Few things embody the romance of being in an up-and-coming band as well as the ugly, broken van that you can use to drive to gigs, carry gear, and fill with unsold t-shirts. On a recent episode of History’s American Pickers, hosts Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz managed to find a legitimate piece of band van history when they found the actual tour van that Aerosmith used in the ‘70s rotting in the woods of Massachusetts. Boston.com has a photo of the van, which looks like something straight out of the nuclear debris of a Fallout game, and it says that the man who owns the land that the van was found on didn’t really have any idea what it was. On the show, he explained that the van was there when he bought the property and that the previous owner had some connection to Aerosmith, but he didn’t know if it was a valuable hunk of garbage or just a normal hunk of garbage.
The American Pickers guys called in some favors, with Black Keys member Dan Auerbach reaching out to Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and founding member Ray Tabano to see if the van was the real thing. He was only a proper member of Aerosmith for a couple years, but the van apparently made an impression on Tabano because he was able to confirm that it was indeed the real 1964 International Harvester Metro that he and the other Aerosmith boys used to drive around in. Wolfe and Fritz ended up buying the rusted piece of junk for $25,000, which may seem like a lot, but not when you consider the possibility that the Aerosmith song “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” was written about this van.
“I don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to fall asleep cause I’d miss you, van, and I don’t wanna miss a thing.” Those are the lyrics, right?