“Vancouver, are you ready for rock’n’roll or country?”
Not a note had been played when this question was asked by Steven Tyler midway through a lengthy opening monologue: a laborious introduction to an otherwise entertaining evening of tongue-in-cheek fun Sunday night at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre.
“I’m not leaving Aerosmith,” he assured the crowd. “There is no-one I love more than Joe Perry,” he insisted, presumably unaware that his musical life partner would end the night in hospital after nearly collapsing on stage in New York.
“This is a little side project.” The biggest mouth in classic rock cracked into a wide smile. “OK, not so little.”
Eventually the music began; Tyler’s country cohorts, The Loving Mary Band, coming close but not quite capturing the rock swagger of Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and “Cryin’,” the latter still the pinnacle of mid-90s power balladry.
The band only found its natural groove on “Only Heaven,” the first track played from Tyler’s imminent solo country album, “We’re All Somebody from Somewhere.”
It never sounded like Aerosmith, but Tyler has earned the right to play music on his own terms. Now in his fifth decade of hit making, country tracks from the long awaited and Joe Perry-derided solo album were merely one side of a concert that was all about Tyler playing the music he loves with people he enjoys playing with. It didn’t need justification, but Tyler felt obliged to deliver it, continually pre-empting songs with prolonged back stories, explaining how the groove of Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac’s “Rattlesnake Shake” inspired Aerosmith, and recalling his introduction to the music of Janis Joplin before “Piece of My Heart.”
Veering perilously close to arena rock karaoke with a frantic version of throwaway Beatles b-side “I’m Down,” cover-turned-Aerosmith standard “Come Together” and cheese-laden country newbie “Red, White and You,” Tyler redeemed himself with the evening’s best new track, “My Own Worst Enemy.” A serious song on a night revelling in its own frivolity, the song’s mournful ruing of a lifetime of drunken mistakes ended with Tyler hammering out the chords on a piano, leaving him in the ideal position to launch into the anthemic “Dream On.”
Of course, with Steven Tyler the actual music is only half the fun. The greatest pleasure came from watching the grand old man of arena rock work his artistry up close and personal. Gloriously ridiculous, his grey-flecked lion’s mane matched his nail polish while contrasting elegantly with his crimson waistcoat and embroidered bell-bottomed jeans. The high kicks of yore are now buried in the past, but Tyler’s spontaneous choreography still packed an encyclopaedia of rock moves and poses into every second of performance. There is not a human alive who can conjure more magic wielding a solitary mic stand.
The set closed with “Walk This Way,” the night’s best and most rapturously received song. There was barely time for a mop down before Tyler and the band were back for an encore, a stripped down “Janie’s Got A Gun” followed by the back-to-basics groove of his new album’s title track and, from the distant depths of Aerosmith’s back catalogue, a raucous “Train Kept A-Rollin’.”
In answer to Tyler’s original question, on last night’s form Vancouver was and will always be more rock’n’roll than country. But it was still plenty of fun coming to that decision.
