Listen To The Band: Jethro Tull

It has been five months since I last gave you a Listen To The Band piece – I think that fits my description of this as an occasional series! For those new to these, they are where I take a more detailed look at the catalogue of one of my favourite bands. Jethro Tull are definitely one of those: I’ve loved their music since they first started, all the way back in 1967. My problem for today is to keep the song selections down to a manageable level. This is quite a long post, so please don’t think you have to take it all in at once: I’ll be more than happy if you take it in bite sized chunks and make more than one visit as there is, I think, a lot here for you to enjoy!

This is the opening paragraph of Wikipedia’s page about them:

“Jethro Tull are a British progressive rock band formed in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 1967. Initially playing blues rock and jazz fusion, the band soon incorporated elements of English folk music, hard rock and classical music, forging a signature progressive rock sound. The group’s lead vocalist, bandleader, founder, principal composer and only constant member is Ian Anderson, who also plays flute and acoustic guitar. The group has featured a succession of musicians throughout the decades, including significant contributors such as guitarists Mick Abrahams and Martin Barre (with Barre being the longest-serving member besides Anderson); bassists Glenn Cornick, Jeffrey Hammond, John Glascock, Dave Pegg, Jonathan Noyce and David Goodier; drummers Clive Bunker, Barrie “Barriemore” Barlow and Doane Perry; and keyboardists John Evan, Dee Palmer, Peter-John Vettese, Andrew Giddings and John O’Hara.”

That’s a lot of musicians, but then fifty seven years is a long time! In compiling this, I considered doing it as a chronological trawl through their career, but decided against that. Instead I’m just playing some of my favourite songs of theirs in any old order, and I’m going for the more tuneful parts of their repertoire – less of the progressive, more of the melodic. Some of these I have played before, others I haven’t, but all are songs I love from a band I love.

And if you’re wondering where their name came from, the story is that they struggled for bookings in their early days and were often given names by their booking agent’s staff, one of whom, a history enthusiast, gave them the alias Jethro Tull after the 18th-century agriculturist. The name stuck because they were using it when the manager of the Marquee Club in London liked their show enough to give them a weekly residency. In an interview in 2006, Ian Anderson said that he had not realised it was the name of “a dead guy who invented the seed drill – I thought our agent had made it up.” He said if he could change one thing in his life, he would go back and change the name of the band to something less historical. I’m rather glad he didn’t, although he has had to live with many people thinking it was his own name, not the band’s.

I’m starting with an early song. This was their fourth single and was the one that made them a big act over here:

Living In The Past was released as a non-album single in the UK in May 1969, but didn’t see a US release until October 1972, when it featured as the title track on the first compilation album of their music. It peaked at #3 in the UK and at #11 in the US when it eventually came out over there. The Living In The Past compilation had been released in June 1972, reaching #8 in the UK and #3 in the US. As you may well have gathered, they offered something a little different for our charts in 1969, and those of us who already had their first album – This Was – were delighted to see their new found success.

That album also included all five tracks of an EP the band released in September 1971, which got to #11 in the UK Singles chart. This is the lead song from the EP:

I bought Life’s A Long Song at the time: I loved it then and still do. The whole EP is a little gem, and I was then faced with the decision the next year when the compilation album came out: should I buy that too, as I already had several of its tracks? Of course I did, and it went with me to uni that autumn.

My next choice is another non-album single that was included on that compilation – you can probably see now why I thought it worth buying:

The Witch’s Promise was released as a single in January 1970, and this video shows the band promoting it on Top Of The Pops, which probably explains the kids in the audience attempting (and failing) to find a dance rhythm in there. It peaked at #4 here and also made #6 in Ireland: a quirky little tune, and another that I have always loved.

Moving forward the best part of ten years brings us to the late Seventies. Jethro Tull released three albums at that time which have become recognised as a kind of trilogy of folk albums. The three were Songs From The Wood (February 1977), Heavy Horses (April 1978) and Stormwatch (September 1979). All three performed slightly better in the US charts than here, and I’m playing just one of their tracks:

One Brown Mouse was a track on Heavy Horses: the album reached #20 in the UK and #19 in the US. That isn’t an official video, though: it was something I found while I was looking for a version to play today. It’s a lovely little song and the video is fun. It was published just over a year ago and doesn’t even have 200 views yet – I think it deserves much better!

I said I would be jumping around a bit, and this one goes back to earlier in the Seventies, though it does keep a tenuous animal connection going with the previous song, and it is another with an unofficial video:

Bungle In The Jungle was a track on the album War Child, which was released in October 1974, peaking at #14 in the UK and #2 in the US. There has always been a whimsical element to Ian Anderson’s songwriting, and this is typical of that. The song was released as a single to coincide with the album’s launch, and got to #12 in the US though it wasn’t a UK hit. It was one of two singles taken from the album, and this is the other:

As Ian says in his intro, this was a performance recorded by the BBC for their Sight And Sound In Concert series, which as the video shows was broadcast on 19 February 1977 – some two and a half years after the song’s album issue, but cleverly positioned to align with the release of the first of those three folk-based albums, with which this shares similarities. I always watched these shows, as there were some great bands on them, much to my ex-wife’s dismay – our musical tastes weren’t close! Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of A New Day did nothing as a single, which doesn’t really surprise me: it is too delicate to compete with the likes of Slade, Gary Glitter and the Bay City Rollers, who were clogging our charts at that time.

Back in March 1972 the band released their fifth album, Thick As A Brick, which was intended as a parody of a concept album, which just had one long track on each of the two sides of vinyl. It came packaged in a gatefold sleeve which opened out into a twelve page parody of local newspapers, and is still the best sleeve of any album I ever bought. The ‘newspaper’ element was brilliant, even down to the horoscopes, which were just the same few forecasts told in different words. I’d like to play the whole thing but it runs to more than 43 minutes, so here is the opening segment to give you an idea:

Concept album or not it was a commercial success, reaching #5 in the UK and getting to #1 in the US, Australia and Canada. It was a little different from the other records I was buying at the time, and I appreciated it all the more for that.

I’ve now reached seven songs, and nine is around par for one of these posts. There are two more I want to play so I’m going for both to complete another set of nine songs! I’m very aware that I have concentrated largely on the band’s earlier years, so I’m redressing the balance slightly with this one:

She Said She Was A Dancer was a track on the Crest Of A Knave album, which was released in September 1987. It only made #19 in the UK and #32 in the US, though it has gone Gold in both countries. This song was released as a single in January 1988, getting to #55 in the UK. It is one of a pair of songs on the album – the other is Budapest – which suggest that Ian Anderson and the band had some interesting experiences while touring in Eastern Europe! Both are great, and the album is very good too. I saw them live in 2011, and they played Budapest in their set that night – I was in my element, even if they missed this one out!

In closing today I’m playing the song which has closed many of their concerts, including the time I saw them:

Locomotive Breath was a track on the band’s fourth album, Aqualung, which was released in March 1971 and got to #4 in the UK and #7 in the US. This was taken as the lead single in the US at the same time: it wasn’t a hit then but a re-release peaked at #62 there in 1976. It wasn’t a single in the UK, either time.

These may not all have been to your taste, but I hope you can see why I’ve been a fan of this amazing band for so long, and that the mixture I’ve given has at least a few that you enjoyed. Me? I love them all, and there are loads more I could have played you to display their songs – I’ve only given you three of their early singles, for example, and there were several more of those. But I had to stop somewhere!

Oh, hang on. Alright, why not? I mentioned it earlier, so here is the full ten minutes of Budapest, from the Crest Of A Knave album, with a video showing some wonderful views that make me wish I had visited the city, though there’s no sign of the lady whose ‘legs went on forever:’

And that is definitely it for today! See you on Sunday 😊