Dude Looks Like a Lady - American Idol 2011

Inside Television 540

Publication Date: 2-11-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Ray Davies - NOT Steven Tyler ... (I think)

I promised a few weeks ago that I was going to let 'American Idol' settle in to its new judging panel before reviewing it. In effect, I gave it the equivalent of the Broadway tryout: watch the show, take notes on the show, but don't critique the show until the kinks have been worked out. And I did write kinks, not Kinks, although Ray Davies might someday make an interesting judge or mentor.

But instead of the guy who wrote, "walks like a woman and talks like a man" ('Lola' if you had to ask), we have the guy who wrote 'Dude Looks Like a Lady'. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Mr. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith!

Eh? What's that?

Joe Perry (Aerosmith guitarist): "(American Idol is) one step above Ninja Turtles. It's his business, but I don't want Aerosmith's name associated with it."

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Mr. Steven Tyler of Not Aerosmith!

I completely agree with Jon Caramanica of the 'New York Times' who wrote this Wednesday that essentially this year is Steven Tyler's year. No great surprise there. It never has been Randy Jackson's year, Ryan Seacrest's year, and Jennifer Lopez has always had a certain glow about her that one associates more with manufacturing than with artistic inspiration. The only real question has been whether Tyler was going to have the attraction of a nasty amusement park accident (picture Paula Abdul on a plunging roller coaster), or the attraction of a shrewd industry player who has managed to profit from - dear God - 40 years in the rock industry.

A sure bet: Steven Tyler will never ever cover The Who's 'My Generation'. "Hope I die before I get old"? Too late for that.

So which is it: crash or soar? Well, as T.S. Eliot wrote in 'The Hollow Men':

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

In this case, we have a rather substantial shadow. For every 'ewww skiv' moment of Tyler observing rather too closely attractive 18 year olds, there is many more of a man quite seriously enjoying his new job. In four weeks, he has clearly become the Lead Judge, the one whose opinion counts. Instead of Simon Cowell lobbing grenades into the air then shooting at them with a bird gun, we have Steven Tyler feeling the songs along with the contestants.

Clearly we don't know how all this will work once the audition phase is over. (By the way, I never knew until that NYT article that the scenes where the auditioners meet the judges are actually weeks after the mass auditions.) Will Tyler become even more acute in his judging, or will he fall back into the catch-phrase swamp ('that was a little pitchy dawg') that has been Idol's Achilles Heel? But this will be a trip worth taking. Trips and Steven Tyler. They go together like ... trips and Steven Tyler. Be seeing you.