“We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs”: The unhinged story of Aerosmith’s Draw The Line, the album that sent them crashing off the rails

Aerosmith posing for a photograph in 1977.

As 1977 rolled in, Aerosmith were flying high. In January, the band’s latest single Walk This Way, belatedly extracted from 1975 album Toys In The Attic, hit No.10 in the US. And in February, when they toured in Japan for the first time, they experienced a level of hysteria akin to Beatlemania.

There was no rock band on Earth bigger than Led Zeppelin, but Aerosmith were rising fast. As their producer Jack Douglas said: “Kiss was their only competition, at least among American rock bands.”