More on Steven Tyler
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- August
- 16
Today’s column was about Steven Tyler, the repitilian front man for the super group Aerosmith, who more than 40 years ago attended Roosevelt High School in Yonkers.
Tyler in those days went by the name Tallarico. He was expelled from Roosevelt for smoking pot.
A number of readers remembered Tyler’s Roosevelt days, among them Larry Feldman.
Feldman recalled that Tyler played the drums in the high school marching band and was frequently late for rehearsals, or just never showed up. The band director angrily told him that he would never amount to anything in life.
After he was kicked out of school, Tyler walked away with the band’s bass drum…a pretty distinctive instrument because it had the school’s Indian mascot painted on its side. He revelaed the theft in the Aerosmith autobiography, “Walk This Way.” The book also recounts how Tyler once walked down Central Park Avenue in Yonkers in the nude. What a kook!
Tallarico-Tyler “was a real chracter and true original,” Feldman said. “Lookig back, I realize how lucky I was to be in that band room with him at Roosevelt.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 5:28 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
When I had quit my Rascals-related wall-of-sound group, the Pilgrims, and joined with a more amateur bunch of local guys by the name of Big River, Steve T called them up (they were also Roosevelt guys) and asked them to please get Screamin Dakota Black in touch with him (yeah…. that wuz my moniker). Seems he liked the extreme bass playing, and the extreme costumes Mr. Black was partial to, and thought he’d offer him a spot in his new group. He tried for a while, but I was newly married, had no phone, and liked my ..(ahem) connubial seclusion,..... so I stayed hidden, he gave up on Dakota, and voila’.......... the rest is history.
40 years later, I still have about 1000 unreleased monster hits.
But I just don’t care any more.
Yeah – Lucky to be in the band room with a purported thief and pervert.
Turns out Tyler was voted “most talented” in high school.