AEROSMITH Frontman Dumps Longtime Manager

AEROSMITH guitarist Joe Perry's wife has confirmed via Twitter that the band's lead singer, Steven Tyler, has left the Boston rockers' longtime handlers, HK Management, and signed a separate deal. "Steven has new management," Billie Perry wrote. "We [and] the [rest of the] band still have the honorable Howard Kaufman/Trudy Green", who have managed AEROSMITH since 1999.

Tyler, 61, is now being represented by Union Entertainment Group, which also manages NICKELBACK, CINDERELLA, LYNCH MOB, HINDER and LYNAM).

AEROSMITH bassist Tom Hamilton is sitting out some dates on the band's current U.S. tour as he recuperates from non-invasive surgery, according to the group's publicist. Filling in for Hamilton is David Hull, who played bass with the group in 2006 when Hamilton was recovering from throat cancer. It was not specified what kind of surgery Hamilton had, or whether it was related to his battle with cancer three years ago. Hamilton recently told The Pulse of Radio that he's been doing well. "Feeling good. Feeling really good, yeah," he said. "I've got to go in and get checked every now and then, but so far, so good. I'm going from six weeks to six weeks, so you know, I'm pretty sure I'm cool, but you never know. You might go in there and they'll say there's some kind of trouble going on."

Hamilton is the third member of AEROSMITH to go down in the month since the band began its tour. First, guitarist Brad Whitford sat out the first few weeks of the trek after having surgery to relieve bleeding in his skull from a car injury. Then Tyler apparently injured his leg onstage on June 29, forcing the group to postpone its last seven shows, including weekend gigs in Florida.

The extent of Tyler's leg injury was revealed by drummer Joey Kramer in an interview with Philadelphia radio station WYSP earlier this week, where he told host Danny Bonaduce, "There's two big muscles in your legs, one's the quadricep, and he ripped that muscle. And it's painful, it hurts; for the first couple of days, he couldn't even stand up or walk or anything."

AEROSMITH resumed the tour this past Wednesday night (July 15) in Atlanta, with Whitford rejoining them.