Draw the Line (Aerosmith album)
| Draw the Line | ||||
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| Studio album by Aerosmith | ||||
| Released | December 1, 1977 | |||
| Recorded | June–October 1977 | |||
| Studio | The Cenacle The Record Plant |
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| Genre | Hard rock, heavy metal, blues rock | |||
| Length | 35:14 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Aerosmith, Jack Douglas | |||
| Aerosmith chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Draw the Line | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| Robert Christgau | (B-) |
| Rolling Stone | (unfavorable) |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Draw the Line is the fifth studio album by American hard rock band Aerosmith, released December 1, 1977. It was recorded in an abandoned convent near New York City, rented out for that purpose.
The portrait of the band was drawn by the celebrity caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
According to AllMusic, ""The band shies away from studio experimenting and dabbling in different styles; instead they return to simple, straight-ahead hard rock." Kerrang! magazine listed the album at #37 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".
By 1977, Aerosmith had released four studio albums, the two most recent - Toys in the Attic (1975) and Rocks (1976) - catapulting the band to stardom. However, as the band began recording their next album, Draw the Line, their excessive lifestyle, combined with constant touring, began to take its toll. "Draw the Line was untogether because we weren't a cohesive unit anymore," guitarist Joe Perry admitted in the Stephen Davis band memoir Walk This Way. "We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs.
According to Steven Tyler's autobiography Does the Noise In My Head Bother You, David Krebs suggested that Aerosmith record their next album at an estate near Armonk, New York called the Cenacle, "away from the temptation of drugs." The plan failed miserably, however, with Tyler recalling, "Drugs can be imported, David...we have our resources. Dealers deliver! Hiding us away in a three-hundred room former convent was a prescription for total lunacy." Largely due to their drug consumption, both Tyler and Perry were not as involved in the writing and recording as they had been on previous albums. According to Perry:
A lot of people had input into that record because Steven and I had stopped giving a fuck. "Draw the Line," "I Wanna Know Why," and "Get It Up" were the only things Steven and I wrote together. Tom, Joey and Steven came up with "Kings and Queens," and Brad played rhythm and lead. Brad and Steven wrote "The Hand That Feeds," which I didn't even play on because I'd stayed in bed the day they recorded it and Brad played great on it anyway.
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Wikipedia