Sammy Hagar was invited to replace Aerosmith's Steven Tyler

Sammy Hagar was asked to replace Steven Tyler in Aerosmith two years ago, a new interview confirms. But I can't picture it, myself.

In Saturday night's episode of VH1's That Metal Show Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford explained that--back in 2010 when Tyler announced he was going to be a judge on American Idol--the group started scouting around for possible replacements. And the Chickenfoot frontman's name came up.

"We spoke to Sammy, and he was really excited about it," Whitford told host Eddie Trunk. "I love Sammy, and I was like, ‘Oh man this would be so cool!’ [But] it all started to come back together on its own [with Tyler], like it was going to and should have.”

Aerosmith's other guitar player, Joe Perry, had previously hinted at the possibility of someone else taking over from Tyler--without actually naming names. When he called me back in January of 2010 to promote a Vancouver gig by the Joe Perry Project, he had this to say about the singer, who was battling an addiction to painkillers at the time.

"Right now I know Steven's in the process of getting some help for himself, but other than that I don't know what he's doing," said Perry. "He's talked about takin' time off from the band, so we're in the process of looking for a singer, 'cause we want to get out there and rock."

Fortunately--or perhaps not--the two former Toxic Twins reconciled, the original Aerosmith lineup stayed intact, and now the band has a new CD slated for release in November. Perry had previously suggested that the album, produced by legendary knob-twiddler Jack Douglas, was going to be a return to the group's early sound, when they wrote the material themselves and didn't bring in outside songwriters to try and make hits. But then word got out that Music From Another Dimension would actually feature hired-gun tunesmiths after all--like Vancouver's Jim Vallance, who cowrote the new disc's questionable first video/single, "Legendary Child".

As for Sammy Hagar being the lead singer in Aerosmith, like I said before, I can't picture it. He's not raggedy enough, for one thing. Plus--an ungodly debut album notwithstanding--he seems to be doing alright with Chickenfoot. As he told forbes.com last year, he's been invited to join lots of high-profile bands.

"I was asked at one time to be in Mötley Crüe," he said. "I was asked at one time to be in Pantera by their managers. I was asked to be in Velvet Revolver when Scott Weiland quit and went back to the Stone Temple Pilots. I was waiting to be asked to be in Led Zeppelin to say no, since they were the greatest band on earth and no could replace Robert Plant.

"I was asked to be in Aerosmith and I said no," he continued. "Certain bands and certain frontman singers are more difficult to replace than others. Steven Tyler and that band have stayed together for forty years and you don’t want to walk into something like that."

That's right. Plus, not everybody can avoid tripping over all those scarves.

You can follow Steve Newton on Twitter at twitter.com/earofnewt.