Customer Reviews

Dream On: Livin' on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith (Boulevard)

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"Dream On" is the perfect example of a trashy tell-all memoir written out of pure greed. Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler portrays herself as a victim, but she's not fooling anyone. She even says in the book that she wrote it for the money.

This book's only purpose is to trash her ex-husband, Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, who is admittedly no angel, but Cyrinda obviously downplays her own shortcomings and her own bad behavior. (For example, she cruelly left her first husband, David Johansen, for Steven. But the way she tells it, she had to do what she had to do because her marriage to David was a bad joke anyway.) Cyrinda's harrowing description of her abusive childhood only garners a little sympathy.

"Dream On" is entertaining for some of its interesting revelations. Such as: Before she met Steven Tyler, Cyrinda had an affair with David Bowie, got pregnant by him --and had an abortion--and once had a threesome with Bowie and his wife at the time, Angie. Cyrinda was also secretly infatuated/in love with Joe Perry, Steven Tyler's bandmate in Aerosmith...She says in the book that she and Joe passionately kissed just minutes before she married Steven. The fact that she chooses to tell that particular story says more about her than it does about Joe Perry.

A good example of Cyrinda's attitude in this book is that she complains that Steven was a lousy husband because after their daughter, Mia, was born, he wouldn't let her hire a nanny. Cyrinda says she's a "high maintenance" woman, but it's clear if you read between the lines that she was a lazy, greedy wife from hell.

I'd recommend reading this book only if you're interested in seeing how low an ex-wife can go. It contains occasional sex stories about Steven (the opening chapter is the most detailed story), and not enough musical context. Don't expect any insight into Steven Tyler as a musical creator.

Even if Steven Tyler was a lousy husband and deadbeat dad, this book is in poor taste because of the emotional damage it's probably done to Mia.

After reading this book and Cyrinda's almost-never-ending, pathetic complaints about how Steven Tyler left her "poor" after the divorce, the only words that come to mind are: "Well then shut up and get a job, Cyrinda!"

Firstly, unlike most of the other "reviewers" of this title, this will be a review of the book "Dream On" NOT my personal feelings about Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler and/or ex-husband Steven. Now that you are forewarned, read on:

"Dream On: Livin On the Edge" has many problems & weaknesses. Almost every one of these is due to Ms. Foxe-Tyler's choice of co-authors. Danny Fields has been a close friend of hers for nearly 30 years, & is known to be one of the nicest guys in the music biz. Unfortunately, these traits work against the books' success.

It is the job of the co-author to ask the hard questions, do background research, make the books' subject dig into areas of their life that they would rather forget. As Ms. Foxe-Tyler's confidante, it is obvious that Danny Fields not only failed to do these things, he also dropped the ball in other areas. There are many times in this book where the reader gets the feeling that certain people or events are so familiar to the authors' that they skip right over them, assuming our familiarity to be equal to theirs. When Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler makes an assertion or states an opinion as a fact, Mr. Fields never once questions her or seeks another opinion. While she is entitled to have her say, her word is not gospel on every single subject, & as co-author, Danny Fields is not doing his job by accepting it as such.

Some examples of these problems include: while discussing her childhood, we learn Ms. Foxe-Tyler is the 3rd child of a woman who married 4 times, all to enlisted military men, had her 1st child at 16, moved often to various military bases around the world & is a religious fanatic who abused her. Yet later on we are told that Cyrinda felt she was an "aristocrat" as compared to the "proletariat" members of Aerosmith. I'm not sure how an upbringing as an army brat by a much-married abusive mother qualifies her as an "aristocrat" but Danny Fields never questions the statement. We are told that she feels Steven Tyler's lyrics are "sensitive and romantic and intuitive". It is certainly a stretch to describe lyrics such as "you can't catch me/cause the rabbit done died" as "sensitive and romantic"! I for one cannot recall a single "sensitive and romantic" song by Aerosmith during their heyday.

Speaking of Aerosmith's heyday, this is probably the largest problem with "Dream On"; Cyrinda didn't become involved with the group until they were recording "Draw the Line" which is actually the start of their decline. Nowhere in the book do we learn anything about the dynamics of how Aerosmith formed & their early days. This gap is especially annoying because of her frequent descriptions of animosity between Joe Perry & Steven Tyler. If these 2 men hated each other so, how did the band first gel? When did the anger begin & what were the causes? How did the other 3 band members deal with it? The reader never finds out, so many anecdotes in the book seem missing a good part of their story. Also missing is Steven Tyler's early years. Ms. Foxe-Tyler often calls him a "sick man" who is "consumed by his dark places". She also has nothing good to say about his family. Yet the reader is left wondering how & when Tyler became so sick & disturbed; what forces in his family created the torture she describes?

It isn't just in the Aerosmith department that Fields & Foxe-Tyler leave the reader hanging. Cyrinda lived with David Johansen of the New York Dolls for a longer period of time than she did with Tyler. She was also married to Johansen. Does the reader learn anything about this period of her life? Not in "Dream On"; read "Please Kill Me" by Legs McNeil if you want to hear her anecdotes of her Dolls' days. There is a photo in the book of Cyrinda with Keith Moon of the Who; is he mentioned in the text? Nope. Why the photo then, yet none of her with David Bowie with whom she lived for nearly a year? The most glaring omission of all concerns Foxe-Tyler's alleged drug addiction. She mentions that the 1st 4 years of daughter Mia's life she was addicted to heroin. Yet just a few pages previously we are told she never touched drugs even when those around her were offering. So when did the abuse start? What led to it? How bad did it get? What made her realise she was an addict? These & many many more questions are never raised much less answered.

I purchased this book because it has been reported that Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler is dying from a brain tumor. Because of this, "Dream On" is a worthwhile book, as it may end up being her only defense after she is gone. It is unfortunate that due to using a friend as a co-author she has left so much unsaid.

I'm a huge Aerosmith fan who has to read anything and everything on Steven Tyler. So of course I had to read this book, despite the negative reviews. I thought the book was just "ok". What annoyed me most was the fact I know Cyrinda Foxe has lead an interesting life (before she even met Steven!), yet she chose to mostly ignore all that. I would've LOVED to hear MORE about her time with David Bowie and David Johansen (NY Dolls), Andy Warhol, Max's Kansas City, ect. If Cyrinda had to do it all over again, I'm sure she'd focus more on those things! I can handle reading less than positive stuff about Steven, everyone knows he was a major drug addict in those days. But Cyrinda should have gotten into discussing her own faults, not just Steven's. She says Steven didn't give her enough money, she couldn't even buy diapers for Mia. Yet Steven did give her support money, it just makes me wonder HOW Cy chose to spend it. She admits she was addicted to heroin for the first years of Mia's life. Maybe THAT'S why she couldn't buy diapers for Mia, despite Steven giving support? At least she and Steven have made ammends now since discovering she has a brain tumor. I recommend reading "Rebel Heart" by Bebe Buell, Steven's ex and the mother of Liv Tyler. She saw Steven at some of his worst moments and comes off as sad she couldn't be with him because of his addictions. Bebe never trashes him though.

As an Aerosmith fan, you should read the book to "take you to the other side" ... Cyrinda is a very F.I.N.E. person who happens to be very beautiful also. She is quite impressed with her life in the Warhol gang and a bitter person when it comes to Steven and the Boys.

There are some very interesting factoids but much of the book centers on her life and how terrible she had it. I guess living with the frontman of one of the best rock bands in history is terrible.

I'm sure there were in fact some hard times for Cyrinda, but all in all, us regular folk can't quite equate our lives with hers.

The book doesn't show the Boys in a good light, if you're a fan you really don't want to hear that stuff. But give Cyrinda her due, she had the nerve to put her life out there for all of us to "see", like it or not.

It's said that one should not speak ill of the dead. But "Dream On: Livin' On the Edge With Steven Tyler and Aerosmith" might leave you wanting to do just that for Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler, the late ex-wife of Steven Tyler and (by her own admission) a huge pain in the backside. Foxe-Tyler's autobiography is a slow embittered grind that seems less like a recounting of her own life than an endless stream of seedy recountings about just what a jerk her ex is.

Born to a moody abusive mother with a penchant for marrying various moody abusive men, Cyrinda (then Kathleen Victoria Hetzekian -- although she refuses to reveal the last, because "I want to leave my father out of this") was a miserable military brat lugged around the globe.

Her refuges: rock'n'roll (Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones), light drug use, and sexual experimentation with the boys on base... and pretty soon, her life was all about those three things. Before long, she had left Oklahoma and Texas behind for the bright lights of the big city, namely New York -- courtesy of Lou Reed and a pair of Danish black boots. And despite being "the most naive, cotton-candy-headed being in the world," Cyrinda quickly established herself in Max's Kansas City, NYC's gay underworld, and Andy Warhol.

And then after a brief first marriage (her first husband is a faceless footnote), she met, got pregnant by and married Steven Tyler, the volatile and popular singer for the band Aerosmith. But of course passion doesn't last forever, and despite having a beautiful daughter between them, their acrimonious marriage was doomed from the start.

There are two kinds of rock wives/paramours: the classy and genuinely intelligent ones like Marianne Faithfull and Bebe Buell, and then there are the Angela Bowie ones who want to shovel dirt on their exes. Cyrinda is solidly in the latter grouping -- "Dream On: Livin' On the Edge With Steven Tyler and Aerosmith" seems to exist solely to smack her ex-husband in the head as frequently as possible, and often as tastelessly as possible (the "dive for it" anecdote is revolting).

When she isn't heaping dirt on Tyler's head, Cyrinda devotes most of the book to ranting randomly about various topics -- she raves about gays, her hatred of religion, her aversion to getting a job (to the point of sleeping with people for room and board) and how she is cooler and more in tune with young people and sex than her contemporaries. She also seems a bit fixated on her own sexual exploits, ranging from unofficial prostitution to a threesome with David and Angela Bowie to voyeuristic peeking at others having sex.

And her embitterment spreads to everything in this book, including other members of Steven Tyler's family --she gets in some digs at his ex-lover Buell and daughter Liv, barely acknowledges his second wife Teresa, and utterly ignores his third and fourth kids.

And it's undeniable that Tyler was a drug-addled mess for countless years... and that's just what his friends say. But despite her seedy anecdotes about Tyler, the person who is most degraded in "Dream On" is Cyrinda herself -- she comes across as lazy (how dare her ex not hire a full-time nanny for someone who refuses to get a job!), hypocritical (she demonizes Tyler for abuse, while proudly talking about the gouges she left in his face -- by her own admission not the only ones) and generally deluded about how others see her ("You're too intellectual!"). Not to mention deluded about her own place in life (seeing herself as an "aristocrat" compared to Aerosmith).

"Dream On: Livin' On the Edge With Steven Tyler and Aerosmith" is a sad memoir of a sad woman, whose bitterness wasn't exorcised until the very end of her life. And that bitterness coats every page of her autobiography, leaving you feeling vaguely unclean.

I have been a huge Aerosmith fan since, well, as long as I can remember! When I saw this book, I thought to myself, "Hey, it's a book on Steven Tyler," and immediately, I bought it. Well, I was in for a big surprise. This "biography" about the lead singer of the world famous band, Aerosmith, turned out to be an autobiography about the author, our hero's ex-wife. In fact the author does not even mention Steven Tyler, let alone Aerosmith, until the middle of the book!
The book starts off with Steven Tyler's future wife (now ex), Cyrinda, as a little girl growing up on an army base. She also says that her childhood was poor and that he mother and father did not even love her. So, as a teenager, she runs away to New York. Here, she starts working for Andy Warhol on plays such as Pork. She eventually becomes the face of an underground scene in New York and marries David Johansen, a member of an underground rock band called the New York Dolls. After that, she becomes friends with Joe and Elisa Perry. Finally, something related to what I came to read about! Cyrinda goes to an Aerosmith show and goes backstage and sees Steven Tyler. Steven shows that he is interested in her. A few years later, while Cyrinda is on the road with Aerosmith, she starts dating Steven Tyler. Here, one would think that the author would give the reader at least a little information about Steven, right? Well, not really. She just basically tells the readers how Steven was very interested in cocaine, and how he used to hit her when he was high. Eventually, they have a baby and name her Mia. Shortly after, they get a divorce and Cyrinda becomes a single mother trying to raise an infant. She does not even really say any information about Steven at all, let alone Aerosmith! In conclusion, this is a good book, but not if you picked it up to learn about the best band in rock history, and their great leader, Steven Tyler.

I am an Aerosmith fan and I am glad I read this book. I had already read Walk this Way, so this was the logical follow-up. I came to like Cyrinda, despite her sometimes ego based proclamations of hotness and social placement. She seems to have her heart in the right place and I do agree she was spiritually inclined from the start. Her actions often displayed a spiritual calmness and knowing, especially when the going got rough. I do believe Steve Tyler carries her in his heart and now that she is dying he has been given a second chance to do the right thing. She asks the question in this book "Is Steve Tyler on her team?" I think now we know the answer is yes, and his role in offering her assistance in her final days will undo the previous deeds and seal their eternal love as soul mates.

I love biographies about famous people but I'm sorry to report this has to be the worst one I have ever read. ... It was one of the only books I didn't even care to finish. Don't waste your money on this one - the stories are half told and the writing is contradictory and confusing throughout.

I bought and read this book a few years ago and on first read, really hated it for all the reasons other people have described, namely the constant trashing of Steven Tyler and general complaining tone throughout the book. I read it again recently and was a little surprised to find that I didn't detest it quite as much, maybe because since then books by other rock women (Bebe Buell, Grace Slick, etc.) have come out that annoyed me in different ways. Cyrinda sounds like she was a royal pain in the patootie with a big axe to grind against many people, including Steven, whose relationship with her makes up the bulk of the book, but in some ways this is an interesting psychological portrait of one type of woman who's drawn to make the scene and get in good with the rock stars. And at least Cyrinda doesn't go on and on about what a great muse she was to artists or any of that - she seems pretty clear that for her it was more about the money and the party and the good times.

As others have noted, Steven doesn't even show up in the book until about halfway through, and I kind of wish it had been later than that, because Cyrinda had a pretty interesting life hanging around the Warhol set at Max's Kansas City and being briefly married to David Johanssen of the New York Dolls before she got involved with Tyler and Aerosmith. The early parts of the story about Cyrinda's upbringing as a military brat in the midst of VietNam (actually, sounds like her stepfather was a pretty high-ranking officer from the stories she tells about meeting General Westmoreland and so on) and her adventures in New York City are fascinating, though occasionally gritty. Cyrinda doesn't shy away from talking about icky subjects, such as being expected to put out in return for a night's lodging, or finding a neighbor's rotting, fly-blown corpse in the downstairs apartment. Nevertheless, I would have enjoyed hearing more details about what went on in the back room at Max's and over at the Factory, as well as a bit more about the New York Dolls. Her first husband, David, is barely mentioned - you'd think he was some no-name guy off the streets instead of a celebrity who the reader would really like to hear quite a bit more about.

However, the minute she meets and starts having an affair with Steven, the book pretty much devolves into non-stop complaining. All the things she says about him, such as that he was messed up on drugs, that his house was a wreck and he expected her to be the maid, and that he could be sweet and funny nevertheless, are all the same things one has read in other Aerosmith books and other tales by Steven's women (Bebe, etc.) so it seems likely they may well be true. It's hard to sympathize with Cyrinda, though, as she does seem very bitter and at the end resorts to trashing Bebe who she sees as trying to get money from Steven over their daughter Liv, when Bebe never married Steven. Cyrinda's stories about the disintegration of her marriage to Steven are especially hard to handle given that she talks a lot about her own affairs with much younger men, some as young as 16, and it sounds gross and pathetic, even if she was a sad drunk at the time just looking for comfort.

In the end it seems pretty clear that Cyrinda looked for romantic relationships that mirrored the one she had with her own mother, who liked music, had great style and was nice in some ways, but also spent a lot of time ordering Cyrinda around, hitting her and generally getting into fights with her. Oh, and Steven had a lot of money too, which apparently made all the beatings much easier to take. Every time he gives her a black eye she goes out and charges a bunch of stuff to his credit card. Please.

Overall, this book could have been so much more, especially if it had gone into details about aspects of Cyrinda's life other than the number of times she did drugs or got into a violent physical fight with Steven Tyler. As it is, the reader is relieved when they finally split up and you want to tell Cyrinda to just shut up and move on. I'm curious to read Mia's book to see what her take was on all this.

I expected Cyrinda to pick on Steven a little during this book but I was surprised at the amount of dirty laundry she aired. Oh well a she was a bitter ex wife when she wrote it and I wonder how much she would recant today if she had the chance after Steven looked after her towards the end of her life. Cyrinda said in the book that if Mia disagrees she can give her view later which she since has done in her book Mia Tyler 'Creating Myself' (which I also purchased from amazon). Mia contradicts or gives her own view on certain events in her mothers book. All up still an interesting read for any Aerosmith or Steven Tyler fan.