Out of the lineup

This is Aerosmith before they were Aerosmith, captured in grainy black and white, back in the days when they spent nights jamming in the BU basement and dreamed of making it big. But today - nearly four decades, 12 multi-platinum albums, and 2.5 million copies of “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith’’ later - one face is missing from that picture. In 1971, a year before Aerosmith was signed to Columbia Records and began the dizzy climb to fame, Tabano split from the group.

The “Bad Boys of Boston,’’ as Aerosmith has been called, are creakier now, their joints less limber, their manes not as lustrous. Their current tour has been plagued by a rash of illness and injury. Several band members have needed surgery in recent months, including frontman Tyler, who toppled from a stage in South Dakota last week. But their place in the rock ’n’ roll pantheon is solidly fixed.

Over time, most rock bands tend to reshuffle. They’re volatile, variable, charged with the frenetic energy of charisma and competition.

“Almost any band you can think of has a Raymond Tabano story,’’ said Stephen Davis, a former music editor at Rolling Stone and author of “Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith.’’ “Very few have all the original members. They often start as a crazy gang, just a few guys getting together to see what it sounds like.’’ Most rock bands - a chemical reaction of personalities that can be electric, explosive, or both - leave someone behind along the way.

The Beatles had Pete Best, the moody drummer eventually replaced by Ringo Starr, and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, who left the group for art school in ’61 and died of a brain hemorrhage a year later. The Rolling Stones shed a drummer, a keyboardist, and several guitarists before its final lineup was cemented. So what does it feel like to be the one who wasn’t, to always wonder about what could have been?

“Sometimes, nostalgia sets in,’’ said Tabano, 62, who runs a catering company in Yonkers, N.Y. “But I don’t dwell. I have to be content with my life. You can’t go back and start regretting things.’’

Tabano and Steven Tyler - then Steven Tallarico - were childhood friends in Yonkers, where they grew up amid a cluster of squat white houses and tidy lawns. They both played in bands in high school and wanted to pursue music after graduation.

Tyler knew a guitarist named Joe Perry who was in a group called the Jam Band with bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer David “Pudge’’ Scott. In the early ’70s, they moved to Boston, where a friend let them rehearse in BU music rooms. And the first lineup of Aerosmith - rhythm guitarist Tabano, singer Tyler, lead guitarist Perry, bassist Hamilton, and drummer Joey Kramer - was born.

Scott, a student at Weston High School, got left behind. His parents wouldn’t let him skip town to join a rock band. “I was pretty brokenhearted about it,’’ Scott said.

The band began playing small venues around Boston, but Tabano’s personality was a bit too combustible, his guitar skills not exactly up to par, according to Davis, who interviewed the band for his book. (None of the current members of Aerosmith would comment for this story.)

“One day, Steven told me, you gotta practice more, you’re not on the same level,’’ Tabano said. “In the end, I guess I realized, maybe I shouldn’t be here.’’ And that was it. It was fall of 1971. He remembers the motorcycle ride home from that last gig, the wind on his face, feeling angry and bitter and a bit relieved to be done with it all - in his words, “the not making money, the drinking, the getting nowhere.’’

Guitarist Brad Whitford replaced him in the band, but Tabano returned a few years later to help out behind the scenes. He spearheaded merchandise sales, designed Aerosmith’s original logo - that iconic winged “A’’ - and tended to the band’s backstage needs. In the late ’70s, he split from the band for good.

Meanwhile, Scott graduated from high school in 1974 and watched from a distance as Aerosmith took off. “It was almost like something had died in my life,’’ he said. Reeling from regret, he decided to forgo college and try to make it in his own band.

“I thought, I was the original drummer who was almost in Aerosmith, it’ll be easy to get record companies to listen to my music,’’ Scott said. “I was wrong.’’ In 1980, he put away the drumsticks professionally and went to work for Hewlett-Packard.

Scott, now 54, is a short, buttoned-up man in khakis and Reebok sneakers. He works as a sales consultant in North Reading.

“Everyone always says to me, ‘Oh you must have kicked yourself for not moving to Boston with the band, you would’ve been this and that, you would’ve had fancy cars,’ ’’ Scott said. He still has a drum set in his basement and the original album cover of the “Jam Band’’ - a psychedelic swirl of flames and eyeballs drawn by Joe Perry in colored pencil - hangs on the wall.

Today, Tabano has slick gray hair and a tough, open stance. One arm is tattooed with a formidable blue dragon that means “inner strength,’’ he says. Standing in his kitchen in Yonkers - a gleaming tile affair complete with a bowl of lemons that his wife has arranged daintily on the table - he looks almost debonair. He wears a chef’s jacket emblazoned with “Raymond Tabano: 5 Star Gourmet Catering.’’ Becoming a chef, he says, was something that occurred to him while dealing with caterers for Aerosmith. “I realized I like the nuts and bolts of things, the behind-the-scenes stuff,’’ he said. After finishing with Aerosmith, and a stint in rehab, he spent six months at a French culinary institute in Manhattan.

All relics of his Aerosmith days are stowed in the basement. “Walk this way,’’ Tabano says with a grin, motioning toward the stairs. Framed albums line the walls. Old photos and records are heaped in corners of the room. Tabano pulls a glossy tangle of backstage passes from the closet and dangles it from his fingers: “Toys in the Attic’’ Tour ’75, “Nine Lives Tour’’ ’97, Rocksimus Maximus Tour ’03.

Scott, too, has a collection of VIP passes. “If I could have one wish, it would be to play one tune on stage with them,’’ he says. “That would be pretty cool.’’

Tabano has been to hundreds of Aerosmith concerts over the years. He is still awestruck, he admits, when he sees the hysterical crowds, the glare of the stage lights, the tour buses plastered with the names of the guys he used to play with. “It just blows me away,’’ he says. “I think, man, they sure came a long way.’’

He sinks into a chair and cradles his electric guitar, a sleek Fender Stratocaster.

“I was there for the birth of rock ’n roll,’’ he says. “There was the ’60s revolution and all of the sudden everybody was conscious. Everything was in Technicolor, not in black and white. I consider myself really lucky to have been part of something that most people only read about.’’

He leans the guitar against a wall, picks up a faded record from a pile on the floor and gently blows dust off its cover.

“Sometimes I think that I’m never destined to be great, but I’m allowed to walk amongst the great,’’ he says. “And anyway, fame comes with a price - there’s no privacy, no normalcy.’’ Tabano and his wife have been married 15 years, and they have date nights every Monday. He makes her salmon with a miso glaze, her favorite dish.

Standing at the window of his living room, Tabano looks out at the lush backyard, the quiet street, the neat rows of houses in the same neighborhood where he and Tyler once rode their bikes together and shimmied up trees.

“I might struggle a little to make ends meet sometimes, but I’m free,’’ he says. “This is who I’m supposed to be.’’

Laura Bennett can be reached at lbennett@globe.com.