The very process behind making this record was tumultuous, to say the least, with Joe Perry leaving the group mid-record in the midst of a public on-stage row during a summer show - leaving Tyler and the rest of the band to complete the record later in the year with fill-ins (Richie Supa and Jimmy Crespo). The actual album cover photo was shot way back in early 1978, which tells you how long the band had this in the works. Whatever the case, the finished product does feel like a bits-and-pieces affair, even though Perry laid down most of his guitar parts before he left. The junkie feel from Draw The Line has faded away a bit (although still noticeable, mainly in Tyler's vocals), replaced by a more manic, edgy sort of driving feeling, as if the band was on a mission to recapture past glory. However, on the faster, or heavier tracks, there's something missing. Probably the best of these - and we are splitting hairs here - is the opener "No Surprize", which roughly tells the story of how the band made it big. But strangely enough, it feels like they are more reliant than ever on ear-splitting volume than gut-wrenching tone, and it starts to wear on the listener a bit by the time you get to covers like "Reefer Headed Woman" and "Think About It". Where I think the band comes up relative aces is on their reading of the Shangri-La's "Walking in the Sand" and the ending ballad "Mia". With the group in the broken state that they were at the time, the spooky reminiscence of the former track - and Tyler really going for it vocally at certain points - along with understated pathos of the latter track, earns the band a few sympathy points as a token return for the bridges and paths broken at this point in their careers. Fun times were not ahead, although without Perry, Tyler and the rest gamely kept the thing running on fumes, as we shall soon see….

And this was roughly Aerosmith's version of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, except that in Aerosmith's case, they did it on a bigger, better, and far more dangerous scale. 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 really kicks in. And then "Critical Mass" starts a run of tracks where it is all too obvious - too many drugs, not enough sleep, and it is really 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...but it’s just another indicator of how much these guys were losing the plot. They never truly recovered from this debacle but left us with a most fascinating crash-and-burn aural document, if that is any consolation.

Unlike the previous album, with its pockets of art rock and Adam's Apples and whatnot, Rocks does not play around one iota. All competitors are officially outclassed, outmatched, out-muscled, and outmoded at every turn. Nowhere is the band’s sky-high confidence better expressed than on the first two tracks - the ultimate sexual swagger and total maelstrom of "Back in the Saddle", followed by the mesmerizing "Last Child", with its slight touch of ballad-fantasy which plunges into its' funk-influenced, strutting main section. So, the only question left remaining was - how long could they keep the up the junkie high-wire act, and continue with the great material, or - when was the crash going to happen? Well...stay tuned.

Three albums in, and actually, right here at the very first track, one realizes - all of the sudden, the lone missing thread has been captured. "Toys in the Attic" - the song - is the place where it completely clicks, and Aerosmith has become the multi-pronged, unstoppable monster we all feared it would. As the rest of the band rushes into outer space on a complete and total oblivion trip, Tyler screams from the edges of his (or yours) worst nightmares these very words: "voices scream…nothing seen…real's the dream". And it goes on from there. Fasten your seatbelts. What transpires is a rollercoaster ride of epic proportions. OK, maybe "Toys in the Attic" is the scariest - possibly otherworldly - part of the ride, but every bit of the album's 10 tracks is top-notch entertainment, at least for a hard rock record in the mid-1970's.

The Aerosmith we know and sneered at everyone else really begins here, in a number of phases. Most importantly, the group establishes a long relationship with producer Jack Douglas - mainly because Bob Ezrin was too busy with Alice Cooper at the time - but so what, because Jack and the boys worked together just fine, as it turned out. It's almost there - every track is impactful, yet in the back of one's mind some random link or characteristic is missing which would group this all together, and easily throw it up with the best of the best - but it's hard to pinpoint what that link exactly is.