paul and Scotty. We’re all sitting in there getting sweaty and Paul Newman whips out this bottle of fifty-year-old brandy he’d got from the Queen of England, which I downed immediately. I toweled off, put my clothes back on, and wandered into the house. There on the mantelpiece was Joanne Woodward’s Oscar with its arms folded as all Oscars are. “Where’s yours?” I asked Mr. Newman. “Well, I never got one, but my friend made that one up for me.” It was a mock Oscar, only with its arms open wide instead of folded and with the guy going, “Vat?” Like, how could you have passed me up after all my great performances?
Twenty minutes later, I got a phone call from my mom, completely hysterical. “They found it!” she’s yelling. “Mom, calm down,” I said. “What’s goin’ on?” She starts explaining . . . and it ain’t good. “The cops are here and they found your marijuana! It was in one of your books.” Uh-oh, they found my stash so cunningly concealed in a copy of The Hardy Boys and the Disappearing Floor. “Get home right now!” I jumped in the car and drove back. I pulled into the driveway and saw a black unmarked car approaching from around the corner. My heart fell out of my ass. The cops handcuffed me and walked me to the car while I protested my innocence. “What are you doing? Why are you arresting me?”
Ah, it never rains but it pours. My dad had come home early that day because it was his birthday. “Gee, Dad, Happy Birthday! I just wanted to make sure we’re all here to . . .” You couldn’t put that in a movie. Action! Have the dad drive up while you’re being carted off to jail. It got in the paper. The shame! The Italian guilt! “Dad, is there a file in your birthday cake I can borrow?”
We were taken down to the police station. They’d popped a bunch of us, most of the kids in my class. We were giving them the finger through the two-way mirror. I’m sitting handcuffed to a bar when this fucking guy who had been smoking pot with us walks in flashing his badge: DEPUTY SHERIFF. The narc was very fucking pleased with himself. I was still playing the injured party. “How could you have betrayed us like that, you ceramic fuck?” I shouted at him. “You set us up!” “They’re gonna throw the book at you, kid,” he said as he walked away. Well, not the book, but maybe a couple of chapters. The narc who busted us was on a vendetta—his brother had died of an OD, and we were the unfortunate victims