WALK THIS WAY: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AEROSMITH

It's amazing they can still walk, period. Chronicling these grizzled rock survivors from their '70s heyday through their sobriety-fueled comeback, Stephen Davis's oral history finds Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and cohorts readily copping to excessive partying, under-the-influence record making, band-wife catfights, lost fortunes -- and drugs, lots of 'em. Each time they reach a new low in self-abuse, Aerosmith top themselves, making Walk This Way a rarity among rock memoirs -- a what-now? page-turner. (Even the making of their Geffen comeback albums turns out to be traumatic.) Only the future-looks-bright ending rings a tad false; with a band this volatile (and given the comparative flop of their latest release, Nine Lives), it's almost worth waiting for a ''revised edition'' to see what happened this year. A-