For a guy who lost two teeth and required stitches after falling on his face in the shower, Steven Tyler was in a chipper mood this morning discussing his bathroom accident with Today's Matt Lauer. He also shared some post-fall pictures, and it hurts just to look at them. The Aerosmith singer blamed his shower collapse on "Montezuma's Revenge," the dreaded tourist disease that temporarily wreaks havoc on a digestive system. "I took a walk with the Incans for 48 hours, I walked in looking like Baryshnikov and walked out looking like Leon Spinks." A retired ballerina and a retired boxer; Tyler apparently stopped caring about pop culture in the mid '80s.
(Not to get off-target, but a brief geography lesson: "Montezuma's Revenge" is an illness that strickens people visiting Mexico, not South America. Montezuma was also Aztec, not Incan. The Aerosmith tour opened up in Peru, the stronghold of the Incan empire and the one geographical detail Tyler got right, but he collapsed in Paraguay, which was out of the tribe's jurisdiction. Someone buy Tyler an atlas.)
The first thought many Aero fans had when they first heard Steven fell in the shower was, "Uh oh, he's boozing again." Lauer made it a point to ask the singer if this was the case. "Being in the program that I'm in, it's something that I have to accept," Tyler said of lingering questions about whether his spill was a result of the now clean-and-sober singer falling off the wagon. Tyler never really answered the question; he instead dodged Matt Lauer's inquiry by taking aim at the cynics. However, when Lauer asks again whether booze was a factor, Tyler said, "It's not the issue." So, no relapse.
Tyler might be healthy enough to perform, but he still has no idea where he is. When Lauer asks where in South America Aerosmith is at the moment, Tyler can't answer. Someone sitting nearby informs Tyler that the band is currently in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is only the second largest city on the continent. It's one thing to mix up Cleveland and Cincinnati, something many rockers do, but being unaware that you're in Argentina's largest metropolitan area is a hard-to-miss detail. Tyler hit his head pretty hard though, so let's give him a pass.