After 54 years, Aerosmith announces retirement from touring

The news came as both a shock, and yet not, on Friday, Aug. 2: Aerosmith, long dubbed the Bad Boys from Boston, announced their retirement from touring.

It came down to singer Steven Tyler’s voice, and the damage done to his vocal cords and larynx last year. (Aerosmith has been vague about how the injury occurred.) A statement posted on the group’s website and social media accounts read: “As you know, Steven’s voice is an instrument like no other. He has spent months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before the injury. We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side. Sadly, it is clear, that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible. We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision – as a band of brothers – to retire from the touring stage.”

Is it over for good?

It seems so. But a keyword in the release could be “touring.” The statement did not address the possibility of a residency situation down the road, as they have done in Las Vegas previously, starting in 2019. Nor did it address their status as a recording band, and in interviews conducted before last week’s announcement, co-founding guitarist Joe Perry had always left the door ajar.

Given the description of Tyler’s current situation, though, both scenarios seem unlikely. Their last album of original material, “Music from Another Dimension,” was released in 2012, their first in over a decade. Still, frequent Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas cryptically posted on Facebook: “Keep in mind, the Beatles quit touring in [19]66 after which they did their finest work.”

Responding to a request for comment, Perry’s wife and manager, Billie Perry, texted, “He doesn’t want to talk,” indicating the band’s public statement would suffice. (Perry will undoubtedly crank up his off-and-on The Joe Perry Project; he also plays in the Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Tommy Henriksen.)

“This only happened a few days ago and I’m basically trying to deal with that,” said Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton in an email. “Most of my focus has been on recording bass parts for a band I’ve been playing with. We have a bunch of great songs."

The now-canceled 40-city farewell North American tour, called “Peace Out,” was slated to start in Pittsburgh on Sept. 20 and run through Feb. 26, 2025, including a New Year’s Eve performance at TD Garden. Since the 2019 “Deuces Are Wild” residency at Park MGM in Las Vegas, Aerosmith’s planned engagements have been problematic, stop-and-start affairs. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the residency in early 2020. A return in the summer of 2022 was scrapped, with Tyler checking into rehab for his addiction to opiates after foot surgery. They played Fenway Park on Sept. 8, 2022, and then resumed the Vegas residency.

The “Peace Out” tour was announced May 1, 2023, and began in September of that year. They played three shows – in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Elmont, New York – but were forced to the sidelines under doctor’s orders: Tyler was instructed not to sing for 30 days. The injury was then deemed more substantial, and the tour was scrapped.

Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, Aerosmith has sold over 150 million albums worldwide. Formed in Boston in 1970, the band developed a sound that was clearly blues-based, revamping old blues and R&B songs much like its heroes the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds initially did. In 2021, Perry told me of these early days, “I thought it was the kiss of death to sit around and play slow blues. If it was a blues song that rocked, that was another story.”

While Aerosmith established a growing fan base in the early- to mid-1970s, the group stumbled as the late ‘70s and ‘80s rolled out. Tyler and Perry were nicknamed “The Toxic Twins,” a sobriquet that fit the “bad boys” tag and one they didn’t slough off. But drug addiction took its toll, prompting Perry’s famous quote in the 1997 autobiography the band wrote with Stephen Davis, “Walk This Way.” "We were drug addicts dabbling in music rather than musicians dabbling in drugs.” Then came rehab, relapses and more rehab.

Over the years, there were other numerous near-crippling issues, including various disputes among band members and management conflicts, illnesses and injuries. Perry exited the band in 1979 and guitarist Brad Whitford did the same in 1981.

“We got caught up in our party routine,” Perry told me in 1986. “Our music suffered. The whole band was creatively in a slump. When I look back on it now, I guess I’m embarrassed, but that’s the way it had to go. That’s us. We’ve always been masters of our own destiny and it was kind of on autopilot for a while and kind of broken down.”

Both guitarists rejoined in 1984 and the band had something of a career renaissance. They collaborated with Run-D.M.C. for a rap/rock crossover remake of “Walk This Way,” something Perry said “sounded fresh and streetwise, a great adventure.” Following that was the MTV hit “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” which Tyler and Perry co-wrote with Desmond Child, and “Janie’s Got a Gun,” co-written by Tyler and Hamilton. By the ‘90s, Aerosmith felt confident enough to open and co-own a rock club on Lansdowne Street in Boston, Mama Kin, which operated from 1994-1999.

Musically, Aerosmith has also had a lot of well-documented highs and lows. The first four albums catapulted them to the top of America’s hard rock pile. Commercially speaking, a collaboration with pop songwriter Diane Warren in 1998 yielded the power ballad “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” It was an anomaly in Aerosmith’s oeuvre, but their only No. 1 hit, staying there four weeks on the Billboard chart. Aerosmith had a career resurgence.

But one of the best high points was that early period, getting signed to Columbia Records and releasing that first album. It was the summer of 1973. Aerosmith was gigging around Boston and the suburbs, playing original music, but the dam had yet to burst.

“I remember being at a gig — I think it was Shrewsbury. It was a 2,000-seat place and it was packed. It was like, ‘Wow, what happened here?’” Perry told me in 2018. “Our manager at the time walked in and said, ‘Boys, we came to play!’ and he had this wad of one-dollar bills. We weren’t in it for the money or the ride-around in limos or anything like that; we just wanted to not have to worry about the rent so we could keep doing it.

“To this day, it’s really about that. The money just gives you the freedom to do what we do. But that was it, that day it felt like something switched, something changed.”

“Dream On,” the hope-springs-eternal power ballad that first displayed Tyler's high-pitched scream and catapulted Aerosmith to early fame, has become a touchstone for multiple generations. In the beginning, the other four guys weren’t keen on recording the song, which Tyler wrote as a teenager. With its piano-based intro and slow build, “Dream On” was something of an outlier and, Perry said, they envisioned themselves as a band where “rock ‘n’ roll was key. But we also knew ‘Dream On’ had something to it.”

Perry said Tyler had the song pretty much together when he came into the Commonwealth Ave. apartment in Allston the band shared at the time. “He had a piano in there. I’m not sure how we got a piano into that apartment. But we heard the riff over and over again and it became part of our DNA and we built it up. We also knew it was really hard to get a rock ‘n’ roll song on the radio past a certain point and with that ballad, we didn’t know where it was going to go, but it worked.”

At the 2022 Fenway concert, Aerosmith started their encore segment with “Dream On.” Whitfield, Hamilton and John Douglas (the former drum tech filling in for sidelined drummer Joey Kramer) were on the main stage. Tyler had ascended to a spot atop the Green Monster, hitting the high notes while sitting at a white grand piano, Perry playing guitar at his side. The guys on main stage pumped out a psychedelic jam while Tyler and Perry made their way back down, closing the night with “Sweet Emotion” and “Walk This Way.”

Recalling that encore almost two years later, from the viewpoint of ironic, wistful hindsight, you can’t help but think: Yes, dreams live on, but the emotion is bittersweet, and Aerosmith won’t be walking this way again.