Bienstock Richard - Aerosmith, 50th Anniversary Updated Edition

Chain Reaction, New York City, circa 1967. MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Preternaturally hyperactive and a self-described problem child, music was just one of many life-shaping forces in young Stevens life. Summers were spent at Trow-Rico Lodge, a 250-acre family-owned musical retreat on Lake Sunapee, in New Hampshire. Ensconced in the creative environs of Trow-Rico, Steven got an early taste of the performers lifehe performed skits at Friday-night parties and, when the adults turned their backs, got drunk on homemade hard cider. Back in Yonkers, he began getting into trouble at school, fought with older kids who called him nigger lips for his prodigious mouth (My mom said, All the better to kiss the girls with, Tyler told MTV), and, along with his friend Ray Tabano, joined a street gang called the Green Mountain Boys. Tyler also tried his hand at piano, but when his fathers instruction didnt hold, he switched to drums. At fifteen, he joined Victors big band, Vic Tallaricos Orchestra, playing for the society set around Sunapee. Like Johnny Carsons theme song, Begin the Beguine, that type of shit, Tyler told Rock Scene in 1986.

But with his teenage years came drugs, liquor, girls, and rock n roll. When the British Invasion hit U.S. shores, Tyler was a goner. I remember the first Stones album, the Who, the Rats from England, the Pretty Things, he told Spin magazine in 1988. Mick Jagger, the baddest boy on the block, my idol. I said, Fuck, I can do that too. He was well on his way. At eighteen, Tyler was making regular pilgrimages to Greenwich Village, where he and his friends spent long nights hopped up on booze, acid, and amyl nitrates, engaging in myriad carnal delights and taking in lots of rock showseveryone from the Lovin Spoonful and the Fugs to the Animals and the Rolling Stones.