Rock Stars Talk Back

As the Polish Prince protested to me down at Detroit's Masonic Auditorium, moments after ejecting myself and a rock critic friend (in his capacity as a security guard), "I don't treat women like that. I don't treat rock writers like that, either." Well, I'll swear on his burgundy van that he did throw us out, and if women are the niggers of the world then rock writers are the garbagemen of Mars, forever doomed to clean out the kitty litters of the mind. To everybody but rock musicians, who think us stoned-out junkies wearing kooky dark shades, talking in faded bebop lingo, invoking endless literary and cinematic metaphors in endless, flatulent five-finger exercises thought up by bored editors to keep themselves in Marlboro Lights and short ribs. Of course, they are right. We have decided to torture said rock musicians further by making them express their thoughts on rock writers in print, which usually only confronts them on the menu of the Continental Hyatt House coffee shop.. .but who are we to laugh at the frailties of others? We have wiped their noses and corrected their spelling, and the results follow. Editor (and Field Marshal) Patti Smith has contributed her thoughts, as well.—Ed.

STEVEN TYLER / AEROSMITH LEAST FAVE CRITIC: "No comment."