Steven Tyler: New Aerosmith Documentary Spotlights Band's 2011 Japan Tour

A bit of band discord indirectly led to a new document of one of Aerosmith's shining moments.

Frontman Steven Tyler tells Billboard that he initially brought Casey Patrick Tebo -- who directed the forthcoming documentary R" -- into the Aerosmith camp about four years ago, during a particularly turbulent period in the group's history. "There was a lot of shit going on at one point with the band," Tyler explains, "and I got really pissed off and I thought, 'I need to start filming a day in the life of myself on tour.' So I brought (Tebo) out about four years ago, and he did such a great job he started doing the (video) screens and he started being our videographer on tour."

That included Aerosmith's fall of 2011 trek through earthquake- and tsunami-ravaged Japan, where the group went "just because of our love for the people there and because of what was going on there...to cheer them up a little bit," Tyler says. While the group started working on its latest album, "Music From Another Dimension," Casey went through footage from the tour and came to the band with an idea.

"He shows up in L.A. and goes, 'Would you be interested in doing a full-length feature motion picture about what you did in Japan?' " Tyler recalls. "And we said, 'Well, show us what you got,' and he put together such great footage of us playing there, six shows and all the songs that we'd never done before ('A Lick and a Promise,' 'One Way Street'), and it was amazing and we said, 'Yeah, of course.' So hats off to Casey, man."

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Rock For the Rising Sun, which comes out July 23 on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download, features live performances of 17 songs as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the tour and bonus material. And Tyler says that if viewers pay attention they'll notice that the film also chronicles the end to the nearly game-ending feuding that dogged Aerosmith during the couple of years prior.

"The band was getting along better than ever," he says. "We'd just broken up for crazy f---ing reasons, and I went away to get my head straight again. We booked a tour, South America first and we took it to Japan, and...It's funny that it took that for the band to realize how important we are to each other and how f---in' good of a band we are and what a f---in' good time we have on stage that is infectious and gets people happy. We were just all in such a bad place that we didn't realize our self-worth. I took going to Japan and playing those shows for the band to realize its own magic again. Somewhere along the line there it got the band happy again, and we thought, 'Holy shit, we gotta do a f---ing record right now!' So, yeah, that tour helped us to a new album."

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Tyler -- who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry earlier this month -- says that positive spirit is still strong within Aerosmith at the moment. The group has summer and early fall dates booked in the U.S., Japan, South America and Mexico, while "everyone is collecting their marbles" to start working on new material and predicts "we're gonna be working on the new Aerosmith record" in the near future. Tyler, meanwhile, also vows to complete his long-in-the-making solo album, hopefully for release in 2014 and including possible collaborations with Johnny Depp and Elton John, among others.

"I'm just doing a solo record 'cause I think it's f---in' kinky to go write a song with Johnny Depp," says Tyler, who recently co-wrote Julian Lennon's new single "Someday" and appears on new songs by Buddy Guy (with Perry and Rad Whiford) and Bayonets, an all-star group led by Paul McCartney guitarist Brian Ray. "I think it's f---in' ridiculous to go write a bunch of songs I started five years ago and never finished. It feeds my passion. I like traveling all over the place and writing songs and seeing what we catch. It's kind of like driftnetting for songs, right. But, no, the band's not breaking up. Me doing a solo record doesn't mean the band isn't working on a record -- but I get that in the press one has to hear that from one lead singer of one Aerosmith."

 

Jesse Tyler Ferguson Performs Shakespeare Despite Downpour, No Sound

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater onstage at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park

The show must go on.

The cast, crew and audience at The Public Theater’s staging of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors put that adage to the test last night when the heavens opened over Central Park’s open-air Delacorte Theater a third of the way into the play.  Midsummer rain is a common occurrence for the beloved summer tradition that is Shakespeare in the Park, so the production paused until the thunderstorm let up.

That’s when the crew discovered a setback worthy of an Act Four plot twist: The soundboard had sustained water damage and was completely fried. The stage manager was about to cancel the show when stars Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who each pull double duty as one of the play’s two pairs of twins, had an idea.

THEATER REVIEW: The Comedy of Errors

“Did George C. Scott have a body mic when he did The Merchant of Venice back in 1961 at this same theater?” Ferguson wrote in a Facebook post recapping last night’s unforgettable performance. “Let’s finish the show wireless. Unplugged!”

The company manager agreed to proceed, and Linklater and Ferguson ran out on stage to deliver the good news, urging the 600 remaining audience members (out of a capacity crowd of 1800) to move close to the stage to hear.

“What proceeded was one of the most magical hours of my life,” Ferguson wrote. “The brilliant [actress] De’Adre Aziza started where we left off, with her jazz-influenced version of Sigh No More, the audience snapping along to keep the beat. When [cast member] Emily Bergl knocked a gun out of Tyler Caffall’s hand the entire company, in unison, yelled ‘BANG’ and then produced the dying cat sound that was meant to follow.”

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Even when the downpour resumed the show continued. “Hamish called it the greatest game of ‘Chicken’ ever played,” Ferguson wrote. “The audience wasn’t leaving because we kept going and we continued on only because the 600 strong stayed put. Everyone was soaked but at this point, who cared. (Apologies to our brilliant costume designer, Toni-Leslie James, who probably cared a little.)”

The play is a comedy, but the performance left Ferguson in tears. “The audience stayed completely still and silent to hear the final words of the play,” he wrote. “That’s when I lost it. You never would have been able to tell because I was soaking wet, but I started to ugly cry.”

“I was so moved by this shared moment," he continued. "It truly personified why I am fueled to put on silly costumes and wigs and pretend to be someone else in front of a collected group of strangers. When we finally reached the end of the play the audience exploded into applause. We didn’t bow, though… all we could do was applaud right back to THEM.”

 

Jesse Tyler Ferguson Performs Shakespeare Despite Downpour, No Sound

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater onstage at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park

The show must go on.

The cast, crew and audience at The Public Theater’s staging of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors put that adage to the test last night when the heavens opened over Central Park’s open-air Delacorte Theater a third of the way into the play.  Midsummer rain is a common occurrence for the beloved summer tradition that is Shakespeare in the Park, so the production paused until the thunderstorm let up.

That’s when the crew discovered a setback worthy of an Act Four plot twist: The soundboard had sustained water damage and was completely fried. The stage manager was about to cancel the show when stars Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who each pull double duty as one of the play’s two pairs of twins, had an idea.

THEATER REVIEW: The Comedy of Errors

“Did George C. Scott have a body mic when he did The Merchant of Venice back in 1961 at this same theater?” Ferguson wrote in a Facebook post recapping last night’s unforgettable performance. “Let’s finish the show wireless. Unplugged!”

The company manager agreed to proceed, and Linklater and Ferguson ran out on stage to deliver the good news, urging the 600 remaining audience members (out of a capacity crowd of 1800) to move close to the stage to hear.

“What proceeded was one of the most magical hours of my life,” Ferguson wrote. “The brilliant [actress] De’Adre Aziza started where we left off, with her jazz-influenced version of Sigh No More, the audience snapping along to keep the beat. When [cast member] Emily Bergl knocked a gun out of Tyler Caffall’s hand the entire company, in unison, yelled ‘BANG’ and then produced the dying cat sound that was meant to follow.”

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Even when the downpour resumed the show continued. “Hamish called it the greatest game of ‘Chicken’ ever played,” Ferguson wrote. “The audience wasn’t leaving because we kept going and we continued on only because the 600 strong stayed put. Everyone was soaked but at this point, who cared. (Apologies to our brilliant costume designer, Toni-Leslie James, who probably cared a little.)”

The play is a comedy, but the performance left Ferguson in tears. “The audience stayed completely still and silent to hear the final words of the play,” he wrote. “That’s when I lost it. You never would have been able to tell because I was soaking wet, but I started to ugly cry.”

“I was so moved by this shared moment," he continued. "It truly personified why I am fueled to put on silly costumes and wigs and pretend to be someone else in front of a collected group of strangers. When we finally reached the end of the play the audience exploded into applause. We didn’t bow, though… all we could do was applaud right back to THEM.”