Biography by Bruce Eder
Jethro Tull was a unique phenomenon in popular music
history. Their mix of hard rock; folk melodies; blues licks;
surreal, impossibly dense lyrics; and overall profundity
defied easy analysis, but that didn't dissuade fans from
giving them 11 gold and five platinum albums. At the same
time, critics rarely took them seriously, and they were off
the cutting edge of popular music since the end of the
1970s. But no record store in the country would want to be
without multiple copies of each of their most popular albums
(Benefit, Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, Living in the Past),
or their various best-of compilations, and few would
knowingly ignore their newest releases. Of their
contemporaries, only Yes could claim a similar degree of
success, and Yes endured several major shifts in sound and
membership in reaching the 1990s, while Tull remained
remarkably stable over the same period. As co-founded and
led by wildman - flautist - guitarist - singer - songwriter
Ian Anderson, the group carved a place all its own in
popular music.
Tull had its roots in the British blues boom of the late
'60s. Anderson (b. Aug. 10, 1947, Edinburgh, Scotland) had
moved to Blackpool when he was 12. His first band was called
the Blades, named after James Bond's club, with Michael
Stephens on guitar, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond (b. July 30,
1946) on bass and John Evans (b. Mar. 28, 1948) on drums,
playing a mix of jazzy blues and soulful dance music on the
northern club circuit. In 1965, they changed their name to
the John Evan Band (Evan having dropped the "s" in his name
at Hammond's suggestion) and later the John Evan Smash. By
the end of 1967, Glenn Cornick (b. Apr. 24, 1947,
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England) had replaced
Hammond-Hammond on bass. The group moved to Luton in order
to be closer to London, the center of the British blues
boom, and the band began to fall apart, when Anderson and
Cornick met guitarist/singer Mick Abrahams (b. Apr. 7, 1943,
Luton, Bedfordshire, England) and drummer Clive Bunker (b.
Dec. 12, 1946), who had previously played together in the
Toggery Five and were now members of a local blues band
called McGregor's Engine.
In December of 1967, the four of them agreed to form a new
group. They began playing two shows a week, trying out
different names, including Navy Blue and Bag of Blues. One
of the names that they used, Jethro Tull, borrowed from an
18th-century farmer/inventor, proved popular and memorable,
and it stuck. In January of 1968, they cut a rather
derivative pop-folk single called "Sunshine Day," released
by MGM Records (under the misprinted name Jethro Toe) the
following month. The single went nowhere, but the group
managed to land a residency at the Marquee Club in London,
where they became very popular.
Early on, they had to face a problem of image and
configuration, however. In the late spring of 1968, managers
Terry Ellis and Chris Wright (who later founded Chrysalis
Records) first broached the idea that Anderson give up
playing the flute, and to allow Mick Abrahams to take center
stage. At the time, a lot of blues enthusiasts didn't accept
wind instruments at all, especially the flute, as seminal to
the sound they were looking for, and as a group struggling
for success and recognition, Jethro Tull was just a little
too strange in that regard. Abrahams was a hardcore blues
enthusiast who idolized British blues godfather Alexis
Korner, and he was pushing for a more traditional band
configuration, which would've put him and his guitar out
front. As it turned out, they were both right. Abrahams'
blues sensibilities were impeccable, but the audience for
British blues by itself couldn't elevate Jethro Tull any
higher than being a top club act. Anderson's antics
on-stage, jumping around in a ragged overcoat and standing
on one leg while playing the flute, and his use of folk
sources as well as blues and jazz, gave the band the
potential to grab a bigger audience and some much-needed
press attention.
They opened for Pink Floyd on June 29, 1968, at the first
free rock festival in London's Hyde Park, and in August they
were the hit of the Sunbury Jazz & Blues Festival in
Sunbury-on-Thames. By the end of the summer, they had a
recording contract with Island Records. The resulting album,
This Was, was issued in November. By this time, Anderson was
the dominant member of the group on-stage, and at the end of
the month Abrahams exited the band. The group went through
two hastily recruited and rejected replacements, future
Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi (who was in Tull for a
week, just long enough to show up in their appearance on the
Rolling Stones' Rock 'N Roll Circus extravaganza), and Davy
O'List, the former guitarist with the Nice. Finally, Martin
Barre (b. Nov. 17, 1946), a former architecture student, was
the choice for a permanent replacement.
It wasn't until April of 1969 that This Was got a U.S.
release. Ironically, the first small wave of American Jethro
Tull fans were admiring a group whose sound had already
changed radically; in May of 1969, Barre's first recording
with the group, "Living in the Past," reached the British
number three spot and the group made its debut on Top of the
Pops performing the song. The group played a number of
festivals that summer, including the Newport Jazz Festival.
Their next album, Stand Up, with all of its material (except
"Bouree," which was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach)
written by Ian Anderson, reached the number one spot in
England the next month. Stand Up also contained the first
orchestrated track by Tull, "Reasons for Waiting," which
featured strings arranged by David Palmer, a Royal Academy
of Music graduate and theatrical conductor who had arranged
horns on one track from This Was. Palmer would play an
increasingly large role in subsequent albums, and finally
join the group officially in 1977.
Meanwhile, "Sweet Dream," issued in November, rose to number
seven in England, and was the group's first release on
Wright and Ellis' newly formed Chrysalis label. Their next
single, "The Witch's Promise," got to number four in England
in January of 1970. The group's next album, Benefit, marked
their last look back at the blues, and also the presence of
Anderson's longtime friend and former bandmate John Evan --
who had long since given up the drums in favor of keyboards
-- on piano and organ. Benefit reached the number three spot
in England, but, much more important, it ascended to number
11 in America, and its songs, including "Teacher" and
"Sossity, You're A Woman," formed a key part of Tull's stage
repertory. In early July of 1970, the group shared a bill
with Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, and Johnny Winter at the
Atlanta Pop Festival in Byron, GA, before 200,000 people.
By the following December, after another U.S. tour, Cornick
had decided to leave the group, and was replaced on bass by
Anderson's childhood friend Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond. Early
the following year, they began working on what would prove
to be, for many fans, the group's magnum opus, Aqualung.
Anderson's writing had been moving in a more serious
direction since the group's second album, but it was with
Aqualung that he found the lyrical voice he'd been seeking.
Suddenly, he was singing about the relationship between man
and God, and the manner in which -- in his view -- organized
religion separated them. The blues influences were muted
almost to non-existence, but the hard rock passages were
searing and the folk influences provided a refreshing
contrast. That the album was a unified whole impressed the
more serious critics, while the kids were content to play
air guitar to Martin Barre's high-speed breaks. And
everybody, college prog rock mavens and high-school
time-servers alike, seemed to identify with the theme of
alienation that lay behind the music.
Aqualung reached number seven in America and number four in
England, and was accompanied by a hugely successful American
tour. Bunker quit the band to get married, and was replaced
by Anderson's old John Evan Smash bandmate Barriemore Barlow
(b. Sept. 10, 1949). Late in 1971, they began work on their
next album, Thick as a Brick. Structurally more ambitious
than Aqualung, and supported by an elaborately designed
jacket in the form of a newspaper, this record was
essentially one long song steeped in surreal imagery, social
commentary, and Anderson's newly solidified image as a
wildman-sage. Released in England during April of 1972,
Thick as a Brick got as high as the number five spot, but
when it came out in America a month later, it hit the number
one spot, making it the first Jethro Tull album to achieve
greater popularity in American than in England. In June of
1972, in response to steadily rising demand for the group's
work, Chrysalis Records released Living in the Past, a
collection of tracks from their various singles and British
EPs, early albums, and a Carnegie Hall show, packaged like
an old-style 78 rpm album in a book that opened up.
At this point, it seemed as though Jethro Tull could do no
wrong, and for the fans that was true. For the critics,
however, the group's string ran out in July of 1973 with the
release of A Passion Play. The piece was another extended
song, running the length of the album, this time steeped in
fantasy and religious imagery far denser than Aqualung; it
was divided at the end of one side of the album and the
beginning of the other by an A.A. Milne-style story called
"The Hare That Lost His Spectacles." This time, the critics
were hostile toward Anderson and the group, attacking the
album for its obscure lyrical references and excessive
length. Despite these criticisms, the album reached number
one in America (yielding a number eight single edited from
the extended piece) and number 13 in England. The real
venom, however, didn't start to flow until the group went on
tour that summer. By this time, their sets ran to
two-and-a-half hours, and included not only the new album
done in its entirety ("The Hare That Lost His Spectacles"
being a film presentation in the middle of the show), but
Thick As a Brick and the most popular of the group's songs
off of Aqualung and their earlier albums. Anderson was
apparently unprepared for the searing reviews that started
appearing, and also took the American rock press too
seriously. In the midst of a sell-out U.S. tour, he
threatened to cancel all upcoming concerts and return to
England. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, especially
once he recognized that the shows were completely sold out
and audiences were ecstatic, and the tour continued without
interruption.
It was 16 months until the group's next album, War Child --
conceived as part of a film project that never materialized
-- was released, in November of 1974. The expectations
surrounding the album gave it pre-order sales sufficient to
get it certified gold upon release, and it was also Tull's
last platinum album, reaching number two in America and
number 14 in England. The dominant theme of War Child seemed
to be violence, though the music's trappings heavily
featured Palmer's orchestrations, rivaling Barre's electric
guitar breaks for attention. In any case, the public seemed
to respond well to the group's return to conventional length
songs, with "Bungle in the Jungle" reaching number 11 in
America. Tull's successful concert tour behind this album
had them augmented by a string quartet.
During this period, Anderson became involved with producing
an album by Steeleye Span, a folk-rock group that was also
signed to Chrysalis, and who had opened for Tull on one of
their American tours. Their music slowly begun influencing
Anderson's songwriting over the next several years, as the
folk influence grew in prominence, a process that was
redoubled when he took up a rural residence during the
mid-'70s. The next Tull album, Minstrel in the Gallery,
showed up ten months later, in September of 1975, reaching
number seven in the United States. This time, the dominant
theme was Elizabethan minstrelsy, within an electric rock
and English folk context. The tracks included a 17-minute
suite that recalled the group's earlier album-length epic
songs, but the album's success was rather more limited.
The Jethro Tull lineup had been remarkably stable ever since
Clive Bunker's exit after Aqualung, remaining constant
across four albums in as many years. In January of 1976,
however, Hammond-Hammond left the band to pursue a career in
art. His replacement, John Glascock (b. 1953), joined in
time for the recording of Too Old to Rock 'n Roll, Too Young
to Die, an album made up partly of songs from an un-produced
play proposed by Anderson and Palmer, released in May of
1976. The group later did an ITV special built around the
album's songs. The title track, however (on which Steeleye
Span's Maddy Prior appeared as a guest backing vocalist),
became a subject of controversy in England, as critics took
it to be a personal statement on Anderson's part.
In late 1976, a Christmas EP entitled Ring Out Solstice
Bells got to number 28. This song later turned up on their
next album, Songs From the Wood, the group's most
artistically unified and successful album in some time (and
the first not derived from an unfinished film or play since
A Passion Play). This was Tull's folk album, reflecting
Anderson's passion for English folk songs. Its release also
accompanied the band's first British tour in nearly three
years. In May of 1977, David Palmer joined Tull as an
official member, playing keyboards on-stage to augment the
richness of the group's concert sound.
Having lasted into the late '70s, Jethro Tull now found
itself competing in a new musical environment, as
journalists and, to an increasing degree, fans became
fixated on the growing punk rock phenomenon. In October
1977, Repeat (The Best of Jethro Tull, Vol. 2), intended to
fill an anticipated 11 month gap between Tull albums, was
released on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, it
contained only a single new track and never made the British
charts, while barely scraping into the American Top 100
albums. The group's next new album, Heavy Horses, issued in
April of 1978, was Anderson's most personal work in several
years, the title track expressing his regret over the
disappearance of England's huge shire horses as casualties
of modernization. In the fall of 1978, the group's first
full-length concert album, the double-LP Live-Bursting Out,
was released to modest success, accompanied by a tour of the
United States and an international television broadcast from
Madison Square Garden.
1979 was a pivotal and tragic year for the group. John
Glascock died from complications of heart surgery on
November 17, five weeks after the release of Stormwatch.
Tull was lucky enough to acquire the services of Dave Pegg,
the longtime bassist for Fairport Convention, which had
announced its formal (though, as it turned out, temporary)
breakup. The Stormwatch tour with the new lineup was a
success, although the album was the first original release
by Jethro Tull since This Was not to reach the U.S. Top 20.
Partly thanks to Pegg's involvement with the Tull lineup,
future tours by Jethro Tull, especially in America, would
provide a basis for performances by re-formed incarnations
of Fairport Convention.
The lineup change caused by Glascock's death led to
Anderson's decision to record a solo album during the summer
of 1980, backed by Barre, Pegg, and Mark Craney on drums,
with ex-Roxy Music/King Crimson multi-instrumentalist Eddie
Jobson on violin. The record, A, was eventually released as
a Jethro Tull album in September of 1980, but even the Tull
name didn't do much for its success. Barlow, Evan, and
Palmer, however, were dropped from the group's lineup with
the recording of A, and the new version of Jethro Tull
toured in support of the album. Jobson left once the tour
was over, and it was with yet another new lineup --
including Barre, Pegg, and Fairport Convention alumnus Gerry
Conway (drums) and Peter-John Vettesse (keyboards) -- that
The Broadsword and the Beast was recorded in 1982. Although
this album had many songs based on folk melodies, its harder
rocking passages also had a heavier, more thumping beat than
earlier versions of the band had produced, and the use of
the synthesizer was more pronounced than on previous Tull
albums.
In 1983, Anderson confined his activities to his first
official solo album, Walk Into Light, which had a very
different, synthesizer-dominated sound. Following its
lackluster performance, Anderson revived Jethro Tull for the
album Under Wraps, released in September of 1984. At number
76 in the U.S., it became the group's poorest selling album,
partly a consequence of Anderson's developing a throat
infection that forced the postponement of much of their
planned tour. No further Tull albums were to be released
until Crest of a Knave in 1987, as a result of Anderson's
intermittent throat problems. In the meantime, the group
appeared on a German television special in March of 1985,
and participated in a presentation of the group's work by
the London Symphony Orchestra. To make up for the shortfall
of new releases, Chrysalis released another compilation,
Original Masters, a collection of highlights of the group's
work, in October of 1985. In 1986, A Classic Case: The
London Symphony Orchestra Plays the Music of Jethro Tull was
released on record; and Crest of a Knave performed
surprisingly well when it was issued in September of 1987,
reaching number 19 in England and number 32 in America with
the support of a world tour.
Crest of a Knave was something of a watershed in Tull's
later history, though nobody would have guessed it at the
time of its release. Although some of its songs displayed
the group's usual folk/hard rock mix, the group was playing
louder than usual, and tracks like "Steel Monkey," had a
harder sound than any previous record by the group. In 1988,
Tull toured the United States as part of the celebration of
the band's 20th anniversary. In July, Chrysalis issued 20
Years of Jethro Tull, a 65-song boxed-set collection
covering the group's history up to that time, containing
most of their major songs and augmented with outtakes and
radio performances. In February of 1989, the band won the
Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance for Crest
of a Knave. Suddenly, they were stars again, and being
declared as relevant by one of the top music awards in the
industry; a fact that kept critics buzzing for months over
whether the group deserved it before finally attacking the
voting for the Grammy Awards and the membership of its
parent organization, the National Association of Recording
Arts and Sciences.
Rock Island, another hard rocking album, reached a very
healthy number 18 in England during September of the same
year, while peaking only at 56 in America, despite a
six-week U.S. tour to support the album. In 1990, the album
Catfish Rising did less well, reaching only 27 in England
and 88 in America after its release in September. And A
Little Light Music, their own "unplugged" release, taped on
their summer 1992 European tour, only got to number 34 in
England and 150 in the United States.
Despite declining numbers, the group continued performing to
good-sized houses when they toured, and the group's catalog
performed extremely well. In April of 1993, Chrysalis
released a four-CD 25th Anniversary Box Set -- evidently
hoping that most fans had forgotten the 20th anniversary set
issued five years earlier -- consisting of remixed versions
of their hits, live shows from across their history, and a
handful of new tracks. Meanwhile, Anderson continued to
write and record music separate from the group on occasion,
most notably Divinities: Twelve Dances with God, a
classically-oriented solo album (and a distinctly non-Tull
one) on EMI's classical Angel Records. J-Tull.Com followed
in 1999.
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