Aerosmith ended their 2009 tour a little early after vocalist Steven Tyler fell off stage and broke his shoulder. After the tour, rumors began circulating that Tyler and his bandmates weren't talking. The rumor was confirmed by guitarist Joe Perry by telling Billboard that the band was looking for a new singer. One candidate for the position, depending on who you ask, was ex-Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar.
In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Hagar said he was asked and didn't want to do it because of the toxicity in the band.
"The Aerosmith hint … came around that time when Joe Perry tried to get me to join that band, and the management asked me to go to South America and try it out. I almost did it. I think if I would have done both those things, I would have been the guy that replaced the guy. You know, always the guy replacing the guy, and that’s a strange legacy for a guy like me, you know what I mean?"
"The problem is, I would have taken the toxicity out of the whole thing! It probably would have bombed, because I’m not a toxic kind of guy. When the arguments start, I’m outta here. I can’t be in a bad situation like that. But that was real tempting there for five minutes. I got down to Cabo, and I really relaxed and thought about it. I was listening to all of the tunes and all of this stuff. I was thinkin', '"Livin’ on the Edge," I’ll fuckin' kill that song!' And then I woke up on the beach and said, 'You know what? I can’t do this.' So that was it."
Perry, on the other hand, doesn't remember asking Hagar to join.
"The whole looking around for another lead singer thing, as soon as that raised its head — and I don’t know where it was quoted — but I don’t even know. Maybe I did, I don’t know. But I'm usually the one on the other end of the phone when it comes to Aerosmith stuff. I don’t even know if I talked to Sammy. I'm not sure. I know it got out there, but we knew him, and I know him. He's a really mellow guy, easy to get along with.
"He definitely had the pipes to interpret Aerosmith songs. I can see why that idea had been floated. But we also had a short list [of other potential singers] at that point. Things went the way they did, and everybody got out of their system what they wanted to. Then we slowly glued back together. I mean, you could say that the band split apart more than when I left [in 1979] and then [guitarist] Brad [Whitford] left [in 1981]. There were other times when we were like, 'Okay, that's enough. We've done enough.'"
