Like plenty of other rockers of his generation, Tyler nearly died a handful of times while under the influence, including overdoses and a serious motorcycle accident in the 1980s. More recently, after falling off the wagon in the 2000s, he literally tumbled off the stage during a 2009 show in South Dakota, suffering serious injuries that also forced him to reassess his reliance on prescription meds and enter another rehab programme. He checked himself in again in 2022.
The “devil”, as he has perceived it for the better part of 50 years, is addiction. And the idea of the “devil stealing your soul” meant succumbing to that addiction by ending up in the grave. There’s a different type of soul stealing that has often accompanied the rock star lifestyle, though, and it’s one he has seemed less inclined to re-evaluate over the years.
Sex, of course, has always been the third part of the unholy trinity that is sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. By the standards of the 2020s and the post-MeToo world, however, the sexual ‘norms’ of rock’s most hedonistic era, the 1970s, are difficult to process even with the most forgiving lens of historical context.
There might be nuanced debates within different waves of feminism as to whether rock’s “groupie” culture was an example of pure exploitation or sexual liberation, but when the issue is more centrally focused on the role of underage girls in that culture, everyone can agree on one thing: the almost entirely male contingent of rock stars taking advantage of those girls weren’t thinking about their behaviour with nuance or empathy.
Worse yet, with the pervasiveness of drug addiction among those same men, a total lack of accountability has a built-in, catch-all excuse. ‘They didn’t know what they were doing’; ‘They were never in their right minds’; ‘The devil had the controls’; ‘The girls were throwing themselves at them willingly’; ‘It was normal back then’; ‘It wasn’t their fault’. Just about anyone who listens to and enjoys classic rock has to navigate their way through this uncomfortable subtext in some way or another.
Most, it seems, including the vast majority of music journalists and historians, prefer to metaphorically cover their eyes or feign ignorance. Everybody knows the rumours and, in some cases, horrific stories about some of rock’s sacred cows, but so long as those stories aren’t litigated and remain locked into a sort of consequence-free mythology, we can carry on, separating the heroes of our past from ‘actual’ sexual criminals like R Kelly or Harvey Weinstein.
Things are gradually starting to change, though. As a result of the MeToo movement and the introduction of new laws pertaining to sex crimes and statutes of limitations, some of rock’s old myths are coming back into focus in courtrooms. Arguably the most prominent of these in 2026 has been the case against Steven Tyler, which was set to go to trial on September 28th, but has been delayed by the surprise recusal of the presiding judge.