DO-LOTEWSTAA
Dream On – Living on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, by Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler and Danny Fields – My main interest in reading this was the fact that the book was co-written by Danny Fields, whose voice was so prominent in Please Kill Me – The Oral History of Punk, but also some interest in America’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band (or at least one of them, along with Guns N’ Roses, KISS and a few others). It also makes a nice companion to the “rock chick” books I’ve read by Marianne Faithfull and Angela Bowie. The book is somewhat mis-titled, though, as nearly one half of it is about Cyrinda’s life before she meets Steven Tyler. This is also the most interesting part of the book.
Cyrinda was basically a poor girl growing up with a psychotic/flaky/religious mom who married a bunch of air force guys, giving little Cyrinda a revolving door of dads. She ran away from home, hitch-hiked and stayed with guys she sometimes hd to sleep with, made it to New York City and stayed at the YWCE (a den of lesbianism – she was wooed constantly) where she fell in with Andy Warhol and his crew, eventually becoming a love interest to David and Angela Bowie (she aborted David’s baby), and eventually also befriending Joe Perry and his wife. This led to a relationship with the wacky Steven Tyler, which was a problem for her friends Joe and Elisa – Aerosmith was drugged out and in-fighting. Shame. Marriage, a baby, and divorce followed, years of drug haze, further years of poverty and struggling to make ends meet when the alimony payments weren’t forthcoming, and plenty of insanity. The book was written in the midst of a legal battle (and perhaps even due to a legal battle), so we don’t get any insights into who the lovely Cyrinda might have dated after things with Stephen went sour (apparently he showed up at her place from time to time, despite the couple being separated and their relationship soured, still expecting sex). Must have been weird being married to a playboy millionaire drug addict who drifts all over the world snorting coke and banging groupies.
Lots of great anecdotes around the book, and from time to time also some decent writing:
In 1971 New York was so radically different form what it is today that I’m going to hae to ask you to really stretch your imagination. Try this: twenty-five years back from that date was 1946! Men wore fedoras all day long, women had those big, heavy hairdos, there was no TV or air conditioning, music was “the big band sound,” and practically no one had been born yet, except I think Charlie Watts.
The book has a cool description of Dorothy Dean, the cashier/security at Max’s Kansas City, “a size two black woman with glasses, who was universally acknowledged as the most terrifying and brilliant person in New York,” who “could scare policemen, politicians, celebrities, and the meanest queens in town.” Cyrinda used to sit in Max’s while Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe used to linger in the pre-chamber, too scared to approach the Warhol gang.
Cool Candy Darling anecdote, which is based on the fact that Cyrinda and Candy had the same-coloured hair (it’s a relative term – Cyinda’s was dyed, Candy’s was fake):
Once I was at a party with these two guys, waiting for th eelevator, and Candy got off and looked me up and down, and one of these wiseass guys smirked and said “I wonder which one is the real Candy Darling.”
An I shot back, “The one with the cock between his legs.”
Cyrinda tells the sad story of Steven Piven, who was onstage with her in Warhol’s play Pork, who killed himself in a room in her building, but whose body wasn’t discovered for a week. He had been depressed that people ignored him; the truth was that he was so attractive that people were afraid to approach him. Talk about sad irony! She got involved with strange people, such as Sam Green, who was dating Barbara Bakeland – she was killed by her son, who killed himself in jail by putting a plastic bag over his head. She spent some time hanging out with Greta Garbo, with whom she had to be very careful (like the time Rex Harrison, who lived in the same building and was then in his 60s, tried to pick her up). She also met Keith Richards, and was nearly mauled by Ike Turner.
She has funny things to say about Al Pacino:
Al Pacino was a stinky nuisance. He was the janitor in sam’s building and slept on this filthy mattress under the staircase. He was grubby, disgusting, smelly and drunk, and he used to look up my skirt when I went up the stairs. There was nothing appealing about him at all. He was an aspiring actor but too soused to get any work. According to legend, Lee Strasberg of the Actor’s Studio spotted him at a party and told him that if he cleaned up he’d let him study at the Studio. And that’s what happened.
Candy Darling, my wonderful friend, was very close to Salvador and Gala Dali, and we used to meet up with them at funky bars. One time I was sitting next to Gala, and in the midst of our casual conversation I felt he hand on my knee, and then it started to slide up my thigh. I wondered a t first if this was some European custom, but I soon got nervous and excused myself. On the way to the Ladies’ room I gave Candy a little “help” signal and she followed me in. I asked, “Is she just being friendly?” and Candy said, “Oh, hone, no. Keep your legs close together when you sit next to her.”
When it came to sex, Angela Bowie was much wilder than her husband. I’ve seen her crawling around on her hands and knees after having sex with a bodyguard, because it was so intense that she couldn’t walk afterward. David would be in one room with me, and we’d be making love or we’d be talking while he’d be doing it with another girl, all on a kind of gentle level and Angie would be in the other room making the floors shake.
David and I had a cabana at that hotel, and we would sit there while Angie and the bodyguard Anthony Jones fucked in the pool. We knew they were fucking, but to the chic women with daiquiris sitting around the pool, it looked as if they were doing some kind of swimming exercise together, this black man and this squealing blond woman. Paul Morrissey came over, picked up on it right away, and said, “I can’t understand how you people get away with things like this.” We were all rock-and-roll trash to him.
She notes the writing of Jean Genie, which took place before her eyes (noting that it was both about her and about Iggy Pop), and how she appears in the video for the song:
Things get interesting when Cyrinda marries another David, David Johansson of The New York Dolls, and becomes a major New York celebrity, whose every move was documented in the rock magazines of the time that were read by KISS and a young Aerosmith. But all good things must come to an end:
The Dolls just weren’t happening anymore, and I was left with only him. There were no more diversions to keep us from actually getting to know each other, and I wasn’t ready to face getting that serious. One night I went out for a pack of cigarettes and never went back. started seeing Steven Tyler, andhis lawyers handled all the divorce stuff. My one-year marriage to David Johansen ended in 1977, on our wedding day.
The romance with Tyler is political and emotional, with plenty of ups and downs.
We were fighting a lot. The screaming was so loud that even Richard Harris, our next-door neighbor and a notorious drunk who frequently gets thrown out of hotels himself, complained to the management.
Even the pregnancy wasn’t normal.
Steven, the big rock-and-roll star, had a plane on standby in case it was needed when the baby started coming A plane? To take me where? There was a perfectly good hospital down the highway, but these fucking rock-and-roll stars are the worst assholes when it comes to this. The world has to know that a plane to nowhere is available for the arrival of this tiny extension of themselves.
An interesting insight on the business or rock and roll.
Bands really do care how they sound in the worst seats. It’s good business to care about that, because those are usually the youngest fans with the least amount of money, and they’ll be back the next few times you come to town. The people with the best seats will be on to the Next New Thing, or too old to rock and roll in a couple of years.
The closing of the book is sad, with Cyrinda replacing drug addiction with food addiction, and all sorts of messy divorce and rehabilitation stuff. But there is also the episode where her daughter Mia discovers (like the rest of us, like Steven Tyler himself), that there’s another Tyler daughter, Liv Tyler, and they got to know each other. So there are happy endings of sorts after all.