Aerosmith News

ProJo.com
By Rick Massimo
Joey Kramer will speak and sign copies of his memoir Saturday, November 14th at Mohegan Sun.

Everyone knows the redemptive feel-good story of the rock legends Aerosmith, who credibly called themselves “America’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band” through the ’70s before imploding under the weight of their own drug abuse problems later in the decade, before pulling it back together for a platinum-selling rebirth beginning in the late ’80s and continuing until this day.

But for drummer Joey Kramer, the journey didn’t end there.

Kramer’s memoir, “Hit Hard: A Story of Hitting Rock Bottom at the Top” (HarperCollins, 233 pages, $26.95), begins in 1995 with the drummer arriving in a posh Miami hotel to begin work on the follow-up to the group’s smash “Pump” album. He takes one look at the drums, turns around and walks out. Within a few hours, with the help of a therapist who had been working with the band, he’s in a California mental-health facility. It’s not drugs or alcohol that’s the problem — it’s depression and anxiety.

For the rest of the book, Kramer traces his life and the roots of the problems that eventually took him over. There are some stories of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but they pale next to the stories of abuse, neglect and, well, rock ’n’ roll.

He describes, in sometimes pretty rough language, the abuse he took from his father, beginning when he was two years old. Music was his refuge, and it defined his youth, as he played in dozens of bands until he headed to Boston, fell in with the guys who formed Aerosmith, working like dogs building a name and eventually hitting the big time.

There was a different kind of trouble awaiting Kramer, though: Singer Steven Tyler, an acquaintance of Kramer’s since middle school, was originally a drummer — in fact, the group had originally picked him over Kramer, and it was Tyler who volunteered to move to frontman and let Kramer in. And Tyler, it seems, never let Kramer forget it. For decades, Kramer took the brunt of Tyler’s perfectionism, as the singer criticized his playing, his attitude, his supposed lack of dedication — pretty much everything.

“You might think that it should have been pretty obvious to me that Steven was simply my father all over again,” Kramer writes at one point. “… But at the time, it was not obvious at all.”

Even after hitting it big and kicking drugs, Kramer’s underlying problems were still there. “It’s said that when you start using drugs,” he writes, “you stop maturing emotionally, so according to that calculation, I was emotionally about 15 years old when the calendar said I was 37. On top of that, I made my living in a rock ’n’ roll band, which meant I was a complete” — um, did I mention the language could get rough sometimes?

Kramer details the years of therapeutic work he did with and without the band, and the secrets and patterns he found in that work, eventually learning to forgive his father, to stand up for himself in the band and to differentiate between love and abuse.

In a phone conversation earlier this week, Kramer says that writing the book was “a pretty cleansing experience,” and helped in his process. And at the signings and meet-and-greets he did at every stop on Aerosmith’s summer tour, he met everyday people who could relate to a rock star’s trauma.

“Depression and anxiety and the like are so prevalent in today’s society that people come up to me all the time and say, ‘Joey that was such a great book; I’m glad you were so honest about it,’ ” Kramer says.

Kramer, 59, says that the guys in the band have all read the book, “and they’ve all expressed that they’re proud of the fact that I did it, and as honestly as I did.” Even Tyler? “Pretty much so, yeah.”

(Tyler reportedly left the band earlier this month; Kramer’s only comment was, “Steven has sought to go after some solo pursuits in the immediate future, and we’re kind of contemplating what we’re gonna do. We shall see. It’ll be very interesting.”)

The recovery process continues. He’s learned, with the help of his mother and anecdotes from friends, his father’s true feelings for him, and his inability to share them. (His father’s childhood, as described in the book, was pretty harrowing as well.) He’s made peace with his mother, who stood by during the abuse, and his sisters, who “claim they were raised by a different guy. So I have to let go of the past. …

“It’s like when somebody dies. It’s not something you actually get over or get cured of; you just learn how to live with it.”

Joey Kramer will speak and sign copies of “Hit Hard” in the Cabaret Theatre at the Mohegan Sun Casino, in Uncasville, Conn., Saturday at 2 p.m. Admission is free.