Do you like Aerosmith?

Aerosmith, November 14, 1987

Richmond Coliseum, Backstage Passes

I was a personal trainer in college at a swanky invitation only health club. High highfalutin lawyers, bankers, etc in a downtown high rise. My boss came up to me one day to ask if I ever heard of Aerosmith and if I liked them. I told him I did. He said "Good, you are working them out for the next week".

Steve Tyler shows up, we are introduced. He starts stretching in a corner. I have to stop and and ask why he is stretching without warming up. He never considered that stretching is not good with cold muscles. He is a pretty approachable guy so he listens contently. He was into running. I always found time after hours to use the bank of treadmills to run. Steve was into running so I ran with him during work hours.

I noticed he had these pink slip on shoes that he was running with. I had to rip him for running with pink shoes. He laughed and told me they were his encore shoes. I also noticed while spotting him while lifting weights that he has zebra strip fingernail polish. I told him I couldn't spot a man with finger nail polish so if the weights dropped on his neck he was on his own.
Of course I never would have said this if he wasn't an approachable and cool guy.

Joe Perry was more into the stationary bikes and weights. Again, very approachable and easy to talk with. He doesn't look like a chatty type on TV. He is too cool for that. But he was unbelievably a great guy to shot the shit with. Not much music, just everyday stuff. They were there as students, not as entertainers.

Brad and Tom were also very approachable and good conversationalists, but didn't spend hours and hours in the gym like Perry and Tyler. I can't say the same about Joey, the drummer. He was a douche bag.

The band stayed in a central location for a week or so at a time. In this instance they were in town for 10 days. They'd jump on a lear jet and fly to shows in the region at nights. This provided some stability for the families. I only remember seeing Joe's wife and little boy during the stay.

Steve left me a few tickets for the Richmond show, back stage passes. I had an out of town girl friend, who could care less about Aerosmith and a roommate from NY who was a huge fan. She surrendered the 2nd ticket to my roommate. Backstage was a cool pass to have but I felt funny about bugging the band, so we kept our distance.

The club was closed on Sundays but someone asked me to come in to open the place for the band. Since it was a non work day, I brought my girlfriend. When my roommate found out I had to go in and work the band out, he begged. He was a runner as well. So I threw him a bone and allowed him to run with Steve.

Steve really liked the treadmills we had and asked if I could get him info to purchase one for himself. I never do know if he ever bought one.

I tried to keep music conversations to a minimum. We did have either MTV or VH1 playing on all the TVs in the workout rooms. At one point "Dude Looks Like a Lady" came on. My buddy asked Steve how they came up with that. The band has said in interviews that they were in a limo and saw a construction worker with long hair and one of the members said, "That dude looks like a lady". But allegedly Steve told my co-worker that they saw Mr T on TV an joked that the guy looked like a girl with all the jewelry but would never admit it because Mr T would kick their asses. Don't know if the story is true or not.

Shortly afterwards, I did move to Boston. They were gods there. WBCN had the band in heavy rotation. People I met up there could not fathom the fact I got meet the band.

Setlist:
01 Toys In The Attic
02 Same Old Song And Dance
03 Dude Looks Like A Lady
04 Big Ten Inch Record
05 Lightning Strikes
06 Rag Doll
07 Back In The Saddle
08 Last Child
09 Draw The Line
10 Rats In The Cellar
11 Dream On
12 Sweet Emotion
13 Walk This Way
14 Train Kept A Rollin