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List Price: $16.99 | | Publisher: It Books
Salesrank: 29214
Released: February 18, 2003 |
| Our Price: $9.82 |
| Used Price: $6.50 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
Hang on, it's a hell of a ride!
From the band that lived by the motto "Anything worth doing was worth overdoing" -- Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford, and Joey Kramer -- comes a quarter century of rock godhood: the life, the music, the truth, the hell, the lost years, and the raunchy, unsafe sex.
And, of course, the drugs.
But after crashing in a suffocating cloud of cocaine, crystal meth, and heroin, Aerosmith rose up from the ashes to become clean and sober -- and reclaim their rightful title as World Champion Rockers. Learn how they did it in a book that is pure Aerosmith unbound: where they came from, what they are now, and what they will always be -- a great American band.
Description of Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith:
From Aerosmith's heyday in the late 1970s, which they spent "gacked to the nines" (as lead singer Steven Tyler puts it), to the Aerosmith of today--clean, sober, and adored by millions--the band has a long, hard history. Walk This Way chronicles the whole story: drugs, booze, and all.
Prefaced with the now familiar rock-star "intervention," when Steven Tyler's loved ones cornered him in his manager's office in 1986, the autobiography traces Aerosmith's twisted road, from their New Hampshire roots to their success in Boston to the worldwide fame that they long craved and currently enjoy. Tyler kicks off this rock & roll exposé, briefly recounting the history of his ancestors in Italy and sharing incidents from his own Northeast childhood. The book is written in interview style, with all five band members talking candidly about the good times--and the bad. We also hear from girlfriends, wives, friends, and various hangers-on.
The story of Aerosmith and their constant ups, downs, and detours never fails to grab you and force you to read another page--if only to see what train wreck awaits around the next corner. Walk This Way is a must-read for devoted fans of Aerosmith as well as anybody who wants to live the full-on '70s rock-star life--without having to go through rehab. --Paul DeBruler
Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith Reviews:
A Bit of a Tease 
2009-12-14 - The Real Meaty Bits are Left out, such as:
1) What was the Love triangle Between Joe, Joe's First
Wife, Elyssa, and Steven that went back to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire?
2) What transpired between Terry Hamilton and Elissya Perry
that caused the milk throwing incident in Cleveland resulting
in the band's demise. All other details in the book are remembered so well, yet they gloss over the most important one.
3) How did these guys avoid the Viet Nam draft? They were perfect candidates. In Iggy Pop's book, he explains, and so does Ted Nugent. Not these guys though.
All in all the book is a page turner but comes off more as a cheerleading rah, rah session for the band rather than a 'warts and all' bio. All the drug glamorization etc., reinforces their God-Like Stature. Nothing about the tumultuous early political stuff from the 70's and its effect on their music. Hedonism at is best. Cheers.
Dream Until Your Dreams Come True 
2009-08-16 - I arrived late to the Blue Army, in fact I didn't see Aerosmith live until October 1998 at the Nissan Pavilion midway through their "Nine Lives Tour". Now, over eleven years after that gig I've read their biography, "Walk this Way" told through the mouths of the Band and fashioned together by the talented rock & roll biographer Stephen Davis. I was not expecting a five-star read. First, this is not literature in any sense of the word. It is not a written story. It is the transcribed oral history of an extended interview with the insiders of the band taken from the memories of their lives together over their first three decades. Second, as I write this, their story continues. Aerosmith is finishing their fourth decade of hard rock and at 61 years of age Steven Tyler took a tumble off the stage during a performance in South Dakota busting his shoulder and splitting open his head. Aerosmith has subsequently cancelled a few tour dates to, "get healthy". These guys never quit. In the late sixties they dreamed of becoming rock & rollers. Though hard work in the seventies they did it and provided an American response to the British invasion. But then they fell, hitting rock bottom in the eighties. Their music lived on through the influence it provided to several generations and genres as they, Aerosmith, continued to destroy themselves from within. They fought with each other, they fought against the darkness of drug addiction, and they fought against the industry and agents they had trusted and relied on. But they recovered, all of them, and arose from the ashes alive, like no other band has ever done. And now at the end of this book, during the "Nine Lives Tour" they had climbed back to the top, with clear heads and a sober outlook on life to arguably become the greatest rock & roll band of all time.
Are they American hero's and role models who overcame the vices of their industry or are they villains and the representatives of all that is wrong with the glorification of excess in a culture of sex, drugs, and rock & roll? Joe Perry is quoted as saying, 'I don't want fans to think we're clean, upstanding American boys, but we are American, and we do stand up." We can argue all day about the influence and glorification a rock & roll culture might have on our children and we can provide our children a wholesome family life attempting to shelter them from the tyranny of drugs and sex and the violent energy of hard rock. We can, in essence, shelter them from Aerosmith. But then they will never hear the simplest and perhaps greatest lyrics of all time. And personally I cannot find a thing wrong with this message.
"Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, if its just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take you away
Dream on, dream on
Dream until your dreams come true..."
"Walk this Way", is a candid look into the lives of not just Aerosmith but the life of American rock & roll. If you are an American and can stand up, up-standing or other wise, and have ever listened to rock & roll and been alive during the 70's, 80's, and 90's, this book is your biography as well. Where were you in 1975 when "Toys in the Attic" was release? Where were you in 1980 when Joe Perry left Aerosmith? Where were you in 1985 when he returned? And where were you, in 1989, when you first heard about love in an Elevator? Aerosmith is American rock & roll and we are all, wittingly or not, all members of the Blue Army.
Must read if you're a fan
2009-08-10 - I've been an Aerosmith fan for nearly twenty years. This is a fantastic book. Stories from the early days in the late 60s up through their rise, fall and resurrection in the nineties are told from perspectives of all the guys.
It's amazing what these guys went through to make. What's more impressive is the fact that they actually cleaned up and are still rocking today.
This is a great biography. Full of expletives and crazy stories. I loved it!!!!!!!!
What a story!!
2009-07-07 - A true rock n roll story of a band that went through it all. The drugs the girls the money, and everything else to go along with it. If your into the stories of rock than this is a good easy to read well written book. Enjoy!!
Poorly written : ( 
2009-06-16 - I read the first few reviews for this book. It seems most people simply are fans of Aerosmith and did not take into consideration how poorly written this book is. It statrs out ok, with the life of Steven Tyler when he was young...bu then it goes and skips around to different people...and tons of people are introduced and you have no clue who the heck they are...it completely lost me after the first few chapters.
I am a huge Aerosmith fan myself...bu this book is crap. I wanted to feel waht they felt then...and this book is just genearlized and skips around form one decade to another in no organized fashion whatsoever. It is scattered and hard to follow. Don't waste your time...wait for a better more organized Aerosmith biography to come out....hopefully one will because this one SUCKED.
If you want to read a GOOD biography...read Anthony Keidis' Scar Tissue and Slash's Autobiographies. Come to think of it... Motley Crue's Autobiography is well written and easy to follow as well. I do believe a guy named Anthony Buzzo? co wrote all of those with the artists...and he does and EXCELLENT job! Forget who ever helped Aerosmith on this one...he SUCKS!!! My 10 year old daughter could organize thoughts and events better than this guy!
