Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler Cashes In On Tunes

Some of Aerosmith’s best-known hits will be sold by the groups frontman, Steve Tyler. In a deal that is reportedly worth $50 Million to Tyler, hits like “Love in an Elevator,” “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” “Janie’s Got a Gun,” and “Jaded” will be sold to Primary Wave Music Publishing.

Primary Wave has been on something of a song-collection mission for a while now and has managed to accumulate the rights to some of the Beatles’ songs by John Lennon, the publishing catalogs of Kurt Cobain, Daryl Hall and John Oates, and Steve Earle.

The motivation for Tyler’s decision to sell the tunes may be due to some new tax laws that have recently taken effect. Previously, a sale like this would impose hefty income taxes on the seller but the change reduces that amount substantially and now imposes a much more reasonable capital gains tax.

How die-hard Aerosmith fans react to this sale remains to be seen. Tyler, of course, has the legal right to sell his material and now Primary Wave will be able to use the tunes as they see fit.

For his part, Tyler says he trusts Primary Wave founder Larry Mestel, to not misuse the music by using it to “sell mattresses.” I guess we’ll see.

Check out the Boston Globe for more on this story.