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Whitford: Things were getting pretty bad. But we realized we just lost the whole focus of why did we come here? Why did we get into this room? What got you excited about this when you were a kid? Was it beer? No, I think I was watching Ed Sullivan one night and the Beatles were on. I don't remember any beer. And you go back there. You get clear enough and you go back there and you go, "That's why I'm here."
Perry: I had a lot of fun partying and doing the things I was doing but one of the things they point out to you is that you're feeling sh--ty and sick a lot more than you're feeling good. And you're spending a lot more time chasing down the drugs and chasing down everything else than you are doing anything else. And then you put up with whatever discomfort you might have for the first time you go to a bar and you have to order soda water. It depends on how important it is to you not to wake up with a hangover. And I use the hangover as just one example, whether it's finding your car wrapped around a telephone pole for the 15th time or 10 stitches in your forehead from falling down stairs 'cause you were drunk, whatever it is that gets you to the point where you go, "I'll trade whatever discomfort I'm having now." For us it was some friends around us and our manager that said, "Look, if you clean up it'll open up a lot of doors. The worst that can happen is you can clean up, find out that your life is worse and you can always start drinking again. You can always go out and get high again. Why not give it a try?" So we figured, let's give it a try.
For artists that use [drugs], it's a shortcut. You don't need that. You're born with the talent, it doesn't give you the song. You have that inside you. And I think that what happens is you can convince yourself that you can't do it without it and that's one of the hurdles as a musician you have to get over. I didn't think I could go onstage and play unless I had a beer to loosen up. Well, if it was only one beer to loosen up I'd probably still be drinking today. But one beer always led to another to another to another and then a bottle of Jack Daniel's and then the phone would ring and it would be the dealer. But one of the things I realized was that the first time I heard rock and roll and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, I wasn't drunk. I was pretty sober. So when I put that together I realized that I'm getting off more on the music than I have in the last 10 years because I'm clean.
Joey Kramer: It was ruining my life, it was taking my band apart, it was taking us down. It was interfering with my relationship — my love was with cocaine as opposed to anything else. I didn't consciously realize that at the time; I realize that now. But I wasn't a smart enough guy to realize that I needed help in making getting sober happen.
Perry: Cleaning up was a big chance ... we felt like it was a big risk. We felt if word got out that we didn't drink and do drugs anymore, we'd lose a lot of our fans. And I know we still have to answer the question, "You guys must be really boring now." I think it's less of an issue now, but back then it seemed to be a really big issue, because everyone was still out there partying and Aerosmith was known as a party band. But it was really about the music. We figured it would be better to give our fans the music than not. And there was no way we could make music on that other level. We had reached the bottom.
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Photo: Courtesy Columbia
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