Aerosmith’s founder and guitarist Joe Perry finally shed some light on the rumor that the band wanted to replace iconic vocalist Steven Tyler at one point. Perry confirmed these reports in a recent interview with Ultimate Classic Rock and revealed that ex-Van Halen singer Sammy Haggar was one of the candidates.
According to Perry, this happened at the time when Tyler served as a judge on American Idol (2011-2012) and had numerous other side projects. The group felt like he isn’t focused on Aerosmith enough, so they started looking elsewhere.
At the time, it was reported that Lenny Krawitz, Paul Rodgers, and late Chris Cornell were among those considered for Tyler’s replacement. While Perry didn’t go into details about the specific names, he did admit that Haggar was in the mix.
“I’m not sure how it got out there, but Sam I know as a really mellow guy, easy to get along with. And he definitely had the pipes,” said Perry.
However, the band never went through with their plan as they rekindled their relationship with Tyler and continued with the original lineup.
“Things went the way they did, everybody got out of the system what they wanted to, and then we slowly glued back together,” Perry added.
Check out the interview in full below.
Interestingly, Sammy Haggar spoke about the same topic in his own Ultimate Classic Rock interview that was published last month. According to Haggar’s version of the events, he was offered to try out for the gig and was “tempted” to do it. However, he decided to reject the opportunity as he didn’t want to be “The Replacement Guy,” alluding to the fact that he previously replaced David Lee Roth as Van Halen’s vocalist.
“I woke up on the beach and said, ‘You know what? I can’t do this.’ So that was it,” he concluded.
