With Aerosmith, fans might not want to miss a thing, but they most especially did not want to miss — if at all possible — the band’s two all-star-guest-augmented shows at the Hollywood Bowl this week, the first of which was Thursday night. These two outings are the group’s first shows since they had to cut their farewell tour abruptly short a little over three years ago. Could they also be the last?
No one has said anything official about this representing an actual finale for Aerosmith, and so many fans have figured that they may have further shows in them after this, perhaps going out at some point in the future with a hometown gig in Boston, in that line of prospective thinking. And yet, there was the show’s host, Bill Burr, at the very top of the evening, captured on video for all the world to hear declaring that these were “the final two shows in Aerosmith’s history.” The casual way in which he dropped that bombshell while introducing show-opener Warren Hayne made it clear he was speaking out of turn. But was Burr letting a real cat out of the bag? (Or, considering that he did a lengthy comic monologue about getting a DUI as a youth on his way home from an Aerosmith show, had he just dipped back into the sauce backstage for old time’s sake?) If these two shows should be the end of the line — rather than just being put together for the sake of filming for a TV special or documentary, as seemed to be happening — it would be a fairly proud way to go out, as the band sounded in completely top form during a short-ish but spectacular 45-minute set that rounded out the nearly four-hour evening.
In particular, Steven Tyler gave no evidence of the vocal injury that halted the abortive 2023 tour. Not just back in the saddle, Tyler and Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton and Brad Whitford did not sound or act like cowpokes who had any immediate intention of re-vacating it. The asterisk on all that was the participation of original drummer Joey Kramer, who had had to take a break from the band due to health issues even prior to the ’23 interruption, but had made it clear he didn’t want to be done.
For the first five numbers of Aerosmith’s six-song climactic set Thursday, the drummer on duty was Dave Grohl, slamming it home as if he were slugger Shohei Ohtani in his pre-midseason prime. So the question of “what about Joey?” was begged when, toward the end, Tyler said, “Before we say goodnight, I just want to say what a ride it’s been with my brothers — Joe, Tom, Brad and Joey,. Fifty-five fucking years, and we’re the same fucking band that started fifty-five and a half years ago.” (You’ve got to love a guy who’s so proud of his permanent record that he remembers to throw the “and a half” in there.) And there. suddenly, was Kramer, at center stage, sharing a hug with the frontman.
He then retreated to the second drum kit that had been sitting out, promissorily, with the initials “JK” on it. Grohl gave up his position on the main kit and left the stage so that it could be taken over by John Douglas, the drum tech who had come to fill in previously for Kramer. As the two men drummed side-by-side on the final number, it seemed evident that Kramer was capable of laying down a good beat but probably not capable of doing the heavy lifting at this point in time.
And so the way that it was handled seemed like a good, bittersweet compromise, in allowing the co-founder to come out and collect his flowers at the close as a still-working performer. No one from the general public who’d bought a ticket had too much idea what to expect out of Aerosmith for these two shows. So some might have thought the 45 minutes were too brief, although a look at the all-star lineup (some of whom will be repeating Sunday night, and some of whom will rotate out) made it clear to anyone attentive that this would not be a full career-summation kind of show.
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