Tom Hamilton (Aerosmith) Answers Your Questions!
ZZ Top and Aerosmith are going on the road. When were the seeds for this tour planted?
Tom Hamilton: About two months ago, we were at the point where we needed to figure out what kind of band we wanted to take out on tour. It is usually who is available that determines that process. Our manager calls out of the blue one day and says, "What do you think about touring with ZZ Top?" My initial reaction was, "Absolutely." I love bands that have a lot of good songs and ZZ has tons of good songs.
We are in this period where people are always commenting on how old we are and how long we have been doing this. There was a point in the past where we would have thought that we had to get a different band, so it doesn’t look like an old guy show. Nowadays, the fans don’t think about that; people in the press think about that. Some of the more precious, new entertainment sites were all pointing the age factor out, as if that was something new. I am like, "Are you kidding? We get to hear Billy Gibbons play guitar every night." A lot of people are going to look forward to that. There are other bands out there who are newer, cooler and hipper but the audience is not going to be rocking out to every single song like they will be with ZZ Top.
I don’t remember ever hearing about ZZ Top and Aerosmith touring.
Tom: We opened for them at some point in the Seventies. We were playing a big stadium, I think it was in Cleveland. I remember they had Astro Turf and it was like standing on a big carpet. ZZ Top’s big visual thing for that tour was bringing out farm animals. They actually had farm animals on stage. I remember we were all laughing about how ridiculous that was. We walked out to watch their set and there was a big pile of cow shit right in the middle of that big green rug. We were laughing about that, and we sent somebody to go get some plastic forks and took pictures of us like we were about to eat it.
With this tour, was ZZ Top cool that you were the closers? Is there any ego left?
Tom: They are coming off a period where they have not been touring a whole lot. The last few years, it seems to me, that they have not been that steady into it. There was never a question of the line up. We have been pounding it out on the road a lot over the last ten years. We have built ourselves up a little bigger than those guys. It is not like they are the opening act. It is more of a co-headline type of set. They will play a nice set that will almost be as long as ours. It is not a situation where they are going to go out and play a forty-five minutes.
Rumors are leaking out that Aerosmith is going to play "Toys in the Attic" in its entirety. True?
Tom: We have been talking about it for years, and people have been asking us about it for years; that topic has been on simmer for quite a while. I don’t want to say anything to raise peoples’ expectations because there is still a lot of decision making to do before we get out there, but, yeah, we are talking about that as an idea.
I think we have always been stymied by the fact that we have this audience that spans so much time. You have less people wanting the old stuff, but they are very intense about it. You have another group that wants to hear the more recent hits. We are trying to figure out how to do that and how to make the audience go home happy. We are really inspired by the idea, and the whole concept, of how these songs will sound all brought up to date. If you look at the Toys in the Attic album, then we have been playing "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion" all these years.
You went through a huge scare with cancer. Do you have a clean bill of health?
Tom: I did go through a pretty shitty period with the cancer treatment. I was very confident that they were going to get rid of it. They told me they would get rid of it but they also told me that I was going to have to go through hell. They told me, all they way through the treatment, that they were going to get me through it. They said, "We have done this tons of times and you are going to heal but it is going to suck a little bit." I go back for checkups every couple of months and it is all clean.
Your health and recovery are the most important thing here but you had a Lou Gehrig like streak of never missing an Aerosmith show broken due to your health issue.
Tom: That is true, it really screwed up my attendance record. It was really tough thinking about the band going out there without me. I didn’t have to agonize over the decision as there was no way that it was going to work. I was not going to be able to go on that tour. Two or three months before the tour started, I was still telling everybody around me that I was looking forward to being out on tour with the band. The doctors, and the people around me, looked at me with understanding eyes and I finally realized that I was just not ready yet.
When people have a period where they have to do cancer treatment, they have to go on a cul-de-sac for a while. A lot of people can’t accept it. People get stuck on that, "Why did I get it? Why did this happen to me?" way of looking at things. Other people say, "I am keeping my schedule full. I am not going to let this get me down." We are all taught to admire that but people who really try to do that are the ones who don’t get through it very well. You have to accept it, which I did. It is now fading into the distance.
Everyone knows the Aerosmith story and what depths the band sunk too. Drug addiction destroyed Aerosmith to the point that people were passing out on stage. Now, with hindsight, how miraculous is it that you are where you are at today.
Tom: I remember when I was young, in my twenties, and having conventional thoughts of what I would be doing when I was thirty-five. I just figured that I would have a regular job by that age. For years, even after the band had made it, I would go visit my parents and my mom would say, "I am glad your band is doing well but when are you going to college?" I would tell her, "Pretty soon, mom, pretty soon." She really wanted me to be educated.
We have just slid into this, kind of like we did when we were just kids. We had that period in the early Eighties where we blew it and we threw a beautiful thing right into the trash. We have learned that lesson and still remember it to this day. I would never make a prediction as to how long this band is going to be around; you just never know. Things are usually pretty volatile and there is sort of a Crisis of the Day all the time. We can feel all of the input from all of the people who want to come and see us play. If, all of the sudden, people were not that interested in coming to see us, then we might start really seriously doing other stuff. Luckily for us, there is still enough people out there who want to see us live that we still get invited.
One of the things that really helped bring Aerosmith back was MTV and the videos that you made. Was that a conceived plan or was it a happy accident?
Tom: I remember MTV came about during that period when the band was broken up. It was a revolutionary thing back then. Up until then, there were rock television shows, but it was still very scarce to be on TV. To be honest, it wasn’t cool to be on most TV shows back then. There was Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, The Midnight Special and a couple of other shows, but for the most part, there were not any shows on TV where you would want to be caught dead on. Televison was not that interested, either, to have this loud, obnoxious music on the air.
MTV came along and changed all of that. I remember driving around during that time thinking how Aerosmith was missing that boat. We were on our way down and we were going to miss out. Maybe that was one of the things that everybody in the band noticed, and in their hearts said, "I want to be part of this. I want to be around for this stuff." It might have motivated everyone to do whatever it took to get back in a room together and be a band again. Ever since then, there are all these things that have come along, mostly generated by new technology, where you are able to get out there and show your music. I think that we are all way into being there for these things when they come along.
Nowadays, I think the novelty of a music video has worn off. That was an amazing thing for us. We didn’t predict that. When we got the band back together, we knew we wanted to be in on that. Our management, and the people around us, suggested directors to work with and how to go about making videos. We were very receptive. We really wanted to be a part of it.
You were no angel during the wild times of the band but I have to ask if you were amazed to learn of the level of addiction that Steven Tyler and Joe Perry had succumbed too. It had to blow you away.
Tom: You are not really supposed to compare. When the book came out then that was the end of that period of not comparing. Steven and Joe decided to be very out front and talk about all of those scarey war stories. Obviously, when we were going through it, it was terrible. It was like, "Oh my God, what is going on?" Everything was going down the tubes and there was a feeling that this was something that couldn’t be dealt with. We had absolutely no idea what to do. I knew it was bad but I was in the party too. Luckily, I never had a moment where I couldn’t get up and play. When I read the manuscript to the book I said, "Holy shit, I didn’t know that." I am actually glad that I didn’t know some of that.
Your drummer, Joey Kramer, is given credit for coming up with the name ‘Aerosmith.’ Legend holds that another name being considered was ‘The Hookers.’ I wonder what you think your career might have been like if you had been called The Hookers instead of Aerosmith?
Tom: We never would have been called The Hookers. It never really even made it into the full band discussion. One of the names we were thinking about was ‘Spike Jones.’ Joey came up with ‘Arrowsmith’ and we were like, "No, that is that book that you have to read in high school." Joey was like, "No, man. A-E-R-O." Right away, everybody really dug that idea. It didn’t mean anything and we weren’t trying to say anything with it. It just seemed to be a cool word that we identified with, so we kept it.
Back in those days, everybody used to hitchhike around the city. We got a hold of a bunch of blank cigarette papers and we stamped ‘Aerosmith’ on them. We would drive around in our van and every time we would pick someone up, we would give them one and say, "What do you think?" We were doing our own crude marketing research. You have to be good at self promotion, let’s face it.
Comments
There are currently no comments.
Commenting for this topic has been locked.