For the members of Aerosmith, its current world tour is the same old song and dance, just a different time period. But what a great period of time it has been.

The group, which has withstood not only the test of time but also the difficulties of life, has finally put its sordid past to rest.

Aerosmith’s latest release, “Nine Lives,” has been a massive success. The CD has spawned two hit singles, “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees”) and “Pink”, and has bolstered the group’s sales to a whopping 70 million albums worldwide throughout the band’s three- decade history.

As bassist Tom Hamilton said in a thick Boston/New Hampshire- mixed accent during a recent phone interview, it’s almost hard to imagine reaching that many people across the globe.

“It’s a number that is kind of hard to relate to,” he said, “especially since it is a worldwide audience. I think that the most satisfying thing about it is that the band, after really avoiding touring outside of the United States in the ’70s, can now have a chance to become a worldwide band. Really, it is like being a part of the global village. The world is shrinking and borders are evaporating.”

Aerosmith has certainly broken its share of borders in the last 28 years since its formation in Sunapee, New Hampshire. The group was the first to annihilate musical boundaries with “Walk This Way,” a collaboration with Run DMC.

Aerosmith was the first group to fully embrace the computer revolution, releasing the first Virtual Music CD-Rom title ever made (“Quest For Fame: Featuring Aerosmith”).

But that was just a stepping stone for what the group would eventually do with this technology. Since then, Aerosmith has released a personal computer game called “Nine” and an arcade game (which was later released on several home gaming systems) called “Revolution X.”

However, don’t let all of these forays into technology fool you. Aerosmith is far from being a commercial sell-out. Hamilton probably said it best when he stated “I’d like the group to be remembered as a band that really cared about the music and the audience, and didn’t take itself too seriously.”

Which means hard-core Aerosmith fans shouldn’t be expecting a rush of group related material any time soon. The members of Aerosmith are far from entering the “KISS stage” of their career, when the hottest rage will be collecting all of the Aerosmith trading cards, reading the comic books and adorning Halloween costumes resembling the group.

“I think that there is a lot of interesting stuff available through our fan club,” Hamilton explained. “But we don’t like to go out there and push the commercial side of it as much. The emphasis of this band is on the music. We could probably make a lot more money if we sold pencil sets and lunch boxes and that kind of stuff. But at some point I think it gets ridiculous.”

Solutions to current problems

The members of Aerosmith (vocalist Steven Tyler, guitarist Joe Perry, guitarist Brad Whitford, bassist Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer) have long been associated with the negative aspect of doing drugs.

Drug addiction in musicians is no new phenomena, especially in groups who were around during the ’60s and ’70s. It’s no surprise then that the members of Aerosmith, who became rock stars after 1975’s critically acclaimed album “Toys In The Attic,” fell victim to drug addiction.

What is surprising is that the group has managed to straighten itself out, and has gained more popularity in the process. Perry once expressed how difficult the process of becoming sober was in an article which appeared in USA Today.

“We were brought to our knees in the early ’80s because of our experiments with chemicals,” Perry was quoted as saying. “We were allowed to see what we lost and got the chance to bring it back. It wasn’t like we woke up and said, ‘Let’s all get sober.’ We were kicking and screaming and being told by doctors that we were going to die.”

But the members of Aerosmith initially heeded the advice of the doctors and straightened out their acts. Unfortunately, their victory has been tarnished because rumors of continued drug use, especially by Tyler, have been circulating at a lightning-fast pace.

The rumors began after the group’s long-time manager, Tim Collins, was fired by the group. Collins had been an instrumental part of the group’s rehabilitation and subsequent ascension into renewed fame, although the tactics he used to make Tyler come clean have been labeled as “underhanded” and “a stab in the back” by Tyler in his recently released autobiography, “Walk This Way.”

The group claims that Collins was fired because they were “tired of being his poster boys for sobriety” and that he was intentionally creating conflict within the group. Collins denies these allegations and claims that he was fired because certain elements of the group were tired of him trying to interfere with their drug use.

Another problem arose when the group ditched an almost completed recording session for “Nine Lives” with producer/songwriter Glen Ballard (responsible for Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill”) that resulted in “Pink,” “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” and “Taste of India” among other songs.

The nearly completed CD was considered to be “too polished and crafted” for the record label’s tastes. The band decided to re-record the songs with producer Kevin Shirley, partly because Kramer wasn’t around for the Ballard sessions due to the death of his father and partly to appease the record company (Columbia).

According to Hamilton, the group is considering releasing the Ballard sessions as B-sides to singles (the Ballard version of “Pink” is included on the single) but that “there is no plan yet, right now it is just waiting in the can.”

Hamilton said the group is “being really careful” about when to release the Ballard material and the left-over songs that weren’t included on “Nine Lives,” 1989’s “Pump” and 1993’s “Get A Grip” because the group wants to “go for something that will get some mileage.”

But in the meantime, Hamilton confirmed that the group is preparing a live CD for release either towards the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

Nothing worth while on MTV

One of the many ironies in Aerosmith’s existence is its relationship with MTV. The 24 hour music and programming channel has always been quick to embrace the videos that Aerosmith makes, whether it is “Rag Doll,” “Angel,” “Dude Looks Like A Lady,” “Janie’s Got A Gun,” “Sweet Emotion,” “Crazy,” “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” or a dozen others.

In 1994, “Crying” was voted MTV’s “All Time Favorite Video,” knocking off the video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for the first time since its television debut. The station’s constant rotation of Aerosmith videos can also be credited for some of the success of “Get A Grip,” which sold 14 million copies.

But Hamilton doesn’t seem very appreciative for what MTV has done for the group. Then again, why should he be? MTV has a nasty habit of making or breaking new bands and has contributed greatly to the short attention span that is now prevalent when it comes to new music.

“There is a lot of music now that becomes instantly successful through MTV,” Hamilton said. “We had to make a name for ourselves on stage — there was no MTV raising awareness of our music. I think that being able to go and play live is really important. It’s where the rubber meets the road.

“Not only that, but it is really fun to interact with audiences,” he continued. “There is a point when the audience and the band is doing the same thing and that is everybody celebrating that we are here together and that it is all about the music.”

Hamilton believes that the reason newer bands aren’t maintaining success for a longer period of time is because they rely on MTV and its short attention span to promote them and don’t go out and tour to support themselves. He doesn’t think that these upcoming bands should place their trust and livelihoods in a station that has serious flaws.

“I wish [MTV] was more music driven,” he stated. “I think that it has the potential to be something really cool. But they got off into some programming that they think they need for ratings. I hear a lot of people saying that the programming is not really what they are looking for, that they would like the music videos back.”

Aerosmith meets The Beatles

One of the things that is least known about Aerosmith is that it had a guest appearance in the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” movie as the “Future Villain Band,” a small cameo role that the group was reluctant to take at first.

“They were making the movie,” Hamilton explained, “and the producer, Robert Stigwood, who was a player in the music business and was also getting into the movie business at the time, came to us and said ‘What do you think?’ and we said ‘Well, we’re not sure.’ Then they tailored a role for us and we thought it was really cool that we got to be the bad guys, so we decided to go for it.”

For Hamilton, being in a Beatles movie was a dream come true.

“I remember what they meant to me,” he said. “They were basically what I lived for, a long time. Every time a Beatles album came out was a huge event for me. Their music was a deciding factor in me deciding that I wanted to be in a band.”

Hamilton remembers December 8, 1980 as a very sad day in his life. It was the day John Lennon was assassinated outside of the Dakota apartment buildings in New York City.

“It was just horrible,” he said, “but I actually felt worse for a good friend of mine, our producer Jack Douglas, who had a really close relationship with him and had just finished working with him on the ‘Double Fantasy’ album. I never met John Lennon, but I was really sad.”

Despite the tragic murder of Lennon, Hamilton says that he isn’t really afraid of being stalked and killed.

“I can’t let it frighten me,” he said, “but I have thought about it and there are a lot of precautions that are built into the way we tour to stop that. But it’s not something that I think about on a day to day basis.”

Censorship, politics and the global village

A couple of years ago, Aerosmith donated $10,000 to the List Visual Arts Center at MIT in Boston to fight censorship. The money was used to finance a “sexually explicit exhibition of photographs and sculptures” that was previously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, but was shut down by the NEA through government pressure.

“If you allow the idea of any censorship,” Hamilton explained, “it should be during a certain period of time under certain circumstances – like little kids should be protected from certain kinds of material that is out there. But the thing is, once you set that in place, you are stuck with it. Pretty soon you will have a government in power that wants to use censorship for its own personal ends.

“I think that the main problem with censorship is to decide who are the censors,” he added, “because people who are interested in censorship are usually the people on the extremes, either on the extreme left or the extreme right, and they don’t represent people like you and me.”

Censorship is one of Hamilton’s biggest pet peeves. But government interference on society ranks right up there.

“I believe that the government interferes with personal rights too often,” he said, “and I think it is encouraged by special interest groups. I think a lot of it starts out as something that may be good for people, that may help them. Then it turns out not to be, like airbags in cars.

“It’s a great idea on paper,” he added, “but you have your activists and radicals that forced it down people’s throats so that the average person has to pay $900 more for a car, to pay for all of that research and development that went into it, and they were put in cars before they were even safe to use. So, that’s the government really fucking up.”

Aerosmith has never been about forcing people to believe in certain ideals. The group is more interested in providing its audience with good time. But even though social and political messages aren’t present in the group’s music it doesn’t mean that the its members don’t think about what these messages are doing to the public.

“I think that people are bombarded with the message thing,” Hamilton explained, “and with people telling them how to live. I think that in some cases that’s good because it gives people more awareness, but we’ve never been that type of band. This band is about getting away from pressure, not enhancing it. Especially when young people and kids are under so much pressure from companies telling them what they should do and what they should wear through marketing.

“I think that a band called Rage Against The Machine,” he added, “has noticed that. One of the basic things they are saying is that the whole system that is doing all of this scientific marketing is kind of mean. This system is saying ‘If you don’t wear these jeans and this shirt, if you don’t buy this product, you are a jerk.’ And I really think it is kind of mean.”

Hamilton has noticed that this American system of scientific marketing has infected the entire world like a disease.

“One of the things that really bummed me out,” he explained, “is that when we went to Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, we were really proud that we were representing what we think is big part of American culture. Then we would see billboards for Nike and McDonalds and stuff like that. It was really depressing.”

Hamilton attributes the spread of this disease to the global village theory. Through the spread of television, radio and Internet technology, and a rise in worldwide travel, the world has gotten a lot smaller and the world’s inhabitants have become rather similar.

“There used to be a difference that you really could see,” he explained, “but now it is really part of that global village thing. There’s not that much of a difference anymore, except in Spain and Italy, where the audience is completely nuts. They are just so enthusiastic and so passionate that it is absolutely incredible.

“We were doing a show in Barcelona once and we were playing along and we could hear this really loud noise coming from somewhere, and we realized that it was the audience singing louder than the PA. That was pretty incredible.”

It is moments like those that make Hamilton believe that music can change the world.

If Aerosmith should be accused of anything, it shouldn’t be that the group is currently using drugs (which the group adamantly denies), that the group is too old to rock-and-roll or that it has contributed to the social negativity that surrounds sexual behavior.

Aerosmith should be accused of the exact opposite. The group has gone great lengths to become sober, the group still rocks if sales are any indication (“Nine Lives” has already gone platinum) and it has done a great deal to open conversation about sexual behavior.

“Aerosmith has evolved from attitudes that are prevalent in society,” Hamilton stated. “Sex and sexual behavior are huge parts of our daily lives and it is something that is worthy of comment from an artist or a songwriter.

“I think that the thing that I like most about what’s happened to our music,” he added, “is that we still do sex songs but the songs are much more inclusive to what women like. For instance, ‘Pink’ is a sex song, but it’s a smart one. There is nothing in that song telling a woman what she needs to provide for a man sexually.

“Yeah, the persona of the song is a man saying ‘This is how you make me feel and this is what I’d love to do,'” he added. “But it is portrayed in a way that a woman might say ‘Yeah, me too!’ The ironic thing is that when the record company did research for this album, women responded more favorably to that song than men.”

Aerosmith will be bringing its bad self to Hilton Coliseum tonight for a sold-out concert at 8 p.m. The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band will be opening.