Aerosmith Bassist Recalls Battle With Throat Cancer

Legendary Boston rockers Aerosmith will be kicking off their summer tour with ZZ Top on Saturday in Wisconsin, and it will be the band's first U.S. trek in two years. For bassist Tom Hamilton, the tour is an especially important one, as he'd been forced to sit out the band's last trek in support of their greatest-hits album 'Devil's Got A New Disguise: The Very Best Of Aerosmith.' The bassist couldn't hit the road with the rest of the band back then, so that he could undergo treatment for throat cancer.

"What I had to go through was the band going out on tour without me," he told the Sun Chronicle during a recent interview. "And so I had a taste of that, the negative feelings of that. So it was a terrible thought, but I had to learn that there were some things that could be worse than not having the band."

Like having to talk through a tracheostomy ring. Hamilton says he's now cancer free, and ready to rock again.

"I've been in this band since I was a friggin' teenager. Obviously I've got a strong desire to be here," he explained. "But you know, sometimes you have to think like some day is coming. I think going through that cancer experience, it kind of grabbed me by the head and made me look at a lot of stuff and just sort of in general, you think of things you always wanted to do some day. Well, some day is here. So I got a lot of that, which I think is a positive thing because it really focused me. And I've come a long way musically since that happened."

Looking back on the experience, Hamilton says it was "almost a gift," because it inspired him to become a better player, and a better writer "than I would have been if I hadn't gone through that."

Of course, on this summer's trek, Aerosmith plan on playing its 1975 album 'Toys In The Attic' from front to back, during its set.

"We're really interested in doing that," he said, "but we want to try to figure out some way to do it so that everybody's happy. It's a problem, but it's a luxury problem. Nonetheless it's a puzzle, and we have to work out how to structure the set so we really cover the whole thing."