Artist: Aerosmith
Label: Columbia Records
Release: 1977
Draw The Line brings together the best and the worst “traits” of one of the biggest hard rock bands of the seventies. Yes, we’re talking about Aerosmith. The naive Boston lads, riding the wave of Toys In The Attic and especially the phenomenal rock punch of Rocks, turned almost overnight into dangerous, fear-inspiring rock & roll warriors, determined to sweep away any and all competition. But all that striving to become the biggest and the best naturally comes at a price, and with Draw The Line that price starts to show for the first time.
In many ways, Draw The Line actually recalls its more famous predecessors, as it often overflows with plenty of quality rock & roll, with all the trademark Tyler vocal outbursts, dirty Perry slide solos, and “textbook” Hamilton bass lines. So what’s missing? Mostly, Draw The Line suffers from a chronic lack of that real “high-flying” energy. And while the Tyler-Perry duo used to be a reliable source of top-notch rock anthems, here the two guys get lost way too often in sloppy, at times even half-baked musical ideas. In this situation, even seasoned production master Jack Douglas, who had smoothed over plenty of rough patches in the past, turns out to be helpless. The old fox can only watch, powerless, as the gap between those two gentlemen yawns wider and wider, eventually ending in a total breakdown of the system and the final crash of the flying blacksmiths.
Even though Draw The Line already shows the first signs of the coming “apocalypse,” it still offers true rock & roll fans plenty of joyful moments. One of them is the opener, which is also the title track, where, apart from Tyler’s convincing vocals, Joe Perry’s slide dominates throughout. It’s the simple poetry of raw rock & roll, polished with all the charm of Steven’s erotic emphasis. Just how well this one-of-a-kind combination works is shown by the next track, I Wanna Know Why, which cools the heated passions down a little. The bouncy song gets stuck in your head fast, mostly thanks to the solid Hamilton – Kramer rhythm section, who also get to let loose on the phenomenally executed Critical Mass. It’s one of Hamilton’s best creations, fully on par with two other gems of his, Sweet Emotion and the much later Janie’s Got A Gun.
This is also where we first run into some kind of aimless funky marches, which, with Tyler’s well-judged charming, still manage to leave a smile on your face. Get It Up and the slightly more listenable The Hand That Feeds are, up to that point, the two most bizarre Aerosmith creations. Almost as bizarre as Perry’s oddity Bright Light Fright, where it’ll probably remain a mystery for a long time why you’d hand the vocals to Perry’s colorless whining when you’ve got a singer like Steven Tyler in the band! Funk rock, along with yet another brilliant Hamilton bass line, returns in grand style with Sight For Sore Eyes. Its complete opposite is Whitford’s Kings And Queens, a dark affair, thematically very reminiscent of Nobody’s Fault. Gems like these and similar ones from the other three gentlemen come in very handy, as they successfully fill in the cracks left behind by the slowly but surely collapsing Tyler-Perry relationship. The two show signs of life again with an excellent cover of the good old Milk Cow Blues. This dynamic version serves up a bunch of thrilling guitar duels, the peak of which is a heavily spiced solo on Tyler’s harmonica. Definitely the real deal for all fearless fans of raw, ragged blues rock.
Taken as a whole, Draw The Line is actually a very solid album, but next to the high-flying aero achievements of Toys In The Attic and Rocks, it’s still a big step back. For all true Aerosmith devotees, Draw The Line will be remembered above all as the last album by the original Aerosmith lineup, whose reunion they’d have to wait almost a whole decade for.
Lineup
Steven Tyler: vocals
Joe Perry: guitar
Brad Whitford: guitar
Tom Hamilton: bass
Joey Kramer: drums
Production
Jack Douglas
Tracklist
1.Draw The Line
2.I Wanna Know Why
3.Critical Mass
4.Get It Up
5.Bright Light Fright
6.Kings And Queens
7.The Hand That Feeds
8.Sight For Sore Eyes
9.Milk Cow Blues
Album length: 34.59
