Tom Hamilton – Aerosmith

While many superstar pop and rock acts strike a sour note with their careers by no longer scoring hit singles on the international charts, “The Bad Boys from Boston, better known as Aerosmith , continues to be one of the world’s favorite rock groups.

And, the amazing part is, with the exception of a few years in the early ’80’s, Aerosmith has landed hits on around the world, since 1973.
How? By following a reliable, time-honored formula for success: land a hit single on radio, then follow it up by seemingly endless global touring to both maintain the act’s basic audience and gradually establish a new, younger audience as well. Along the way, in the late-’80’s, the use of high-profile, big-budget MTV music videos, to promote their new singles, provided Aerosmith with an even broader, international audience.
Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton, founded the act along with guitarist Joe Perry, when they were known as Jam Band, back in the summer of 1970. After a few personnel changes, the two decided to let vocalist Steven Tyler join the act in New Hampshire, United States, in 1972. The classic Aerosmith lineup was rounded out that same year when, Brad Whitford (guitar) and drummer Joey Kramer signed on.
“All we wanted to do back then,” Hamilton said during a recent interview,” was play cool music. We’ve never had any pretensions about being political leaders or spokespersons for a generation. Right from the start, we never wanted to represent anything more than guys who were just making good, cool music and also having fun.”

In the following interview Hamilton talks about the reasons for Aerosmith’s continued success in the year 2001, as well as their massive, global popularity.

(Q)- What is your age and place of birth?

Tom Hamilton- I was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado and I’m forty-nine years of age.

(Q)- Thank you. Now let’s begin the interview.

Tom Hamilton- OK. He laughs.

(Q)- How old were you when you first started out with Aerosmith?

Tom Hamilton- I was right out of high school. I was 19 years old, in 1970.

(Q)- How have the five of you stayed together for so long without breaking up for good to this day?

Tom Hamilton- We’ve had years and years of love and hate relationships. Through most of the Seventies, everybody had a bag of resentment they were carrying around against somebody else in the band. And most of the time, those kind of things in these kind of situations, really want to rear their head and cause trouble between band members. But we’ve dealt with a lot of it when we were getting clean and off of drugs. We had to look at, ‘Why do we want to be wasted on drugs or drinking (alcohol)? Why is that the answer for everything?’ Then we realized that, this band was not just about partying and having fun, that was just a way of dealing with stress. So we went through that whole era and it feels like now, we’re in another stage in dealing with each other’s personalities and dealing with each other’s personalities in a proper manner. We still have major contentious arguments about differences in regards to the music. But, this is important, nobody goes home feeling resentful, whenever they go home at the end of the day. We’re better at accepting the way things come out. So far, so good. But it has it’s boundaries. There is a lot of sharp edges around the edges, so stay in the middle.

(Q)- What provides Aerosmith as a band, with a sense of renewal? How does the band keep coming back time after time and continue to crank out the hits and keep touring successfully, around the world?

Tom Hamilton-When it comes to making hit records and singles and being popular around the world, we listen to radio around the world like everybody else. Not a whole lot of bands do that. So, we know what’s going on not only in the U.S.A., but around the world. We know what cool new music is going on and how it relates to us and how it relates to the music that we have always loved. And, basically we want to be in the global marketplace and maintain the excitement level that a brand new (younger) band does whenever they have a worldwide hit single. And the only way to do that is with new material. We’ve never really gone in with the idea that we have our old classic hits, like “Dream On” and “Sweet Emotion” and we’re going to just ride those into the sunset. It’s all about (for Aerosmith) the decision to do something and to do it well in public. Like in the recording studio so it is on record or on-stage live in concert playing shows. And, we’ve got something in mind every time we go to create some new music, in terms of an audience reaction and we know what we have to do to get it. So whenever we go into the studio to create new music, we go in a little bit hungry and dissatisfied and we always want to try to fill the glass up all of the way.

(Q)- Is this about constantly trying to up what Aerosmith has done each and every time they go into the recording studio or on-stage live in concert in front of an audience?

Tom Hamilton- Yes. But, to do that, you cannot continue to follow an old pattern for success with your music, you have got to continually be changing, or else your music and the band’s image around the world, will quickly become dated and not cool. Internationally, Aerosmith is known for always not having the same sound with a hit single. There is always something different or some aspect that has changed on each Aerosmith hit song.

(Q)- Is that the result of a conscious decision or does that just come out in he mix of the music with each new song and singles?

Tom Hamilton- After we got back together and did the “Done With Mirrors” album, we all realized that the world was changing and if we wanted to really have our band in people’s faces, then we probably would need to make more new and different, hit singles. Before that, we had always wanted to keep all of the creative energy for songwriting, within the band and so we didn’t permit any opening up of the band to (outside) creative energy. Looking back, that attitude was a bit egotistical. So what happened was a single called, “Angel” on our “Permanent Vacation” album. And with that song and that album, we saw this dramatic response from it, around the world. And it was reflected in how many people here coming to our shows and what the audiences looked like age-wise and everything. And, we still had all of our rock music, classic songs that we could pound the audiences with. But with “Angel”, we came to realize that we were getting a new, younger audience for our music. So, we decided back then, to walk a kind of tightrope with our music. Now we’ve been doing that for the latter part of our career. You have to be kind of an evangelist if you want people to even think about your band for even a minute a day. So, having a hit single now and then, around the world, has been a way for us to have enough of an audience to be able to go out there and rock out for an hour and a half to two hours in concert each night whenever we’ve been on tour.

(Q)- So the members of Aerosmith wanted to focus on possibilities for the band’s music so you could concentrate on what the material could become and thus, expand the audience?

Tom Hamilton- Yes. We were not going to let it trail off.

(Q)-Why?

Tom Hamilton- I don’t know. Maybe we just have a compulsive need to show off in public. After all, that is what performing (rock music) is. We like to come into a town and give a concert that is basically us, playing our songs the way that the songs sound on our album. We love to have with that, great sound, great lights and a great production. And some bands might think that is kind of shallow and unethical, but we think, with ticket prices being what they are today, we don’t subscribe to that theory. We are totally into dabbling with the audience as much as we can. And, we as fans of (rock music) are into the shows that we like to go and pay to see. When I go to see a band in concert, obviously I want to go and see them play, I want to hear their songs live, in concert, I want to see a great light system and a great sound system and a great all around show going on. So, that’s the way we look at our live shows. As a live band, we’re more like the psychedelic, late Sixties rock shows. In that, we love to bring a sense of unreality to what we do live, in concert on stage.

(Q)-What was the attitude the group had in regards to creating new music for the current album, “Just Push Play”?

Tom Hamilton- Well, the music consistently comes from us. We’re the same people who did the “Rocks’ album and the “Toys In The Attic’ album. And, anything that we come out with is going to be put through that filter. And go through the process of deciding what does go on the record and what doesn’t. So, that is what I think has always made our music unique in that it’s “Aerosmith Music”. This current record (“Just Push Play”) I think really has a lot of the elements of our early musical elements in that, Steven and Joe co-produced the record and a lot of decisions were made in-house, by the band. And that’s really important. To have a lot of guitar was important this time around because we’re a guitar band. And, on this album Joe really stood up and played and said, ‘We’re putting a lot of emphasis on guitar oriented music for this record. Which was a decision that I was really overjoyed about. It then, just worked out really well. As far as the creative process was similar to the way it was in the early days and we thrive on that.

(Q)-About five years ago, guitar oriented rock music was said to be uncool and over. Now, Aerosmith is popular with guitar rock oriented music. Now, guitar rock music is back once again.

Tom Hamilton- Yes it is and I am glad to see that. (He laughs.)

(Q)- Audiences such as the Japanese love guitar oriented rock music.

Tom Hamilton- Yes they do.

(Q)- Yet, they’re very critical as listeners they listen to everything in the music, even the subtle nuances.

Tom Hamilton- Oh yeah they certainly do.

(Q)- They’re very into the mix and they’re into the ’70’s high end stereos and all of that and they love guitar oriented rock music. What my point is, in Japan, guitar rock never went away. And now Aerosmtih has on their latest album, put out music of all guitar oriented rock music, which is doing well globally and still has a new hit single “Jaded”. So maybe the Japanese were a bit ahead of the curve in that they never did not appreciate guitar oriented rock music and maybe, Aerosmith has finally helped the rest of the world, or at least the U.S.A. get that sense of appreciation for guitar rock music back again.

Tom Hamilton- If you’ve got good songs, songs that are fun to listen to in the long run and you’ve got good guitar rock oriented music, then yeah, you’ve sure got something there that is hard to beat. And yes, it is great to see audiences around the world catching onto what we wanted to do as far as making this album guitar oriented. If we have to choose what instruments we’ll play to make music as Aerosmith, then yeah the guitar will always win out in the long run, every time. (He laughs).

(Q)- What songs are you guys featuring on the tour this time around? Will the play list be a mix of old songs as well as more recent material?

Tom Hamilton- We’re going to be playing the first four songs off of the new album and then beyond that, who knows. It’s an agonizing process.

(Q)- Why is that an,” agonizing process”?

Tom Hamilton- Because we’ve got so much material that we really need to play and it is a matter of trying to guess what a given audience wants to hear. Is it the old material, the more recent material, or the songs from the Eighties? Is it the hit singles, or the more esoteric B sides? It’s really hard to come up with a balance.

(Q)- Do you all take a vote?

Tom Hamilton- It’s not that organized. (He laughs) it’s more like a sort of a free for all fight with people trying to sell each and one another their ideas. That usually is a consensus (voting) process. Very rarely do we have to take it down to a vote. There is always a couple of places we discover during rehearsals that we have to decide, through discussion, what to play. Usually we look at it from the fans point of view and what a fan who is paying to see our show, would want to hear. What do the fans want to hear whenever they come out to see a show? That is the big question. Fans go to a lot of expense and trouble to come out and to see a band, so we’ve never been one of those bands who suddenly decides to play only what we want to do. Like we never say that we want to do an album of all blues cover tunes. I think that, one of the big pitfalls in the rock music business is, a lot of bands, once they get to the top and have a couple of albums under their belt, they forget that they’re looking at a situation where there always is new, younger bands waiting to knock them off of their pedestal. A lot of bands think they’re on the top and then they suddenly fade out because they can’t come to grips with the fact that they’re facing a lot of competition from new, younger bands who are looking to take their place.

(Q)- So deep down it’s a matter of ,”Staying Hungry”?

Tom Hamilton- Yeah, absolutely.

(Q)- And, perhaps that is a good way to live life offstage as well?

Tom Hamilton- Yes. That is the band’s point of view. I know there are a lot of musicians who can’t be bothered with that attitude of, “Staying Hungry”. They need to play the songs that inspire them on-stage. And, that is OK, as long as the audience feels the same way also. Otherwise, what’s the point in getting together with an audience? There is kind of an implied contract between the band and the audience whenever you play live in concert. Is the audience is going to show up, buy your tickets, buy a T shirt and invest in a lot of emotional energy in being a part of your music as a band? The band’s side of the contract is to fulfill that, while at the same time, having a few spaces were you might put some more esoteric songs in the play list to suggest that the audience might like some of the older, more obscure B sides from you’re older albums.

(Q)- So there is a great deal of trust placed in the band by the audience in the concert setting?

Tom Hamilton- Yes. Especially at today’s ticket prices.