Aerosmith
Their Dope Era Was Dope
Aerosmith in my opinion were the best during their smack era. Based in Boston 1970 and relatively unknown except for a cult following they got signed to Columbia Records in 1972. This after Clive Davis saw them at Max’s Kansas City in New York. Their first self-titled album featured “Dream On” in (1973,) the following album “Get Your Wings” (1974) received little fanfare.
One of my two favorite Aerosmith albums is “Toys in the Attic” (1975.) The band, particularly Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, were deep into the rock-and-roll lifestyle. They were primarily abusing alcohol and cocaine often referred to affectionately as the "Toxic Twins.” The record launched Aerosmith to mainstream stardom, and went Platinum 9 times.
Producer Jack Douglas and engineer Jay Messina operating the mixing console, while guitarist Joe Perry plays a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar with Steven Tyler seated at the Record Plant, NY.
Entire album via Aerosmith youtube
The following year 1976, Columbia released the album “Rocks” which went Platinum 4 times. This is my second favorite Aerosmith album. Their heroin addiction became severe during the recording and touring. “We drank a lot because of the blow and we got blown a lot because we drank a lot,” shrugged singer Steven Tyler. The backstage term “production meeting” was slang for going somewhere to do a load of lines. Come the sessions for Rocks, as their buddies The Faces had observed a year earlier, what were once vices were now habits.
Entire “Rocks” album on Aerosmith youtube
1970s lineup (from left: Steven Tyler, Tom Hamilton, Joe Perry, Joey Kramer, and Brad Whitford), posing together backstage 1976.
1977 “Draw The Line” their 4th album, was recorded in an abandoned convent. It was at this time after much drug abuse and constant touring that the band began unraveling. As Joe Perry once said "we were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs" from the memoir Walk This Way.
Although the LP would sell well more than a million copies in fewer than six weeks after its release, in 2014 Perry would refer to it in Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith as "the beginning of the end" and "the decay of our artistry."
“Draw The Line” full album on Aerosmith youtube
Aerosmith died out for awhile, band lineups changed and more blase’ records were released. It was obvious to me that bands like Motley Crue and Guns N Roses were heavily influenced by Aerosmith. In 1986 Aerosmith redid “Walk This Way” with Run DMC and their career bounced back bigger than ever and the hip hop genre took over the music industry.
I love ROCKS. But DONE WITH MIRRORS, PUMP and GET A GRIP are first-rate albums from the sober era. Actually not sure about DWM.
I think Rocks was their high point. The Joe Perry song “Combination” never gets old.