Steven Tyler Story

‘Jesus, what have I done?’: Rock star Steve Tyler’s traumatic encounter with abortion


Lead singer of the band Aerosmith, Steven Tyler, confessed to having his child aborted back in the 1970s and shared the details of the trauma that he experienced because of it.

In 1975, Tyler was in his late 20s and persuaded the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Julia Holcomb, to make him her legal guardian so that they could live together in Boston. When Miss Holcomb and Tyler conceived a child, his longtime friend Ray Tabano convinced Tyler that abortion was the only solution.

Tabano said, “They had the abortion and it really messed Steven up because it was a boy. He saw the whole thing and it [messed] him up big time.”

Tyler reflected on his abortion experience in his autobiography saying, “It was a big crisis. It’s a major thing when you’re growing something with a woman, but they convinced us that it would never work out and would ruin our lives…”

“You go to the doctor and they put the needle in her bell and they squeeze the stuff in and you watch. And it comes out dead. I was pretty devastated. In my mind, I’m going: ‘Jesus, what have I done?'”, said Tyler of the abortion.

After the abortion, Tyler had an affair with a Playboy model named Bebe Buell, while remaining in a relationship with Holcomb, the mother of his aborted baby. Buell recounted the effect that abortion had on Holcomb saying, “There were many suicidal calls from poor Diana as they were breaking up. It was actually a pretty sad time”

In the time after the abortion, Steven’s life also began to spiral out of control. He went on a European concert tour and was accompanied by Buell, who said, “He was crazy… totally drunk, really out of it… Steven destroyed his dressing room at Hammersmith… when we got back from Europe… One night I found him on the floor of his bathroom having a drug seizure. He was writhing in pain.”

There were many days during this time that Tyler was stoned on massive doses of barbiturate. Tyler said, “I would eat four or five [barbiturates] a day… and be good for a couple of months… which is why that period is blackout stuff.”

Then, Miss Buell became pregnant with Tyler’s child. She realised it would be impossible for her to raise a child with Tyler, given his out-of-control lifestyle and substance abuse. She returned to her former lover, composer/producer/recording artist Todd Rundgren, who agreed to act as father of the child and keep Tyler’s fatherhood a secret. Their daughter, who grew up to become actress Liv Tyler, was born on 1 July 1977.

Years later, when Tyler married, and he and his wife were expecting their first child, he said he was still haunted by the abortion. “It affected me later… I was afraid. I thought we’d give birth to a six-headed cow because of what I’d done with other women,” Tyler concluded. “The real-life guilt was very traumatic for me. It still hurts.”