Draw the Line Book Aerosmith
Aerosmith was riding high, and gettin' higher, in 1976. Each of Aerosmith's four studio LP's to date were certified platinum, the group was a massive draw as a headlining act, and the wild party never stopped. However, Aersomith was feeling the effects of non-stop touring and recording. The _Rocks_ tour concluded in early '77. Following the hectic world tour, many close to the band felt it was time to take an extended break before starting work on their next album. However, there was no rest for the weary, as the group returned to the Wherehouse, in Waltham, to begin work on their fifth album. The brass at Columbia Records had tentatively planned on a release date of May 30, 1977, for Aerosmith's next LP. This was in line with the '70s standard of delivering an LP each year, although super-groups such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd deviated from this schedule. The pressure was on Aerosmith to write and record new material in a short time frame, that would stand up to the songs from their previous releases, namely _Toys in the Attic_ and _Rocks_. In addition, Columbia desired a live album from Aerosmith in late '77, to cash in on holiday sales. Once more Aerosmith elicited the talents of producer Jack Douglas for their fifth album, _Draw the Line_. Douglas was as close to the Aerosmith situation as anyone and he witnessed first hand what was transpiring. "I was working on _Draw the Line_, which was approaching the end of Aerosmith's inspiration," Douglas noted. "It was just too much road, not enough time to write, too much excess. Too much money! I mean when you've got two weeks off and tou're told to go write songs for your next album, and you've got all this money, you're gonna want to go out and have some fun, not sit at home banging out notes and words. I had to go out on a world tour with Aerosmith, just to finish it. Every time they were near a studio, I'd pull them in to finish up the record." (Record Review/Oct., 1981) According to Steven Tyler, writing and therefore recording fell behind schedule simply because the group was tapped out. They had no songs left in them. As it turned out, very little was done in pre-production. The songs for _Draw the Line_ came along very slowly during the drawn-out recording process. The pencil-pushers at CBS, as well as the management team of Leber/Krebs, failed to realize that the group's creativity had been pushed too the limit. It was a period when Aerosmith clearly needed more time off... and more space from each other. Conversely, Aerosmith was forced into the studio for a few weeks at a time, followed by selected tour dates, then back into the studio. This sequence was typical throughout '77, until _Draw the Line_ was finally completed. "You can't just sit down and expect to write all the songs for an album in one week," Steven injected, as tour commitments obviously retarded the writing process. "You can't really write on the road, especially with the likes of Perry and Kelleher (Aerosmith's burly tour manager) in the same hotel... with Whitford, Hamilton and Kramer too." (Hit Parader/January, 1978) Joe Perry: "_Draw the Line_ was a long album to do. We heard too much of it, we were too into it. We did some tracks in different studios, so it was all spread out and it wasn't as tight as I would've liked. I think our best playing has been on _Rocks_. There's a lot of playing on _Draw the Line_ that you can't hear." (Guitar Player/March, 1979). "We used to listen to our mixes so loud in the studio that everything sounded big. You'd listen to tracks on the threshold of pain, and after three days on blow, it sounded huge." (Guitar World/Dec., 1987) While recording dragged on, the drug use intensified. "Everybody was being irresponsible," Perry stated. "I don't claim I was better than anyone else. We'd lost a lot of respect for advice, or for anybody telling us what to do, or when to do it... we had a real party making _Draw the Line_." (Circus) By late June, with the initial planned release date for _Draw the Line_ already in the rear view mirror, Aerosmith was scheduled to perform a series of live shows. On June 24th, Aero performed the first of two shows in Houston, Texas. Aerosmith incorporated the song "Draw the Line" in the summer shows, but this was a case of touring without new product on the market. As Aerosmith bounced between the studio and the road, the new songs continued to come along slowly. Suddenly the summer months were slipping away and Aerosmith was set to depart for Europe, to begin their "Eurofest '77" tour. Aerosmith's first date on the "Eurofest" tour took place in Liege, Belgium, at the Blitzen Festival, on August 13th. The crowd began assemblying at 10:00 AM, for the event. Aerosmith headlined the day long festival, taking the stage at night, as the temperature hovered just above freezing, while rain feel over the festival-goers. Due to the cold and damp conditions, Aerosmith encountered problems keeping their instruments tuned. Despite the setbacks, the crowd responded enthusiastically to Aerosmith's performance. The poor weather in Belgium seemed to follow Aerosmith, as rain and chilly weather plagued their outdoor dates in Germany. During Aerosmith's show in Frankfurt, Steven Tyler's voice snapped. Tyler required a few days off to rest his raw throat. Therefore, two Swedish dates were cancelled. Aerosmith flew to England on August 23rd, as the band was scheduled to appear at the annual Reading Festival on the 27th, backing up headliner Thin Lizzy. With a few days of downtime, Jack Douglas managed to book some time at George Martin's AIR London Studio. Desperate to work on songs for _Draw the Line_, Aerosmith was working illegally in the foreign studio, as Aerosmith lacked the proper working permits to record in England. During Aerosmith's Reading Festival performance, Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen were special guests of the band backstage. Immediately following the Reading date, Aerosmith returned to the states, with several bad memories of their "Mudstock" tour of Europe. Aerosmith was now holed-up at the Cenacle, a converted convent in the sleepy town of Armonk, New York. Although Aerosmith was removed from the distractions of New York City, where they had previously recorded at the Record Plant, the member's of Aerosmith managed to keep the party going in the out-of-the-way town in upstate New York. "The Cenacle included sixty acres, with a great big house, and the Record Plant installed a studio for us," stated Joe Perry. "I don't know how much it cost us, but it was outrageous. They had a bar and people serving us... I'd wake up at four or five in the afternoon and say 'one Black Russian please'. We had motorcycles and Porsches and we'd go cruising around the countryside terrorizing everybody. We had a great time up there..." (Creem/Dec., 1978). As Joe Perry noted, recording at the Cenacle was an expensive endeavor, but Aerosmith's catalog of albums were the second biggest seller in the entire CBS family. Only Chicago's albums moved more units than Aerosmith. As a result, there was barely a budget restraint imposed on Aerosmith's recording sessions. This was a drastic departure from the early days, when Columbia barely promoted Aerosmith's self-titled debut LP. Due to the extended recording sessions for _DTL_, Joe Perry had to withdraw from co-producing David Johansen's solo LP, along with Jack Douglas. Perry did manage to contribute guitar work on a pair of tracks for the former New York Doll vocalist. In return, Johansen helped write a song with Aerosmith ("Sight for Sore Eyes"). The songs for _Draw the Line_ were virtually finished by the time Aerosmith hit the tour trail in October. On October 6th, Columbia released "Draw the Line" as an advance single, to coincide with the tour. However, the LP was still not in the stores. Shortly after the start of the Fall dates, Aerosmith's tour was interrupted due to injuries sustained by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Aerosmith had completed their set at the Philadelphia Spectrum, on October 9th. As the group was making their way back to the stage for an encore, someone in the crowd hurled an M-80 toward the band. Tyler temporarily suffered blurred vision due to the explosion, while Perry's left hand was badly burned. "This is something the band half expected for a long time, but we still weren't ready for it when it happened," bassist Tom Hamilton revealed. (Rolling Stone) Subsequent concert dates were cancelled through the end of October. Tyler spent some of the time putting on the final vocals for _Draw the Line_, while the remaining members of the group hung-out in Boston, waiting for the tour to resume in November. When the tour started again, insiders claim that Perry and Tyler really started to go over the edge. "Their drugged erratic behavior turned the tour into a three-ring circus," Hamilton confirmed. "We started a phase of doing too much to make touring tolerable. Soon intolerance took over. Before and after shows, band members retreated to their own dressing rooms to do their own drugs. Perry and Tyler couldn't stand the sight of on another." (People) "We pushed ourselves right into a corner," Tyler explained. "When I got off that tour, I remember waking up in my own home, not knowing where I was and dialing room service on my home phone." David Krebs, Steve Leber and their associates denied it at the time, but drugs and internal friction was ripping Aerosmith apart. _Draw the Line_ was finally released in early December of '77. The much anticipated follow-up to the raucous _Rocks_ LP came in far over-budget, at an estimated cost of over one million dollars. _Draw the Line_ shipped platinum, selling 1.5 million copies in it's first six weeks of release. This made _Draw the Line_ Aerosmith's fastest selling LP to date. The record debuted at number 48 on the Billboard chart. The LP eventually peaked at number 11, after six weeks. Despite the solid sales of the album out of the box, _Draw the Line_ signaled that not all was well in the Aerosmith camp... and rough times were just ahead. Unlike the pull of _Toys in the Attic_ and _Rocks_, _Draw the Line_ did not possess strong chart staying power. Following the initial demand for the LP, sales quickly tapered off. Abbreviated touring during the winter months also contributed to the relatively weak sales of _Draw the Line_. Aerosmith didn't return to the concert trail until mid-February of 1978. In effect, Aerosmith did the majority of their touring for _DTL_ prior to the release of the LP. Packaged with an Al Hirschfeld inked caricature of the group on the cover, _DTL_ starts strongly with the chainsaw driven riff that propels the rockin' title track. "Draw The Line" was only one of three cuts written exclusively by the talented tag team of Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. The Tyler/Perry duo truly earned the "Toxic Twins" tag by 1978. Steven and Joe were typically too out of it to work at length on new material for the group's fifth studio album. Therefore, the creative load included more contributions from Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer, as well as assistance from outside sources. Other prime numbers from _Draw the Line_ include a raging cover of "Milk Cow Blues", the ambitious "Kings and Queens", the funky "Sight for Sore Eyes", "I Wanna Know Why", and the thick guitar onslaught of "Critical Mass". In addition, Joe Perry's "Bright Light Fright", which finds the moody guitarist flippin' off day break, is a precursor to Perry's solo career. While _DTL_ kicks ass in spots, the album doesn't come close to the standard established by earlier releases from the Boston-based bad boys. Aerosmith fans anticipated a much stronger effort from the group, after the run of previous ball bustin' Aero albums. It wasn't to be. This was the beginning of the end for the band in the '70s. In short, _Draw the Line_ is Aerosmith's big time drug album. Coked out and road worn, the boys desperately needed time off. As Joe Perry noted years later: "The Beatles made their _White Album_. We made our _Black Out_ album." KNOCK IT BACK!
Source: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/aerosmith/draw-the-line/