Aerosmith draw the line
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As soon as you hit the first line, you close your eyes and think, “AIt’s gonna be another great album.” Imagine you’re a teenage Aero fan it’s December of 1977 and you’re curled up in front of your stereo with a joint, a bag of cheese puffs and the new album your favorite band has helpfully ralphed out just in time for the Christmas season. And Steven Tyler tops it off with a burst of attytood: “Checkmate, honey / Beat you at your own damn game.” Joe Perry and Brad Whitford start beating the tar out of another filthy riff. Lee ever fought for.)Ī single sludgy guitar chord rings out. (Seventies Aerosmith is at least as grand a Lost Cause as anything Robert E. Well, the high-water mark of Aerosmith can be found about 20 seconds into the Draw the Line album.
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You know that point on the battlefield at Gettysburg that represents the “high-water mark of the Confederacy” - the last best attacking moment of the Confederate Army? We made our blackout album.” - Joe Perryġ. Less ambitious but equally charming is “Bright Light Fright” – Perry’s solo spot and another glimpse into the band’s life at the time: “It’s the dawn of the day and I’m crashed and I’m smashed / As it is I’m feeling like my chips are cashed.” Draw the Line as a whole is indeed a crashed and smashed album, but hey, who’s to say that rock ‘n’ roll needs to be sober and in good shape in order to work? And as far as I’m concerned, Aerosmith were one of the bands that best summed up the genre’s attitude during the 1970s, and this is definitely one last success for them before things really started going downhill.“The Beatles made their White Album. And a convincing one at that, with a sense of urgency given by the speeding of the tempo, an emotional guitar solo after the climax, and finally, a haunting coda with Tyler’s overdubbed screams and moans. No ballads are featured this time around, but instead we get something that is perhaps even more outside of Aerosmith’s comfort zone – “Kings and Queens,” an obvious nod to the prog rock scene both lyrically and musically. And the underrated “The Hand That Feeds” and “Sight for Sore Eyes” both just gleam with energy and enthusiasm which ultimately transcends any compositional flaw. “Critical Mass” may sound like a “critical mess” at first, with those astral guitars that keep fading in and out and the really buried vocals, but I’d take an entertaining mess over a calculated but predictable success any day. “Get It Up” may be at first remembered for Tyler’s hooky chorus, but its real foundation is the riff the band locks into – both funky and heavy at the same time. None of the other songs on Draw the Line really reach that level of intensity, but most of them have something to offer. Add that to another instantly-memorable Joe Perry riff and what you get is a fine, fine piece of 70s hard rock. When Steven Tyler screams his lungs out in the album-opening title track, it really does sound like he’s exorcising some personal demons as opposed to just abusing a gimmick.
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Sure, they were still popular, but their music always had a certain dose of threat, darkness and heaviness that gave them an edge. Let me explain: the Aerosmith of the 1970s were not the family-friendly, MTV-hit machine that they would become in the next decades. Yet, having said all that, all of these complaints and many others somehow seem to become completely null once you really get into the spirit of the album. The production is messy and muddy, especially when compared to the rather “clean” heaviness of Rocks. The compositions are arguably inferior, with the Tyler/Perry song-writing team credited only with three of them. What happens next? All recording sessions are done in an atmosphere of complete uncontrollable mess, and not so much as a unit, but with each individual member popping into the studio to add his own part.ĭo you have this picture in mind? Because if you do, and if you’re also familiar with Aerosmith’s previous material, you’ll have a fairly accurate idea of what Draw the Line sounds like. Now imagine their manager comes up with this idea for the next album: the band would relocate in an abandoned convent as a mean to keep them away from the show-biz excesses. Add extensive touring and press coverage to the mix, as well as the toll all of this takes on the interpersonal relationships within the group. Parties, drugs, booze and groupies are now the order of the day.
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Imagine a rock n’ roll band who just got catapulted into international stardom by their latest two albums.