Recovering AEROSMITH Bassist Comments On Boston Show

AEROSMITH bassist Tom Hamilton — who is sitting out the first part of the band's "The Route of All Evil" tour after completing a seven-week course of radiation treatment for throat cancer (filling in for Hamilton is David Hull, a longtime friend of the band who played in the JOE PERRY PROJECT) — has issued the following update:

"The other night I was listening to the messages that had been piling up on my cellphone. I'm pretty bad at keeping track and returning messages but I've been worse since I've been recuperating from that nasty radiation treatment. All of a sudden, there was Steven [Tyler, AEROSMITH frontman] reminding me that the band was going to be in Boston in a couple of days and why don't I come down and play 'Sweet Emotion'. My first reaction was no way. Not only do I feel like crap, I look it too. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. It just felt right. I missed everybody. So I decided to consider it. If the day came and I wasn't up to it I could always bail.

"The day came and I felt pretty decent so I headed down to the gig. Terry, Sage and I got there about 8:45. The band was going on at 9:15 so I wanted to be there close to when they went on. My throat has been really sore and it gets much worse when I talk. There are so many people I wanted to say hi to. I knew I had to minimize my time there. The second I got to my little private room Donny set up, Joe appeared and proceded to fill me in on everything I hadn't heard back through the grapevine. Then Brad, Joey and several crew guys came in including my trusty tech Jerry. Steven was somewhere doing some footage for a National Geographic special so I'd have to see him right before show-time. Everybody treated me like an honored guest, which was nice but weird. It made me want to get back out on the road and just be one of the daily sights.

"Before I knew it Donny ran in and gave me the signal that the show was starting. I ran down into the crew area at the back of the stage and peeked out. I have to say it was really cool watching them (!) go onstage. I had three songs to listen to before 'Sweet Emotion' and by God those guys are good! Truly it sounded excellent!

"Along came 'Sweet E'. I waited for the lights to go down and then crept over to my amp. I gave Dave (my fill-in guy) a high five. By that time the lights were back up and Steven was giving me a good old fashioned intro. I started playing the spacey sounding beginning of the song and felt no different than the last time we played it on our last tour. Then the part came where the whole band comes in and all the lights start blazing away and I felt like I was on Jupiter for a few seconds. It took a few minutes for my brain to catch up with my surroundings. Kind of like when you stand up too fast and see stars before you get used to being on your feet. Things came into focus pretty fast and I was treated with the sight of a rockin' audience in front of me and my smilin' buds all around me. Everything sounded, looked and felt amazing. I realized in a second why I had decided to come down to the gig that night. It was only a small taste but enough to really make me look forward to when I rejoin the tour for good."

Check out photos of Hamilton's appearance with AEROSMITH at the Boston show:

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Filling for Hamilton on AEROSMITH's current tour is old friend and former JOE PERRY PROJECT bassist David Hull.

AEROSMITH will release a new best-of collection, entitled "Devil's Got a New Disguise", on October 17 via Columbia. The CD will feature two new songs — "Devil's Got a New Disguise" and "Sedona Sunrise" — while the rest of the set will be a "pared down" single-disc version of 2002's two-CD set "O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits", containing single mixes of 14 favorites from the band's tenures with both Columbia and Geffen.

Check out the "Devil's Got a New Disguise" artwork at this location.