Tyler has "bunch of songs" for new Aerosmith album

Singer Steven Tyler of the U.S. rock band Aerosmith performs at the Sweden Rock Festival in Solvesborg June 10, 2010.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler said on Tuesday the band would start work on its first new studio album in a decade, and promised that his new gig as a judge on "American Idol" would not get in the way.

"We've certainly been writing," Tyler, 62, told journalists. "I know (guitarist) Joe (Perry) has got some licks and I've got a bunch of songs that I've written for solo and/or Aerosmith, and next Saturday, we start."

He said his bandmates would join him in Los Angeles, where he will tape "American Idol." The show's 10th season premieres on Wednesday. Last week, he said Aerosmith would tour Japan and South America at the end of year after his "Idol" commitments are over.

"What you hear in the press about Aerosmith getting in the way of 'American Idol,' it just isn't so," he added on Tuesday.

Aerosmith has sold more than 150 million albums since forming in 1970, but a 2009 feud between Tyler and his bandmates threatened to break up the so-called "Bad Boys of Boston."

The band has tried several times to record a follow-up to 2001's "Just Press Play," but has been thwarted by various injuries. Internal frustrations overheated when Tyler fell of the stage in the middle of a song, bringing their 2009 summer tour to a premature end.

His decision last year to join the pop-oriented "American Idol" raised a lot of eyebrows. But he said fans would get to see a "more vulnerable, more honest" side of him on the show.

"All that TV is getting is that other side of me. It'd be like if there were reality cameras in the house while the kids were growing up. That's the side of me they're seeing. And if Aerosmith fans don't like that, then all they saw was the ominous, dark -- or open, however you choose to see me -- (side of me) onstage when Aerosmith comes to town.

"But here I get to be more vulnerable, more honest, more open, more in the moment and less colored by the songs that I wrote," he said.

Tyler said his contract with the top-rated singing contest was for more than one year. But asked about the future, he said evasively "as you know, things are what they are."

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; editing by Dean Goodman)