Tim Collins (manager) - History With Aerosmith

History With Aerosmith

In the early 1980s, Tim Collins worked as the manager for The Joe Perry Project, the solo project created by guitarist Joe Perry who had left Aerosmith in 1979. In 1984, Collins orchestrated the reformation of the original Aerosmith. He succeeded when guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford rejoined the band in April 1984. He believed he could make Aerosmith the biggest band in the world by 1990, if he reformed the original band and got them clean and sober. Aerosmith officially reformed in May 1984 and hired Collins as their manager. After every major record label passed on signing Aerosmith to a recording contract in the summer of 1984, Collins, with the help of the infamous music attorney Brian Rohan, inspired legendary A&R man John Kalodner to sign Aerosmith to Geffen Records. The band toured extensively and created their first album after the reunion of the classic lineup in 1985, titled Done with Mirrors. However, the album wasn't the success they had hoped for, the band wasn't receiving mainstream publicity, and the drug addictions of the band members and their attempts to quit drugs on their own weren't working. Collins and his team, with the help of Dr. Louis Cox, orchestrated a drug and alcohol intervention on lead singer Steven Tyler. Tyler entered a drug rehabilitation program at the Caron Foundation in Pennsylvania that was extremely successful for him. The rest of the band members followed suit shortly thereafter.

One of the major things Collins had Aerosmith agree to was the appearance of Tyler and Perry on Run-DMC's cover of Aerosmith's song "Walk This Way". The collaboration and subsequent video made Aerosmith a household name again and opened the band up to a new generation.

By the time their next album, Permanent Vacation, was released in 1987, all of the band members had gotten clean, and Collins was now working hard to make sure the band won their fame back, through his namesake "Collins Management". By this point in time, Kalodner and Collins had forged a creative partnership that was a winning combination. They enlisted the help of top-notch outside songwriters and producers to work with the band in recording their albums, had the band touring the world extensively with up-and-coming acts opening for the band, enlisted the help of top-notch music video directors, and was now having the band make numerous appearances in television, movies, video games, major festivals, and the like, helping to win over a new generation of fans, while retaining their old fanbase.

Between 1987 and 1994, Aerosmith released three albums and a compilation album (Permanent Vacation, Pump, Get a Grip, and Big Ones) which sold a combined 23 million copies in the United States alone, won the band three Grammy awards, and numerous Video Music Awards.

When the 18-month Get a Grip Tour concluded at the end of 1994, the band wanted to take an extensive break and take their time in recording their next album (Nine Lives), this one for Columbia Records. However, Collins wanted the band to have more structure and kept pressuring the band to do more appearances and record the album more quickly. The band took extensive vacations and Tyler and Perry were working with producer/songwriter Glen Ballard in the mid-1990s, writing, recording, and rehearsing songs, including productive sessions in Miami, Florida. Collins felt that since Tyler and Perry were working independently with Ballard in penning songs and that the entire band would not be working together for months at a time, that the band was breaking up. However Tyler and Perry were noted for writing songs together and then having the band record the songs during recording sessions. Additionally, drummer Joey Kramer was sidelined during pre-production due to health problems. Collins felt that he was losing control of the band, as Aerosmith seemed to have now been able to work independently of their manager and were clean for almost a decade at that point.

The members of Aerosmith, while grateful for all the help Collins had given them in helping the band resurrect and rise back to mainstream popularity and acceptance, fired Collins in July 1996. Within hours of his firing, Collins suggested in interviews that the band may have no longer been sober.