On This Day in 1970, One of the Best-Selling Rock Bands of All Time Was Nearly Kicked Out of Their First-Ever Show (At a Local High School)

The students (and staff) of Nipmuc Regional High School likely had no idea they were about to witness history being made when they entered the gymnasium on November 6, 1970, to attend a school dance featuring live music from a newly formed local band called Aerosmith. But history in the making it was—for both the town and the musicians. The unassuming Friday night social marked the debut of the band that would go on to become one of the most ubiquitous in classic rock history.

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But back then, school employees regarded the rock band as little more than long-haired, booze-drinking, shirt-stealing miscreants. And sure, they might have been right in their perception of the band. Nonetheless, that was just the kind of attitude that would propel Aerosmith to rock ‘n’ roll stardom.

Aerosmith Almost Got Kicked Out of Their First Show

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry’s childhood home was only minutes away from Nipmuc Regional High School, the venue that would host the band for their very first show. They didn’t necessarily land the gig on merit. Perry was friends with some of the students at the school. They convinced the teachers to push for the band to play at their next dance on November 6, 1970. That was no short order for the teachers, either. “It was a hard battle to actually get them there,” Carl Olson, a history teacher at Nipmuc at the time, recalled to the Milford Daily News. “[The principal] wasn’t too enthralled with the idea, but we worked on him long enough.”

Thanks to Aerosmith’s rock ‘n’ roll shenanigans, that first show that the Nipmuc staff worked so hard to schedule almost didn’t happen. “The band was drinking Boone’s Farm wine before the concert and almost got tossed,” another local teacher told Milford Daily News. Steven Tyler also stole a Nipmuc shirt from the school locker room. He wore it during the performance, further solidifying the band’s “bad boy” reputation. (Perry had already done some work in this regard by getting into a fight with his principal at a nearby school over whether he should cut his hair.)

Overall, the concert was as successful as a rock ‘n’ roll concert in a high school gymnasium could be. “They didn’t play many songs, but it was loud,” Olson said. “And the kids loved it. The adults were a little taken back.”

The Band’s Debut Set the Stage for Their Shows to Come

The high school paid Aerosmith $50 for their appearance that night. And while those cheap-seat days would soon be long behind them, other aspects of their very first show remained. The musicians continued to wreak havoc and play into their rebellious reputation at the venues they played. The band also fought over their set immediately after they got off the stage at Nipmuc Regional High School—another habit that would come to define the band’s aggressive and sometimes tense dynamic.

The fact that they played a high school at all was indicative of how Aerosmith would continue to cut their teeth throughout the early 1970s. Rather than focusing on clubs and bars, Aerosmith went where other bands didn’t. This decision garnered criticism from their musical peers. But it worked to develop a devoted fanbase in and around their homebase.

“We never got into the club circuit ‘cause they didn’t want to hear original music back then,” Perry later said. “If you couldn’t play a whole set of what was on the jukebox, then they just didn’t hire you. So, we used to promote our own shows. We’d hire out the town hall and put up posters. It was why a lot of Boston bands didn’t really recognize us as a Boston band. We didn’t play the game like everyone else. We did it our own way.”

(Photo by Ross Marino/Getty Images)