After turmoil that included public squabbling, threats of a lineup change and a rehab stint, Aerosmith is back and ready to rock.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers have announced their “Cocked, Locked and Ready to Rock” European summer tour — with Steven Tyler.
The band made the announcement Thursday. It also posted a video on its Web site in which Tyler, sitting with the rest of the band, jokes: “I just auditioned and I got the gig.”
“We’re coming your way and rocking your world! Look out because here we come,” he says as he looks at guitarist Joe Perry and the group breaks out in laughter.
Aerosmith, which has been one of rock’s enduring bands over the past three decades, has been in limbo since Tyler fell off a stage during an August concert in South Dakota, injuring himself and forcing the band to cancel the rest of their summer tour.
After that, Perry expressed anger that the group had been sidelined and said Tyler needed to get his act together. For his part, Tyler was quoted as saying he was interested in going solo, and soon the band was talking about replacing Tyler with another singer.
In December, Tyler checked in to rehab for a painkiller addiction, a problem he blamed on years of injuries suffered while performing with the band.
In an interview this week, bandmate Joey Kramer said: “Everything right now in Aero-land is very copacetic. … We will carry on and do what we do best.”
As far as their latest drama, he said: “The one common denominator that we still all have is that we all love to get up on stage and rock out, play music and bring joy to people. And we let the other drama, as of late, kind of filter itself out by the wayside and concentrate on more of what’s important, which is the playing and the business at hand.”
The band, best known for hits like “Walk This Way,” has a long history of discord and overcame heavy drug abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s, but has been a mainstay in rock since enjoying a revival more than two decades ago.
Their tour starts in Sweden on June 10.
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Associated Press writer John Carucci contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.aerosmith.com
(This version CORRECTS to TYLER from PERRY in graf 6. )
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