Best Known As: Music Performer

Gist:  Steven Victor Tallarico (born March 26 1948 in Yonkers, New York), better known as Steven Tyler, is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known for his work as the lead singer and primary lyricist of Boston-based rock band Aerosmith.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Tyler was also known for his heavy drug and alcohol abuse, though he completed drug rehabilitation in 1986 and has since maintained sobriety for over 20 years. During his high-energy stage performances, he usually dresses in bright, colorful outfits with his trademark scarves hanging from his microphone stand. He was recently named 99th on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers. He is also ranked 3rd on Hit Parader's Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.

Life Facts:  Steven Tyler was born Steven Victor Tallarico; on the paternal side of his family, he is of Italian (his grandfather Giovanni Tallarico was born in Cotronei, Calabria) and German descent. His maternal background is Cherokee and Ukrainian.

Tyler was born in New York, NY on March 26, 1948. He was the second of two children and had one older sister, Lynda. His family later moved to Yonkers, NY, where he attended Roosevelt High School. He was expelled from Roosevelt for drug use and later graduated from Leonard Quintano's School for Young Professionals. Before working as a professional musician, Tyler says he worked several odd jobs, including a stint at a bakery.

Music has always played a large role in Tyler's life as he was the son of a classical musician who helmed the Vic Tallarico Orchestra. His father taught music at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx for many years. Steven Tyler also took a liking to blues and in the 1960s, he was a drummer and singer in a variety of local rock and roll bands including The Strangeurs then changed to Chain Reaction, The Chain, and William Proud. Tyler spent time in the summers of his youth at the New Hampshire lakes region's Lake Sunapee, where he met his future bandmates. He has residences in Marshfield, MA, Sunapee, NH, Cape Cod, New York City, and Los Angeles. He is the father of Liv Tyler.

On the 14th of February, 1984, Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, who left the band in 1979 and 1981 respectively, showed up to an Aerosmith show. According to the band's Behind the Music special on VH1, Tyler alleges he made the first phone call to Joe Perry encouraging them to meet up again. Backstage, they all met and Perry and Whitford agreed to join the band once again.

Aerosmith embarked on a reunion tour called, "The Back in the Saddle Tour," and proceeded to record once again. One problem was still remaining, however, and that was the drug addictions of the band members, especially Tyler, who had collapsed onstage during several performances in the early 1980s and had long suffered a heroin addiction. Aerosmith's new manager Tim Collins and the rest of the reunited band knew that they wouldn't get anywhere with their leader Steven Tyler still under the heavy influence of drugs. In 1986, they held a meeting in which they pressured Tyler into entering a strict drug rehabilitation program.

After Tyler had completed drug rehab, every other member of Aerosmith eventually went into rehab and all had successfully exited their respective programs at various times in the mid-late 1980s.