STEVEN TYLER

AEROSMITH’S STEVEN TYLER

Artist Eric Payson recalls getting up close and personal with the Rock Legend

By Adam Kluger

Eric, how did these amazing images of Steven Tyler come about? When I used to work at MTV I became friendly with a bunch of the producers there and many of them went on to work with the biggest names in rock and my friend John Bendis who worked very closely with Tom Petty and Aerosmith invited me up to a recording session where they were doing Just Push Play in 2000 on the eve of the George Bush steal of the election. They put me up in a nice bed and breakfast outside of Worchester they had taken over, there’s a farm up there that’s also a recording studio, and people can stay for a couple of weeks and record their album. The Rolling Stones were up there when they recorded Goat’s Head Soup. So, Bendis brought me up there and Steven Tyler and I just hit it off immediately. We were fast friends. In

particular, he loved my impersonations he started egging me on to do my German impersonation and we saw a plane barnstorming up in the sky - we were all taking a walk, me, Bendis, and Steven and there was a plane barrel- rolling up above and we just pretended to be soldiers in World War 1 and we just started improvising for three days straight and it was kind of surreal but he really got me, he dug me, Steven was a great performance artist a great piano player, story-teller. People only see the rock star version of him but he’s very human and very accessible and funny and warm and welcoming and he was with me and he really opened himself up to me and I took some nice photographs of him that I’m very proud of. I had my “Almost Famous” moment with Aerosmith and I’ll never forget it. The band treated me liked royalty. They took us to a strip club. They treated me like family. I was really

honored and they loved my work and they were impressed by it. They were not above it. They were really just mensches. A bunch of working-class guys from Boston mostly who were not really fazed by fame and were still working. Funny, on one of the songs they were doing we were in the recording studio with the head of Sony Records, and right when they stopped playing I said, “you got to do that song at the Superbowl,” and they ended up doing it at the Superbowl. I was just dialed in with them it was a really good moment and I sort of captured that in a nice, interesting moment in time with my camera with Steven and there are a bunch of nice shots. That’s a good one. There was another really good one with him outside on a fence and it just looks like your older brother and another one under a tree and his hair looks like an extension of the branches. Steven was the real deal. I know he’s

had his ups and downs and he’s battled his demons publicly. You almost get the sense that the famous rock star that he is isn’t who he wanted to be. It’s just who he became and he was cool with it but he’s a real artist and a real human being. I’m glad I got to see that.

Has Steven Tyler ever seen these incredible photos? I really don’t know what he ended up seeing. I didn’t want to push the relationship just like over the years I’ve met celebrities and you have your moments with them and then you just sort of let them go and if they see it they see it. You know Steven Tyler sees a million pictures of himself so to me, they don’t care, their world is not about my pictures their world is about their music but I have those images and I commemorated that time with my own work. Maybe someday he will maybe someday he has. I don’t know. I have a lot of stuff. I shot a lot of film. I was shooting 120mm film both print and chrome. Black and white and color. I brought at least 150 rolls up with me which is a lot. I was just working non-stop and I was really amped and they saw me and they welcomed it and they are real pros and they handled it all beautifully and they were very down to earth. They defied the image of spoiled wacky rock stars. They were like a family and they had their wives and extended family around there and it was very, very real. I don’t know if Steven ever saw the image. I hope he did. He will eventually.

What’s your creative process as a worldrenowned fine art photographer and artist? I just combine a lot of factors very quickly. There has got to be some energy coming out of something that is still. Whether it’s light, shadow whether it’s human energy, a scene happening between people, or a person juxtaposed against an interesting form. Your daily world and in a 24 hour day there’s a different light. There’s light then there’s darkness. There’s artificial light, but there are all sorts of permutations and combinations of things happening. Understanding film. Understanding digital readings, understanding light, how to manipulate light to create your own voice, a dramatic voice is something that I learned how to do. How to compress the power over the way that light saturates so that it works dramatically and poetically for me. I can take something very powerful and make it very subtle. I don’t like to use the cliché painting by light but there is some of that you’re excavating, you are taking like a sculptor, you are taking rawness and you’re refining it through the various elements I see and I’m able to do that. I often work on the fly out of a car-- I’m not using heavy studio equipment with artificial settings and I love what those artists do like William Wegman, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Weber. They are all doing that and I didn’t need to replicate that. I was finding

YOU ALMOST GET THE SENSE THAT THE FAMOUS ROCK STAR THAT HE IS, ISN’T WHO HE WANTED TO BE.

something that was working for me and I was able to express myself in my own way. I kind of take the mundane from a very fluid world and give it dignity.

What is Paramedia? A theory? It’s just a barrel of laughs, a lattice of coincidences between me and events in the media not unlike Zelig. Using some of my three-dimensional ESP to read into events. Narrating my own existence that is connected to something larger than myself. It’s a theory and some people have seen some magic from it. I do fancy myself as somewhat of an illusionist. Everyone has their own ecumenical system that guides them. Mine is Paramedia. That’s the short answer.

How have you evolved as an artist? I think I’ve taken more chances. Perhaps becoming more abstract while still keeping a very identifiable image. There is something more surreal or abstract as the years go on as the body continues to grow that is still concrete and real and identifiable and it’s important that the work that I’m showing somebody has something that resonates. I’m looking to create abstract forms that almost have human-like qualities to them. That speak, that are funny that are scary that are spooky that are epic even in their simplest form. I’ve shot so much over time, I’ve never stopped. It’s still something I do for hours and hours a day. I understand what the world can give me photographically, how things can come together if I use my intuition if I’m patient if I

take chances if I go out there and look for it a little bit. I love to drive around big, sprawling American cities and I would go out all night long in the center of the city and drive forever and learn cities and learn streets and by doing that I come upon images and by doing that I’m open to seeing how images can evolve and I can bring my own style to the moment and that’s something I’ve mastered I feel over time and that is how the work has evolved. I think the spirit is the same. I definitely have taken more chances.

You are a larger-than-life figure in the art world. Everybody knows you and gravitates toward you at art shows, festivals, and art parties. Why did you choose the art world? The energy of all those artists and the smartest most beautiful women in the world elegantly dressed looking for something new. It’s a place for me to perform. I usually go to the biggest openings at the biggest galleries and pretty much steal the show just by showing up. You’ve seen the power players stop what they are doing and come over to me. I always get respect in public. Walk with me through any of the art fairs people stop me every five feet. I’m a New Yorker. These are my streets. This is my city I come from a creative empire with Warner Bros. and I have nothing to prove. I’m having a good time. The history of art and artists in New York is in those galleries and as buttoned up as they try to be to sell their work, when they are having openings it’s really a public thing and that’s

really where I do my thing. I started shooting and showing at some galleries in New York and they welcomed me. Marian Boesky Gallery and Mixed Greens. I got to learn the art world on my own terms. A lot of these artists are very self-reverential or quiet and guarded and I probably was just a little more accessible and didn’t take it all so seriously and I still don’t. There’s humor in my photography, my performances, and my impersonations. My performance art and persona and characters that I have created are equally as important to me as any of the photography, and people in the art world have noticed that. And people in the art world see me hanging around with the biggest dealers and directors and they know who’s in my circle and I’ve parlayed all that to create a little mystique in the art world.

"One of your Steven Tyler photos was featured in a pre-pandemic show in Paris. What was that like to have art critics rave about your Paris show? Is that important? The world-famous artist Gaetano Pesci got me that show. Gaetano is one of the great designers, architects, and artists of all time. And he became obsessed with my work. He sponsored the show and Basia the curator and I are planning to do another show. I was honored to end up in Paris because I didn’t have an easy time in New York and LA. I’ve had some moments. but I have a home now in Paris at that gallery and it’s all because of Gaetano. There’s a magic to Paris

from Jim Morrison to Hemingway and so many greats ended up there and showed there. I’ve shown in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and Berlin. Just doing it my way.

I’VE NEVER STOPPED FINDING NEW WAYS TO TAKE PICTURES. I’VE NEVER LOST MY JOY AND PASSION FOR CREATIVITY.

I’ve always felt from the first time I saw your photography in a New York Museum show that you were destined to go down in history as one of the important contemporary artists/ photographers of our time. If widespread fame doesn’t happen, at least I’ve lived the life I’ve wanted to live on my terms and I continue to do work and continue to have a cup of coffee in the big leagues of art and I matter to my community I continue to work. I’ve used technology to my advantage I’ve moved with it and I’m ok with my place. Everybody gets a lot of things in life and there are other things that they never get and on balance I have a lot to look forward to. I’m 55, maybe I’m just beginning. But

I’ve had a good run. I’ve never stopped finding new ways to take pictures. I’ve never lost my joy and passion for creativity.

How are media and pop culture an intrinsic part of your art? You have gone from still images to studies of the media itself to photographic sculpture and now video art almost like the films of Stan Brakhage. I feel like I’ve become a video artist and I love it. I love the animation. I’ve done still images for 30 years and there’s always a sense of movement in those works but the smartphones and the Google software have allowed me to electrify those still images like Frankenstein and bring life to that stillness in a very subtle way and they are like instant moments of imagination or the subconscious that I am capturing. They are glimpses of reality that people recognize.

What’s your legacy? I’ve heard people in the art world refer to your photography in reverential tones...some artists even call you the Babe Ruth of photography...Do you agree with your diehard fans in the art world that you are, in fact, the best photographer of your generation? Tough to say. I don’t think anybody has ever scratched what I’ve done. Yeah, I think I’m the best. I think I’m the GOAT. I do. I don’t think anybody is close. And I hope I get that. I know it’s bold and I know it’s obnoxious but I’ll put my work up against anybody, anywhere, anytime.

If it’s the truth it’s not bragging, right? I like these GOAT and Mount Rushmore conversations. They are obnoxious and annoying and in your face and they freak you out, irritate you but I like it. I like being in that mix at least.