Top 10 “bad behavior” quotes

The Grateful Dead, who just famously finished an incomparable career with three mammoth farewell shows, have their own legendary legacy with drugs. The difference, in Rolling Stone Special Collector’s Edition: Grateful Dead, was that it was less cocaine-obsessed. (The observations include, “Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you’ve been to some of those places, you think, ‘How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?’” and “I think it’s too bad that everybody’s decided to turn on drugs. I don’t think drugs are the problem. Crime is the problem. Cops are the problem. Money’s the problem. But drugs are just drugs.”) For better or for worse, Steven Tyler’s take is less dynamic, though no less entertaining. Not that he gives a guitar pick what we think either way.

~:~ ~:~

1. “I blew $20 million. I snorted my Porsche. I snorted my plane. I snorted my house in that din of drugs and booze and being lost… ”

2. “I remember one night on the road when Joe and I were sharing a bed with two girls and woke up in the morning with a seafood blue plate special… Crabs for everybody!”

3. “By the end of the seventies, some nights I was so out of it our road manager, Joe Baptista, would have to carry me onstage.”

4. “When you’re on tour, short of loss of life and limb – or actual death – you have no time to get sick like a normal person. There are no days off. You’re working yourself to death. The only thing that got us through was the cocaine.”

5. “It’s hard to tell who I am by the trail left by my musical career. I am the Demon of Screamin’, the dude that looks like a lady, the rag doll that married Lucy in the Sky. But I’m also something more than the rock ‘n’ roll junky whore who got his foot inside the door.”

6. “Aerosmith did drugs… drugs, drugs and more drugs. Can it take you down? Yes. Did it take me (us) down? Well, we’re still here. But it’s also what life is all about. Watching whales breach; holding a baby bunny; getting a new puppy for Christmas… that feeling of GREAT. It’s all humans really want.”

7. “For those who OD’d… drugs are bad!… Are all drugs bad just because some of them took over my life from time to time? I wrote some beautiful songs under the influence.”

8. “The coke bingeing got so bad and blatant to where we just laid our lines on top of the bass amps on the left side of the stage.”

9. “Joe had vials of coke with straws in them at the back of the stage, and when the lights would go out he’d go over there and (assistant) Kelly would put the straw in his nose; he’d take a hit, then the lights would come on again.”

Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir (HarperCollins) runs $27.99 at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, and is also available via Google Play.