Steven Tyler (couch) Aerosmith, Done With Mirrors Tour, AZ, 1985

“This was the last photo I took of Steven for ten years; here’s why…I was excited that Aerosmith were making a comeback. They began to hire me in the early ‘80s and we became friends. When Joe and Brad rejoined the band in the summer of ’84 for the Back in the Saddle tour, I tried to set up shoots, but the best I got was a pass to take photos for a few songs during the show, with no backstage access. The band had a new manager and wasn’t being responsive to my requests. He was trying to get them all clean, and I found out later that his main goal was to get rid of all of the people who had been in their lives back in the drug days. Now it was a year later and they were no longer a headliner. Aerosmith was on tour opening up for the Scorpions. In September, they had a show in Arizona, and the Scorpions hired me to shoot it. I figured it was a perfect opportunity to talk to Steven and find out why I was being shut out. I went over to the new manager at sound check and asked if I could shoot Aerosmith’s show as well as some backstage photos of the band. He told me he would have to think about it. Minutes before the show, I had no response from him. He was avoiding me. When I saw Steven backstage he gave me the biggest hug and asked me where I’d been for the last couple years. I was about to tell him, and then the manager walked in. I asked him in front of Steven if it was okay to shoot the show. He said sure. I asked him if I could get a pass. He told me he didn’t have any but not to worry about it. I insisted, and then Steven just took his laminate and put it around my neck. The manager did not seem pleased by this. I was starting to figure out that he had been the roadblock to my access the previous year. Steven called in the other guys for some quick shots. It would be my last photo shoot with Aerosmith for more than a decade. After shooting the first few songs of the show, I was pulled out by a security guard. I was enraged. I confronted Aerosmith’s manager, who told me I shouldn’t have asked to shoot the show in front of Steven and that it would be the last time I would shoot the band. He told me I was in “memory lane.” I was banned from the Aerosmith camp until the manager was fired in 1996.” — Mark “WEISSGUY” Weiss