Tyler: Going solo?

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has tried hard not to comment on the problems inside his band for the last few months. But he's finally broken his silence and says singer Steven Tyler is out - but he hopes there's a future for the rest of the outfit.

Issues first came to light when Tyler fell off a stage in August, breaking his shoulder and forcing the cancellation of a US tour with ZZ Top. In the following days rumours circulated that Tyler was no longer talking to his bandmates, that he had separate management at odds with Aerosmith, and that he was drinking again.

The frontman recently told Classic Rock Magazine he was going to work on "Brand Tyler". Now Perry has spoken out too, saying Tyler has finished with the band after their F1 Grand Prix concert in Aby Dhabi last weekend.

He tells the Las Vegas Sun: "Steven quit as far as I can tell. I don't know any more than you do about it. I got off the plane and saw online that Steven said he was leaving. I don't know for how long.

"Frankly, the last few months I've been wanting not to rock the boat. We didn't want to call him out and get him any more pissed off. We didn't want him cancelling any more gigs - we really wanted to do these last four. So we just let things lie.

"He has no contact with me or the other band members. That's one thing I've learned to live with - I try to overlook it."

But Perry thinks the band is bigger than any one member, and feels there's work still to be done by himself, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer.

He says: "Aerosmith is such a powerful band. You can't disregard 40 years of four guys who play together as well as they do. It's not about replacing Steve - it's four guys who play extremely well together, and I'm not going to see that go to waste. I don't know what path it's going to take at this point, but we'll probably find someone to sing where we need a singer, and then we'll be able to move the vibe up a notch."

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