Random Weird As Hell Steven Tyler Stories (17 items)

(#8) He Allegedly Swiped $2,000 And Was Rescued By A Sword-Wielding Friend

Joe Perry got into the tell-all game with his 2014 memoir, Rocks: My Life in and out of Aerosmith. According to Perry, Tyler had a penchant for kleptomania in the old days, and the band once lost a gig because Tyler lifted a slide projector.

Another time, armed individuals accused Tyler of swiping $2,000 from a suitcase. Perry wrote that they threatened Tyler before the band's friend Gary Cabozzi stormed in with a sword and threatened them right back:

Cabozzi won the day. He said that twenty years later he learned that it was Steven who took the money.
(#13) He Attributed The Band's Touring Prowess To Coke

Despite Tyler's battle with drugs and alcohol, all the stints in rehab, and losses he's suffered, he still said many of the band's accomplishments wouldn't have been possible without coke fueling them. During a 2013 interview with Howard Stern, Tyler said:

Drugs took me down. Yes, it got us through the '70s, if it wasn't for Peruvian marching powder, we wouldn't have been able to do what we did. From the '70s to '79, we played every state except Alaska and Hawaii.
(#14) He Took 'This Is Spinal Tap' Personally

In 1984, as the members of Aerosmith were at the nadir of their collective downward spiral, Steven Tyler saw This Is Spinal Tap in theaters and was stunned to see so much of himself in the film. As he told Rolling Stone in 1990:

I was real high at the time, and Aerosmith was sinking – we were like a boat going down. And that movie was way too close, way too real. Our last album was Rock in a Hard Place, which sold, like, maybe ten copies; Spinal Tap did Stonehenge, and our album cover looked exactly like that. I freaked. I took Spinal Tap real personal.

Thankfully, Rolling Stone scribe David Wild was on hand to contextualize Tyler's musing for readers:

Aerosmith had become a virtual parody of itself. The band's story was one of rock & roll excess, complete with all the absurd trimmings: wives who incessantly bickered, band members who fell offstage with disturbing regularity, $100,000 room-service bills, contests to see how many things in a Holiday Inn room would fit through a television set, million-dollar budgets, nightmarish gigs at theme parks, crew members who got more groupie action than their f*cked-up bosses and money that went who knows where.
(#5) When He Was 63, He Told A 16-Year-Old She Was Showing Just The Right Amount Of Skin

Steven Tyler was 63 years old when he started judging on American Idol, and most certainly did not act his age. Late night host Jimmy Kimmel was so amused by Tyler's creepy moments on Idol, he dedicated a bit to it called,"Steven Tyler's Creepy Leer of the Night."

The frontman's creepiest moment came during the audition of 16-year-old Victoria Huggins. Tyler said of her skirt: "Just the right amount showing... that's nice."

Randy Jackson did an awkward please-end-me laugh. Huggins cheerfully replied, "Well, I gotta appeal to the boy audience, but I wanna be a lady."
(#17) He Admitted His Drug Abuse Cost Him Everything

Tyler was a drug and alcohol addict for decades. He first got sober in 1988, relapsed in 2000, and got sober again in 2010. In a 2013 interview with Dr. Oz, he refused to admit the number of times he went to rehab, though he spoke of how addiction cost him everything:

We live on the tail of a comet being in this band... I did it so much I couldn't stop, and then I had to ask myself and face myself to see why couldn't I stop. Is it just that I loved it, or did it steal me like a crook and have me by the short hairs? My sobriety cost me nothing less than everything. It’s serious when you lose your kids, your wife, your band, your job... and you’ll never understand why, because you’re an addict.
(#11) Jerry Garcia Was Worried About All The Drugs He Was Doing

In a piece on Aerosmith's fall from grace and triumphant comeback published in Rolling Stone in 1990, Tyler spoke of worrying noted drug aficionado Jerry Garcia with the amount of illicit materials he and his bandmates consumed.

"Jerry Garcia says that we were the druggiest bunch of guys the Grateful Dead ever saw," Tyler said. "They were worried about us, so that gives you some idea of how f*cked up and crazy we were."