On Friday, Aerosmith played a two-hour show before a less-than-sellout crowd of 9,000 at the Helsinki Arena. The following day, the 66-year-old Tyler showed up outside the city’s best-known department store, Stockmann, on the Aleksanterinkatu shopping street.
He took over a street musician’s arrangement of water-filled bottles to bang out a rough version of the band’s 1973 hit “Dream On”, complete with gleeful laughs and shouts.
Tyler published a video of the performance on his Facebook page under the headline “Hitting the bottle hard in Helsinki” – apparently a reference to his highly-publicised battles with alcoholism. Within less than a hour, the video had earned more than 20,000 “likes”. In recent years Tyler, the father of actress Liv Tyler, has become known as a judge on the American Idol TV show and at the Miss Universe contest.
Earlier this year, Aerosmith’s appearance at the Helsinki Arena was thrown into doubt after two of the venue’s principal owners ended up on a US sanctions list over Russia’s actions in Ukraine. On Sunday the band is scheduled to play in Stockholm, Sweden, while another American act, Miley Cyrus, plays the Helsinki Arena.
Click here to see the video on Tyler's Facebook page, where he also posted a photo of himself posing on Pohjoisesplanadi and a video of himself putting a note in the keyhole of Cyrus's hotel room door.