Steven Tyler allegedly refused to perform with Aerosmith at the Twin Cities Summer Jam over the weekend if the venue didn’t open up the VIP section upfront to General Admission ticket holders. The VIP section had very high prices and was undersold, and Tyler wanted fans upfront rather than leaving the seats unfilled. The VIP seats cost around $600-$1,200 for the three day festival. Tyler’s demand made through his entourage was met, and the show went on. Steven Tyler scared fans with a Slash remark on Tuesday.
Chris Hawkey said on KFAN’s Power Trip Morning Show on Monday, “As a festival you make choices about what you’re going to do about seating, and because we paid an exorbitant amount of money for Aerosmith to be at this festival, we had to sell some VIP seating in order to make enough money to have a festival. You can’t just do General Admission to book Aerosmith for the kind of money.”
“Even though they had been there literally all day, an hour before the show Steven decided he didn’t want VIP seating, he wanted everybody to be able to come up close to the stage. That didn’t seem to make sense to the people who paid a thousand dollars for a seat at the show.”
“There were very angry people and I understand .. I had a guy literally trying to fight me. I’m sure you’ll get a refund and most people who deserved it are getting their refunds, they deserve to get a refund, but the guy wanted it that moment.”
Bring Me The News transcribed Hawkey’s comments. Steven Tyler threatened to ‘take down’ impersonators on Monday.
Joe Perry discussed playing with Brad Whitford in a new Guitar Player interview, “Just the natural way that we play together. I listen to what Brad’s playing, and he listens to what I’m playing, and then we just try and mix it up, right down to — especially in the earlier days — saying, ‘Who’s gonna play the Strat? Who’s gonna play the Les Paul?’ That kind of thing. And when we come up with new riffs and new songs, we each come at it from different angles, and then we settle into our thing. I’ve always felt like we have two lead players and two different flavors in this band, and that’s really important.”
