Does Steven Tyler ever find himself inappropriately attracted to his daughter Liv?
That’s one of those questions you ask last in an interview, in case the guy gets offended and hangs up the phone. But when I asked Tyler, the Aerosmith singer replied, “Oh, absolutely,” adding his trademark cackle. “How can a father not be attracted to his daughter, especially when she’s a cross between the girl he married and himself? Unless he’s an ugly man, a father is always gonna be sexually attracted to his daughter on a certain level.” So you’re saying incest is based in vanity? “Positively, there’s a certain level of narcissism in incest. All a man has to do is be totally honest with himself and he can see it. However, the real man knows that’s just a place to never go. Instead he celebrates it by telling his daughter how beautiful she is and what a precious child of God she is. There’s ways to love it without making love to it–I wrote ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ about fathers who don’t know the difference.”
(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)