Draw The Line

Counting down my 10 favorite Aerosmith tracks

“Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away,” sang Steven Tyler on 1973’s “Dream On,” Aerosmith’s first major hit. And yet, despite continuously courting death in their phenomenally self-destructive first decade, Tyler and his band somehow managed to keep a-rollin’ for the better part of a half-century before finally calling it quits last week, at least as far as any continued touring goes.

While I haven’t paid much attention to Aerosmith since the late nineties, and I can’t say I ever feel remotely inspired to listen to anything from their post-1979 discography, the news of their retirement from the road still makes me feel kind of sad. I only ever saw the band once — in 1990, at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, Illinois — but they were tight as all hell that night (their then-newfound sobriety had done clearly done them a world of good), and a whole lotta fun. They gave it the proverbial hundred percent onstage, and clearly still got a charge out of playing music together. From all accounts, they remained pros to the end, at least onstage; and while we all know nothing lasts forever, it’s gotta hurt like hell when the desire to rock is still there, but your body (or in this case, Tyler’s damaged larynx) just won’t cooperate.

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I thoroughly loathed the song doctor-assisted MTV monolith they became in the 1990s, but Aerosmith in their 1970s heyday made a legitimate case for consideration as America’s great hard rock n’ roll band of the era. Sure, they wore their Rolling Stones/New York Dolls influence proudly on their ragged sleeves, as well as their Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin love, but they also brought their own deliciously fucked-up flavor to the table, as evidenced by the countless 1980s metal and hard rock bands who tried (and largely failed) to mimic their sleaze and swing. They were loud, lewd and rarely ever took themselves too seriously, except when it came to to the business of kicking some musical ass — which is why, if you attended any keg party anywhere in America between 1976 and about 1982, you were practically guaranteed to hear an Aerosmith album at some point in the proceedings.

Aerosmith’s members were completely loaded on alcohol and other substances in those days, but their lineup was just as loaded with talent. In Steven Tyler, they had a brilliant, colorfully androgynous frontman with an expressive delivery and a sharp lyrical wit, a singer capable of cramming a whole parade of streetsmart phrases and hilarious/ridiculous images into a single verse, and then spitting them at you with a rapid-fire delivery that was as incisively articulate as it was innately percussive. (When I first heard Run-DMC’s cover of Aerosmith’s 1977 hit “Walk This Way,” my first thought was, “I can’t believe it took everyone this long to figure out that ‘WTW’ was a rap song!”)

Tyler’s “Toxic Twins” songwriting and onstage-foil partnership with guitarist Joe Perry was very much in the classic Jagger/Richards and Johansen/Thunders mode, but Aerosmith’s guitar tandem of Perry and Brad Whitford was far more fluid (and a helluva lot funkier) situation than the Stones or the Dolls could boast, with Whitford contributing many much-loved riffs and solos that were often erroneously credited to the more charismatic Perry. Whitford also had a hand in co-writing a number of the band’s classic songs over the years, as did bassist Tom Hamilton, whose fluid rhythmic alchemy with drummer Joey Kramer was just as key to the Aerosmith sound and feel as the Tyler-Perry (not to be confused with Tyler Perry’s Tyler Perry) and Perry-Whitford combinations. Every Aerosmith member made a crucial contribution to the band; 1982’s Rock in a Hard Place — the only album the band recorded without Joe Perry and primarily without Brad Whitford — demonstrated that Aerosmith was a far less interesting prospect when one or more of its original pieces was missing.

I first started getting into the harder edge of the rock spectrum in the fall of 1978, which meant that — though none of us knew it at the time — I’d already missed out on Aerosmith’s “classic” period. They still provided an important part of my early rock education, however; their older hits were constant presence on FM radio, as was (at least for a few months) their surly rendition of The Beatles’ “Come Together,” which was one of the first dozen or so singles I ever bought. I absolutely loved their version of that song, though I never quite knew what to make of the medieval fantasy pomp-rock of “Kings and Queens” on the flip side.

(I’m actually holding that very same “Come Together” single in this blurry photo from May 1980, taken on a day where everyone in my eighth grade class was invited to bring a favorite record to play. I’d fully “graduated” to albums at this point, but didn’t want to schlep any of my LPs to school for fear of them getting damaged or stolen.)

In honor of Aerosmith retiring from live shows, I decided to put together a list of my ten favorite tracks by the band. I’m not saying the following songs are necessarily their greatest achievements — as important as “Dream On” and “Walk This Way” are to the band’s history and career, they’ve both been overplayed to the point where I never need to hear them again — but they’re simply the Aerosmith songs that really do it for me beyond all the others.

10. No Surprize

Recorded in a haze as the band was beginning to collapse under the strain of financial struggles and drug abuse, 1979’s Night in the Ruts is my least favorite album of Aerosmith’s seventies run. But I do love its opening track, both because it reminds me of my first weeks as a Chicago resident (“No Surprize” was in heavy rotation on WLUP in January 1980), and because its name-drop of Max’s Kansas City is a nice nod to how important the early-seventies NYC scene was to these Boston boys. And who can resist a rhyme like “If Japanese can boil teas/Then where the fuck’s my royalties?”

(Note that Joe Perry walked out on the band halfway through the album’s recording, so that’s Jimmy Crespo playing Perry’s “No Surprize” parts in the song’s video.)

9. Bright Light Fright

Though it was considered something of a disappointment at the time of its release, “only” reaching #11 on the Billboard 200 (their previous album Rocks had gone all the way to #3) and generally receiving lousy reviews in the rock press, I dearly love 1977’s Draw the Line. Yes, it’s an absolute mess — the album was basically constructed under duress by a bunch of wasteoids who were way more interested in snorting blow and shooting guns than writing and recording, and it sounds like it. But that same sick energy oozes deliciously through the punky clatter of tracks like the Sex Pistols-inspired “Bright Light Fright,” which was penned and sung by Joe Perry. The rest of the band supposedly hated the song, but were too busy snorting blow and shooting guns to come up with anything better.

8. Movin’ Out

I’ve always found Aerosmith’s self-titled 1973 debut a frustrating listen. The production is flat and murky (but not murky enough to give it that enchanting “cough syrup” feel I dig on a lot of other hard rock albums of the period), and the playing often sounds a little stiff, like the band members hadn’t yet found their comfort zone in the studio. But one track where that’s definitely not a problem is “Movin’ Out,” the first song Tyler and Perry ever wrote together, where the band’s slinky menace comes through loud and clear despite the shortcomings of the production. Though the chorus is “We’ve gotta move out ‘cause the city’s movin’ in,” I thought for decades that Tyler was growling “sin” instead of “city” — a mistake which made perfect sense to my ears.

7. Draw the Line

Another “wet nap winner” from the album of the same name, “Draw the Line” is a slide-soaked slice of swaggering sleaze that — both on the album and in this 1978 performance — brims with supreme overconfidence while sourly staggering on the edge of complete disaster. And I fucking love it.

6. Chip Away the Stone

Aerosmith always had outstanding taste in covers — the first time I ever heard “Walkin’ the Dog” (Rufus Thomas), “Train Kept A-Rollin’” (Tiny Bradshaw), “Big Ten Inch Record” (Bullmoose Jackson) or “Think About It” (The Yardbirds) were via Aerosmith’s 1970s albums. But my favorite of all of these is their cover of Richie Supa’s “Chip Away the Stone,” which appeared in both a non-LP studio version on a 1978 single and a live version the same year on their live album Live! Bootleg. Though the single only reached #77 on the Hot 100, its non-LP status made it the Aerosmith 45 to own if you were an in-the-know fan — and the band’s rollicking barroom rock n’ roll performance made it well worth the search.

5. Toys in the Attic

Much as I’ve long considered 1976’s Rocks to be my favorite Aerosmith album, the fact that three of the next five tracks are actually from 1975’s Toys in the Attic make me think I should probably reassess that particular opinion. In any case, Toys’ title track is straight-up badass, with its dark energy, evocative (and unusually succinct) lyrics, tightly-wound guitar riffs and runaway train rhythms. Even back in the days when I found it hard to square my love of punk rock with my love of Aerosmith, I could always crank “Toys in the Attic” without any sense of shame or embarrassment.

4. No More No More

Another Tyler/Perry classic from Toys, “No More No More” could have been a simple Stonesy piano-pounder about the stresses of nascent stardom — and would have been cool as is — but the band throws several musical curveballs into the proceedings, including a gorgeous minor chord refrain frosted with a chiming twelve-string. And when the band suddenly just settles into a groove and lets Perry wail over the last minute and a half, it feels like absolutely the right decision.

3. Sick As A Dog

So, yeah, I totally have a soft spot for jangly guitar passages that lead into crunchy riffs, and “Sick as a Dog” from 1976’s Rocks definitely delivers the goods on that score, even more so than “No More No More”. It also has some slashing rhythm guitar from bassist Tom Hamilton (who wrote the song’s music), tag-team bass playing by Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, a couple of Brad Whitford’s greatest leads, some comically debauched lyrics from Tyler (“Get your head out of the loo!”), and some giddy bubblegum handclaps on the outro — all of which add up to pure rock perfection in my book.

2. Sweet Emotion

Aerosmith’s first Top 40 hit, “Sweet Emotion” peaked at #36 in the summer of 1975, but it would be the number one song I’d play for anyone who somehow hasn’t heard Aerosmith before. Everything about this Toys in the Attic track (another Tyler/Hamilton co-write) absolutely kills, from Hamilton’s stealthily funky opening bass riff and Joe Perry’s robotic talk box intro (both of which were unfortunately edited out of the single version) to its furiously swinging pre-chorus riff, Tyler’s venomous vocals, and the brilliant production work of Jack Douglas, who was essentially the band’s “sixth member” for much of the 1970s. “Dream On” (which was re-released as a single in 1975) and “Walk This Way” would become bigger hits, but they sound pretty stale to me today, while “Sweet Emotion” still sounds really fresh.

1. Seasons of Wither

Their first album with Jack Douglas, 1974’s Get Your Wings was a huge sonic leap forward from Aerosmith’s debut. But as great as some of the uptempo tracks like “Same Old Song and Dance” and “Lord of the Thighs” are, far and away my favorite track from the album — and from the band’s entire catalog — is “Seasons of Wither”. If “Dream On” was Aerosmith’s aspirational anthem, “Seasons” is the sort of desolate ballad that you hang your teenage self to in the family garage, timing it so that your feet start swinging right as Mom drives up with a station wagon full of groceries. Written by Tyler on a broken guitar while fueled by a cocktail of barbiturates and cocaine, “Seasons” drips with equal parts existential angst and druggie self-pity, anticipating the severely bummed-out aspects of the grunge movement by a good decade and a half. And yet, I just can never seem to get enough of its wasted beauty, bad vibes and all.

Okay, that’s ten for me — what are some of your top Aerosmith faves? Feel free to post in a comment below!

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