Dear Gen Xer,
Aerosmith needs no introduction, so I’ll spare you the Same Old Song and Dance.
The Players in this week’s story are:
Steven Tyler: 26-year-old singer
Julia Holcomb / ‘Diana Hall’: 16-year-old girl
Ray Tabano: childhood friend
Terry Hamilton: wife of bassist
Laura Kaufman: publicist
With their help, I’ve composed an oral history, which covers the years between 1973 and 1976.
All of the words you’re about to read were plucked from the following sources:
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? - Steven Tyler
Walk This Way - Stephen Davis
The Light of the World - Julia Holcomb
I’ve mixed and matched and cut for clarity. Nothing has been taken out of context. Nor have I added any words of my own.
Now let us raise the curtain on Steven Tyler’s Toy in the Attic.
JULIA: In November of 1973, shortly after my 16th birthday, I met Steven Tyler at a concert in Portland, Oregon. To understand what leads a 16-year-old girl to find herself backstage at an Aerosmith rock concert, and in a three-year live-in relationship with Steven Tyler, you need some essential background information.
A devastating trauma struck our family in the summer of 1971 when I was 13 years old. My younger brother was killed in a car accident on our way home from a camping trip with our grandparents. He was 10 years old. My grandfather was also killed, my grandmother lost a leg, and my sister and I were injured.
My stepfather was committed to a mental hospital briefly, and mother had an emotional breakdown. My sister and I went to live with my aunt and uncle for some months.
My sister and I were left on our own most of the time. Previously, I had been raised going to church, but after the accident we just never went back. My sister and I became angry and rebellious. My sister left home when she was about 16, and backpacked around the country with her boyfriend. There I was at age 15, my sister gone, and feeling like I was in the way.
A few months before I met Steven, while I was still 15, I became friends with a girl who had access to backstage parties at concerts. She was 24 years old, and although our acquaintance was brief, she was a pivotal change in the course of my life, and ours was one of the most dangerous friendships I ever formed.
She quickly taught me to dress in revealing clothes to get noticed and use sex as a hook to try to catch a rock star. I still remember dressing to go to the Aerosmith concert, intending to get backstage with her. I had listened to the song Dream On and seen Steven’s photo on the album cover. I went to the concert hoping to meet Steven and after the concert we met for the first time. At that time, I thought he was the best thing in my life. My sad, vulnerable story, as well as my youth and personal attractiveness captured his interest.
STEVEN: She was sixteen, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it. With my bad self being twenty-six and she barely old enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. She was a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was my heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.
I brought her back to Boston because I was so in love with her. She was so young, so skinny, really beautiful; she had more legs than a bucket of chicken. She was mysterious and as sexual as I was. She just wanted to hang around all day and do it and then talk about it afterward. It was like incredible—and so delicious.
I was so in love I almost took a teen bride. I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights and her parents fell in love with me, signed papers over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me. My Sweet Eeee…
JULIA: My mother signed over guardianship of me to Steven after I had moved to Boston. I remember my surprise when Steven told me she had signed the papers and trying to take this in mentally.
He had mentioned that he wanted guardianship papers so I could travel across state lines when he was on tour. I had told him my mother would not sign me over to him. I asked him how he had got her to do it. He said, “I told her I needed them for you to enroll in school.” I felt abandoned by my mother as well as my father and stepfather. Steven was really my only hope at that point.
JULIA: When we first lived together I took the birth control pill. It is not true that my pregnancy with Steven was unplanned, as has been written. After some months together, Steven spoke to me of his desire to have a child. He had grown up in the New Hampshire countryside and at times he behaved like a down-to-earth farm boy. He wanted a family and he asked me if I was willing to have a child with him. I was touched by his sincerity and said yes. I wanted children, and began to believe he must truly love me since he had made himself my guardian and was asking to have children with me. He threw my birth control pills off the balcony of the hotel where we were staying, into the street far below.
STEVEN: She was a sweet, mysterious creature…very smart, and she knew what she liked and what I liked. We took baths together. She wore skirts with no panties. We did it on the red-eye from L.A. to Boston…that kind of stuff. All the things that guys dream about.
We made love in public, in private, and tried positions the Kama Sutra has yet to come up with. One time we started out in a hot tub on the roof and wound up in the lobby.
JULIA: Although I presented myself to him in a highly sexualized way, we did not have sex in public places as he wrote in his new book. His continued gross exaggeration of our relationship is puzzling to me. He has talked of me as a sex object without any human dignity. I have made a point over these long years never to speak of him, yet he has repeatedly humiliated me in print with distortions of our time together.
STEVEN: That sweet girl used to recite poetry and constantly sing songs to me like my mother did when she put me to sleep. It was an inspiration to my heart. One of the songs she taught me was “We Are Siamese,” which I’m sure you’ll all remember from the movie Lady and the Tramp.
Like I said, so sweet. Not like me.
TERRY: Steven was living with a very young girl named Diana Hall in a little carriage house on Goddard Avenue in Brookline. Diana was a sweet little girl…whose parents had signed her over to Steven as her legal guardian so she could be with him. What kind of parents would do this? I don’t know. When Steven would overdose, Diana would call us and Tom and I would rush over. It was a pretty strange relationship all around.
LAURA: She was cute, innocent…way too young. …He dressed her up as Little Bo Peep, made her wear outfits, for God’s sake, little schoolgirl frocks.
JULIA: Within a year I became pregnant. I had never been pregnant before, contrary to what Steven has written. At first Steven and I were both happy about the baby.
He asked me to marry him a few months later and I said, “yes”. He took me to New Hampshire to tell his parents about the baby and the marriage. He asked his grandmother if he could give me her wedding ring.
His grandmother declined to give us the ring. She loved Steven but expressed concerns that if we divorced, the ring would leave the family. Things went quickly downhill from there for the two of us. When we left that night, Steven and I had a heated argument: I felt he should buy me a ring at a jeweler and we should get married anyway. He did not.
RAY: Diana was too young. When he [Steven Tyler] went on the road, he'd say, ‘‘Ray, make sure you keep an eye on her.” Because the apartment would get ripped off and bad shit would go down.
JULIA: It was the fall of 1975. We returned to our apartment in Boston, and within a few weeks he was touring with his band. I was alone and pregnant in the apartment with no money, no education, no prenatal care, no driver’s license and little food. Steven would call me every day to check in with me and I asked him for money to get groceries. He promised to send Ray Tabano over the next day to take me shopping. Ray was a childhood friend of Steven’s and had been a guitar player in the original band. I remember waiting by the window for Ray to arrive. He came to the apartment and I let him in through the front door.
RAY: I went over one day to dole a little coke out to her and a half hour later I get a call that the street is full of fire engines.
STEVEN: The drugs were so heavy I don’t even remember very much except that I was out on the road and Raymond called and said, “Steven, there was a fire.”
JULIA: I woke up in the hospital. There was an IV in my arm and a doctor was speaking to me slowly, like one speaks to a child. He asked, “Do you know your name?” “My name is Julia Holcomb,” I answered. He asked more questions and he was relieved to see that in spite of severe smoke inhalation I had not suffered brain damage. The baby I was carrying also survived the fire.
STEVEN: I got home to find the apartment Diana and I shared at 1736 Beacon Street totally burned out. I think she fell asleep and her cigarette caught the mattress on fire. Diana was badly burned on her arms and in the hospital. She was really too young to leave alone at home, but I couldn't take her on the road with me either.
JULIA: In the hospital a doctor came into my room and said that my lungs were remarkably clear of smoke damage. He said Steven had spoken to him about the possibility of my having an abortion, since I was so young and recovering from smoke inhalation. I was surprised and I asked him if the baby was OK. He smiled and reassured me that the heartbeat sounded good and the baby seemed fine. I told him I would not have an abortion. I wanted my baby. The doctor was kind and supportive of my decision. He did not pressure me in any way.
The doctor left the room and Steven came in. He told me that I needed to have an abortion because of the smoke damage to my lungs and the oxygen deprivation I had suffered. I said “No,” I wanted the baby. I was five-months pregnant. I could not believe he was even asking me to have an abortion at this stage. He spent over an hour pressing me to go ahead and have the abortion.
He sat beside my hospital bed, but we did not look at each other. I said no again. Finally he gave up and said, “OK, you can go home to your mother’s and have the baby there.” I was worn out and began to feel hopeless. My mother and stepfather would not be happy to have me return home pregnant. I believed they would also want me to have an abortion. I began to feel like life was caving in on me. I had no health insurance or money and did not believe Steven intended to help provide for our baby or me. He had not been providing medical care for me up to that time. I believed he was abandoning me as my father and my mother had. I began to cry and agreed to have the abortion. Steven was relieved and happy. He reassured me that he cared for me and that after the abortion everything would be fine.
I was moved to another part of the hospital and a different doctor performed the abortion. It was a horrible nightmare I will never forget.
The doctor did not explain what the procedure would be like. Steven watched when the doctor punctured my uterus with a large needle. Then I was taken to a room to wait for the contractions. Steven sat beside me in the hospital until it was over. When the nurse would leave the room he was snorting cocaine on the table beside my bed. He even offered some to me once, but I just turned away, sick inside.
RAY: I told Steven to get rid of her after she burned his fuckin’ house down, but she was pregnant and he still wanted to be with her. Fuckin’ guy wore her dresses, for Chrissakes! I said, ‘‘Steven, if she has this fuckin’ baby, you’re gonna be stuck with this girl for life. C’mon, man, do the smart thing.”
STEVEN: You go to the doctor and they put the needle in her belly and they squeeze the stuff in and you watch. And it comes out dead. I was pretty devastated. In my mind, I’m going, Jesus, what have I done?
Two days later, we boarded Eastern Flight #567 to Richmond, Virginia, where we played to 12,000 in Richmond Coliseum with Slade and REO Speedwagon.
JULIA: Nothing was ever the same between us after that day, though I did not return home for over a year. I became very quiet and withdrawn after the abortion. I was grieving the loss of my baby and I could never look at Steven again without remembering what he had done to our son and me. I had just lived through a horrific fire that nearly claimed my life, but the abortion made me feel like part of me died with my baby.
STEVEN: Diana had lost her childhood and I lost my mind.
JULIA: I left Steven in February 1977 and returned to live with my mother and stepfather. Steven called a few times after I returned home and then I never heard from him again.
STEVEN: And that was it for me and Diana after three years.
So if there’s a heaven and hell, I definitely have a little hell to go through. My conscience would still be tormenting me if it weren’t for the therapist who said, ‘Listen, your sense of moral responsibility is lessened when you're out of your mind on drugs the way you were.” I went, Wow, thank God. But I don’t wanna kid anybody, because it affected me later when I tried to get my real wife pregnant. I was afraid. I thought we’d give birth to a six-headed cow because of what I’d done with other women.
Julia Holcomb filed papers in December 2022 accusing Steven Tyler of sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Holcomb was able to sue Tyler after California temporarily waived statutes of limitations for childhood sexual abuse allegations.
Tyler has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. He’s also argued that the revelations in his memoir are protected by the first amendment.
The case is ongoing.
He didn't “fall in love”, he raped a child.
I love how you put this together in everyone’s own words. Also, Jesus.