A rockstar with drug problems is nothing new: Steven Tyler

Even at 63, Steven Tyler, the Aerosmith lead singer turned American Idol judge, is in his rockstar spirits! Ready with his new single (It) Feels So Good, he is also “penning down a song with pal Johnny Depp”. And while everyone had just began to think, or rather lament, that Aerosmith is dead, Tyler clarifies, “No, I am working on a new music with Aerosmith with a follow-up to 2004’s Honkin’ on Bobo (their 14th studio album). We just have to get together and put it together. We’re all musicians. We’re still brothers.”

Notorious for his party hard lifestyle, Tyler’s behaviour and indulgences ignited feuds with his band mates. “They wanted to replace me in 2009. I blew a hell lot of money… my Porsche, my plane, my house; kept my medicine cabinet on stage in a 14-inches drum head, the bottom of which contained one other abusive stuff”

Well that was Tyler’s eighth stint in the rehab. “But the damage hit me the day my son came with tears in his eyes and said, ‘dad you were so high every night that I was afraid!’ I would have been dead several times over.” Tyler’s memoir (Does The Noise In My Head Bother You) talks about all the low phase in his life, the drug addiction and the many medical problems he underwent.

“A rockstar with drug problems is nothing new,” feels Tyler, but doesn’t regret a thing since he believes that everything that came his way has cut him into what he is today. “I’m a grateful recovering drug addict, alcoholic.”

The singer also feels that being in a band like Aerosmith, depicted him differently — as ‘bad boys’.  “And people love the bad boys of Boston. Everybody’s always intrigued by the badness of it all. But I’m also addicted to Christmas time hearing my kids laugh — I don’t think they are aware of this,” he reveals.

He added, “Aerosmith always came before my family. They are my family, I always thought of them like that. We are all brothers and always with each other. But I soon realised the lesson in the last couple of years that I really need to nurture the family I have got.”