And this was roughly Aerosmith's version of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street - from a sheer chemical intake standpoint, if you know the story behind the making of Draw The Line - except that in Aerosmith's case, they did it on a bigger, better, and far more dangerous scale. I think the album cover is a total misrepresentation, from the perspective that it trivializes the magnitude of the experience these guys must have really put themselves through, just to complete the album. In retrospect, all they really needed to do was "draw the line", and put the biggest lines of cocaine imaginable on the cover, but then again, record stores were always family settings, weren't they? Bad drug jokes aside, this was really the downslope of the other side of the mountain, of the fast lifestyle these guys were living. Draw The Line contains the same amount - no, maybe more energy than Rocks and Toys in the Attic - but most definitely, the vibe is different than those two records. The band is more jittery, unfocused, harder to get a read on, and - like the average crackhead on the street - paranoid with everything it comes into contact with, either real or imagined. The title track kicks off the affair on a riff and groove as ferocious and brutal as anything they have done before, but even here, the mindset is on the next hit to keep the high going. "I Wanna Know Why" is where the paranoia kicks in. And then "Critical Mass" starts a small run of tracks where it is all too obvious - too many drugs, not enough sleep, and it is falling apart. "Get It Up" is one of the most grotesque songs in Aerosmith's 70's catalog. I don't even know how to describe the actual style - all I know is, they have reached the point of the party where everyone is too trashed to care about anything, and now the old, decrepit hookers and dealers have made their presence known, which might be why Tyler sings repeatedly that he "can't get it up". And it ends with the approximation of a clock slowly ticking away. It's beyond surreal. And then, a couple of tracks later, we get "Kings and Queens", a different bout of surrealism. Meant to take us back to medieval times, it's as if Tyler simply looked at a chessboard set while he was high, and wrote a bunch of lyrics based off of that. But what the rest of the band wrote, and then executed? Somehow, it works - despite all of the infighting and drug-taking and other BS, there's a point in the song where the Toxic Twins and the rest of the band set it aside, push on, and shine through the madness - and on a track about "Knights of the Round Table", according to Tyler, of all things. Aerosmith never recovered from this debacle, but they left us with the most fascinating crash-and-burn aural document, if that is any consolation. I mentioned Exile on Main Street earlier, but believe you me, if one has any doubts over how out-of-control a band could get and still manage a somewhat coherent record out of the deal - and at times, even an awe-inspiring one - this is your definitive answer.