Nine Lives

The twelfth studio album began at Criteria Studios in Miami with producer Glen Ballard, where Tyler and Ballard wrote the lyrics for Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees), Taste of India and Pink. Joey Kramer was grieving and suffering from depression, and Steve Ferrone played drums for a while. Columbia was unhappy with the nine tracks, and in July 1996 the band asked manager Tim Collins to step down. They hired Kevin Shirley and set up at Avatar Studios in New York, starting again in September 1996 and re-recording the finished songs with Kramer. John Kalodner helped cut 24 songs to 13. The band first called the record Vindaloo, after the Indian touches such as Ramesh Mishra's sarangi on Taste of India, then took Nine Lives as the title for the troubled making of it.

It reached number one on the Billboard 200 and sold over two million copies in the United States, and Pink won a Grammy. The original cover, which showed the Hindu god Krishna with a cat's head, was protested by the Hindu community, and the record company apologized and replaced it. The Nine Lives Tour began in May 1997, was the longest of the band's career, and ran into 1999 because of the success of I Don't Want to Miss a Thing. Erlewine of AllMusic found the album overlabored, while Elysa Gardner of Rolling Stone was more favorable.