Aerosmith sued by Calgary promoter over cancelled prairie and Vancouver gigs

Remember how psyched you were last year when Aerosmith was booked to play B.C. Place on August 15? You were thinking maybe they'd be just as impressive as they were when they blew Motley Crue off the GM Place stage in 2006. And there was always the hope that openers ZZ Top would play a few tunes from Tres Hombres.

Then 10 days before the show frontman Steven Tyler went and ruined it all by injuring himself during a gig at Sturgis, North Dakota, forcing cancellation of the Vancouver date. You were bummed—though probably not as much as Calgary-based promoter Keystone Entertainment, which lost a ton of money off that scrubbed show and the four other Western Canadian ones.

In the months after Tyler's onstage accident the fate of Aerosmith—arguably America's greatest rock band, at least in the '70s—was unclear. Rumours flew about Tyler being hooked on prescription painkillers and making noises about going solo, and his longtime bandmates weren't impressed. When guitarist Joe Perry spoke to me in January he didn't sugarcoat the situation. "Right now I know Steven’s in the process of getting some help for himself,” he said, “but other than that I don’t know what he’s doing. He’s talked about takin’ time off from the band, so we’re in the process of looking for a singer, ’cause we want to get out there and rock.”

Fast forward six months and Aerosmith is back together and ready to do just that. The band announced its Cocked, Locked, Ready to Rock summer tour on June 1, but there were no make-up dates for last year's cancelled Canadian concerts on the itinerary. That's when Keystone—claiming it had made repeated attempts to reschedule the missed shows, to no avail—filed its lawsuit, seeking $6 million in damages for losses it incurred on "financial charges; dept servicing; short-term capital costs; promotional, marketing and media expenditures; venue and security deposits and equipment rental deposits."

It's not the first time the "Bad Boys of Boston" have been in the legal crosshairs for missing shows. In 2007 they were sued by angry fans who allegedly lost money on travel reservations and other expenses after Aerosmith cancelled a show in Hawaii. It remains to be seen how all this turmoil and litigation will effect the band if it ever gets around to making another album. But at least we know a good name for Joe Perry's next solo project: Let the Lawyers Do the Talkin'.