Aerosmith's upcoming Route of All Evil Tour with Motley Crüe is getting off to a muted start Tuesday, September 5, in Columbus, Ohio. Bassist and founding member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers from Boston, Tom Hamilton, 55, will miss the first six weeks or so of the tour after undergoing seven weeks of radiation treatment for throat cancer.
Hamilton will rejoin the tour in mid-October, according to band publicist Marcee Rondan. Filling in for Hamilton, who formed the band in 1969 with singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry, will be "longtime friend of the band" David Hull, who played in the Joe Perry
Project.
Bassist Hamilton also co-wrote the Aerosmith classics "Sweet Emotion" and "Janie's Got A Gun" with Tyler, who himself underwent successful experimental surgery earlier this year to fix a broken blood vessel on his right vocal cord, forcing the band to cancel about 20 spring shows.
Aerosmith blogger John B. reports on the band's site, "As you all know Tom Hamilton won't be with his brother until mid-October. David Hull has been in the studio everyday going over a countless number of songs. Joey and David usually got into the studio two hours before the rest of the guys to get into a groove. See you in Columbus!"
Through the magic of video tape, while singing on the road with the band, Tyler will also appear on TV Monday, September 25, where he’ll play himself on 
CBS’s comedy series Two And A Half Men, starring Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer. The famously reformed mad partier appears as Sheen's Malibu neighbor, playing loud music and being generally irritating.
Lastly, the veteran rockers will be releasing another greatest hits CD in October, just four years after their last one, the 2-CD set O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits. "We were working on getting a studio record out, but we just couldn't do it. There wasn't enough time," Perry told Billboard.com. The collection, Devil's Got a New Disguise: The Very Best of Aerosmith, will contain 16 songs, including two new ones, the title track and "Sedona Sunrise."
Article comments
1 - Connie Phillips
Congrats! A link to this article now appears on our Myspace Profile page.
2 - Eric Olsen
rockin! thanks Connie - hey I hadn't looked in a while - the MySpace page looks great!!
3 - Glen Boyd
I gotta be honest here and tell ya that Aerosmith is a band that realy pisses me off. These guys had a legacy and sold it all out to pimp theme parks and sing shit like "Dream On" next to Britney at the Super Bowl.
Look up the wors "sellout" in a dictionary and you'll see Steven Tylers picture right next to Rod Stewart's.
Still a good news article though EC. I'm sorry but I just hate these guys though.
-Glen
4 - SFC SKI
Tom Hamilton is such a rock steady player, it will be hard to imagine Aerosmith touring without him, I wish him well.
Joe Perry Project? Hmm, looks like I have to go hunting online, I have a bunch of JPP on cassette.
5 - Eric Olsen
not much question they consciously decided to "go commercial" when they regrouped and started recording songs by Desmond Child and Diane Warren, but hey, they are still doing their thing, still mostly rock, and have stayed mroe or less clean and sober together for a long time. I'll still take Get Your Wings, toys in the Attic , and Rocks over anything since, though
6 - Eric Olsen
Ski, long time no chat! How are you doing? That one JPP tune "Let the Music Do the Talking" probably rocks harder than anything Aerosmith ever did.
7 - SFC SKI
Thanks, Eric. A few weeks leave, I was too relaxed and busy to post here. Now I am back to my old cantankerous commenting.
Yeah, the JPP was pretty rockin' especially when JP had Charlie Farren singing for him. Farren later had his own band that put out a great debut album, but didn't last much past that. I thnk Joe is the more blues and rock side of Aerosmith, whereas Steven Tyler was the guy to start using outside pop tunesmiths for a lot of their later, much more successful but much less rockin' work.
I haven't bought an aerosmith album in decades (I am getting old) but I have heard that their live shows still rely on the harder older stuff that made them great.
8 - Liv Tyler
There's a great article on David Hull [on my blog Tabloid Baby]