The Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson Discography

[Orbert]

Live albums were different back then.  You could have extended jams and solos and other things you can't do today because there's no way to click-track them and synchronize them to your expensive amazing impressive sound and light show.  This early version of "My God" contains an extended flute solo, "With You There to Help Me" has the piano solo, "Dharma for One" incorporates the drum solo, and Martin Barre's guitar solo bridges the two songs which make up the final track.

Word up on that one.  I was watching a couple DVDs of old - early 70's footage - of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, and they just strolled on stage, with the house lights up, took up their instruments and started to play.  No fanfare, no curtain drop, whatever, and the music just flowed.  If Page or Blackmore wanted to vamp for ten minutes during Whole Lotta Love/Space Truckin' (and they usually did) then they vamped.   I kind of miss that. 

Even in the 80's, when we were playing in bars, we'd go all the way with the jams.  If the song had a guitar solo, there's always a chance that we'd double it up, and we'd fuck with each other just to keep each other on our toes.  Is he gonna keep going?  Are we coming back for the verse, or what?  And if it's one of those songs that goes into a solo at the end, it was completely open-ended.  Pete, our guitarist, was very excited about his early Nady wireless rig, which meant he could leave the stage and go running through the place while soloing.  We'd keep the rhythm going and eventually developed some things to do with the chords (similar to how the live solo in "Stairway to Heaven" goes through some changes that aren't on the studio version), and he'd just keep going.  People loved that.  To me, that's part of the glory of live music.  The fact that it's live.

The band I'm in now has a totally "modern approach" to that.  No open-ended solos, everything has to be in groups of eight or 16 or 32 bars, blah blah blah.  If there's a solo at the end, we have to agree on the number of times to repeat the pattern, then do our predefined ending.  Hell, last year we started using a click-track.  Drummer's ears only, because I can't play with one and neither can some of the others, but our drummer, incredibly, has tempo issues, so I guess the click is good.  At least we don't start songs too damned fast or too damned slow.  People can sing the praises of click-tracks all they want, but saying that they don't take anything away from live performance is bullshit.  Of course they do.  They remove one of the most important aspects of it, the fact that it's live.  End rant.

[jammindude]

I have never....NOT EVEN ONCE...jumped on that whole "I miss MP" bandwagon.   But when you guys talk about show improvisations, and then I think back to the BTL live jam on Budokan....



I miss MP now.   

[Orbert]

I never jumped on, either, but there are definitely some things that MP brought to DT that I miss.

[TAC]

OK, just listened to The Christmas Album. I really must say that it is spectacular. I fucking love Christmas time. I know, obvious statement is obvious. But I really do, and when it comes to Christmas music, I am musically open, where I am otherwise usually closed.

I might even get this. I can totally put this on and it would be perfect. I really like it, and if that's the last studio album, then they go out winners. This was a fantastic listen and it gave me goosebumps.


I also checked out that Aqualung Live album. That's really cool. I like that it was an intimate audience like that. Gives more credibility to it, for me, as opposed to some "we're gonna play Aqualung in it's entirety" type of tour.

[MirrorMask]

I have to admit that I sometimes have a hard time with contemporary Christmas albums.  I'm old, and old-fashioned.  Like many of us, I have fond, hazy memories of Christmases past and the wonderful music that comes with the season.  A lot of times, hearing the traditional songs updated and rocked out just sounds "wrong" to my ears, even as I admire the musicianship and the clever, imaginative arrangements.  When I arrange Christmas music for the various ensembles at my church, I come up with (IMO) some pretty clever stuff, but the overall "feel" is always close to what people are familiar with.  That's at least partly because it's what my audience is expecting; the rest of it is because I don't have the imagination that Ian Anderson does.  Taking "We Three Kings", playing it in 5/8, and calling it "We Five Kings" would never occur to me, yet here it is.  It's brilliantly arranged and executed, and I'm still not sure how much I like it.  Rocking or jazzed-up versions of traditional songs are hit-or-miss for me.

But I also know that most people don't have the prejudice against such things that I do.  A lot of people I know absolutely love hearing rocked-up versions of traditional Christmas songs.  Sometimes I do as well; I'm not going to name-drop yet because I don't want to distract too much from the album at hand, but some of my favorite Christmas music is material released in the past 20 or 30 years.

I have some relatively current Christmas songs I like, but generally they are newer songs and not covers of traditional stuff.  I'm sort of with you on this.  I like the IDEA of, say, Gary Hoey doing surf/metal covers of Christmas tunes, but they never seem to satisfy in the listening.   Yet I could listen to Elvis' Christmas Album all day long.   

I like Elvis' Christmas Album because he's basically singing the songs "straight".  Not rocking them up, not trying to do anything fancy with them, just singing them with feeling and that glorious voice.  That approach always has a better chance with me.

Some of the less traditional yet mostly awesome music of recent years is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  Pretty obvious, yeah I know.  Most people know "Sarajevo" (the one based on "Carol of the Bells") and some of the others.  We went ahead and bought all the albums, and most of it's really good.  "Carol of the Bells", despite being a capella, has a certain intensity to it that somehow translates well to a heavy metal treatment.  I think that's why it works for me.  The "feel" is the same even if the setting is not, and they didn't mess with the timing or the melody.

I also like Brian Setzer's rockabilly/big band Christmas stuff.  He brings something new and different to it, but also respects the source material.

OK, just listened to The Christmas Album. I really must say that it is spectacular. I fucking love Christmas time. I know, obvious statement is obvious. But I really do, and when it comes to Christmas music, I am musically open, where I am otherwise usually closed.

I might even get this. I can totally put this on and it would be perfect. I really like it, and if that's the last studio album, then they go out winners. This was a fantastic listen and it gave me goosebumps.

I launched a thread a couple of years ago about Christmas music, when the time comes you're all more than welcomed to bump it and add new suggestions.

I knew of Tull's Christmas album, at least that such a thing existed, this thread helped me to remember about it and I guess I will listen to it in a month or so.

[Stadler]

https://youtu.be/jLhf8caVIiI

Is this the right time for this?   It was in December, 2011, at Canterbury Cathedral, on Ian's "Ian Anderson Plays Christmas" tour.   Bruce did this, "Jerusalem" (his solo song, which is a take-off on a more popular hymn by William Blake) and Locomotive Breath.

Here's Jerusalem:  https://youtu.be/QJnPIdKATzU

[Orbert]

Three more fillers before we get back to the real stuff.

The Best of Acoustic Jethro Tull (2007)



Fat Man 2:51
Life is a Long Song 3:18
Cheap Day Return 1:22
Mother Goose 3:53
Wond'ring Aloud 1:55
Thick as a Brick (Intro) (Edit No 1) 3:03
Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day 4:11
Cold Wind to Valhalla (Intro) 1:29
One White Duck / 0¹⁰ = Nothing at All 4:38
Salamander 2:51
Jack in the Green 2:29
Velvet Green 6:03
Dun Ringill 2:41
Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow 3:23
Under Wraps 2 2:14
Jack-a-Lynn 4:56
Someday the Sun Won't Shine for You 2:01
Broadford Bazaar 3:39
The Water Carrier 2:56
Rupi's Dance 3:01
A Christmas Song 2:41
Weathercock 4:20
One Brown Mouse (2006 version) 3:41
Pastime with Good Company (Live in Denmark) 4:13

----------

Pretty much just what it sounds like, a compilation of acoustic Jethro Tull songs, plus a few solo Ian Anderson tunes.

[Orbert]

Live at Montreux 2003 (2007)



Ian Anderson - Vocals, Flute, Acoustic Guitar, Harmonica, Mandolin
Martin Barre - Electric and Acoustic Guitar, Flute
Andrew Giddings - Keyboard, Accordion
Jonathan Noyce - Bass Guitar, Percussion
Doane Perry - Drums, Percussion

----------

Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You
Life Is a Long Song
Bourée (Version de Noël)
With You There to Help Me
Pavane
Empty Café
Hunting Girl
Eurology
Dot Com
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Fat Man
Living in the Past
Nothing Is Easy
Beside Myself
My God
Budapest
New Jig
Aqualung (includes Band Introduction)
(Encore) Locomotive Breath (includes Black Sunday (reprise) and Cheerio)

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Jethro Tull's 2003 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, released on CD and DVD in 2007.  Link above is to the DVD rip.

[Orbert]

And once again going from relatively recent to something historical...

Live at Madison Square Garden 1978 (2009)



Sweet Dream 6:52
One Brown Mouse 3:24
Heavy Horses 7:22
Thick as a Brick 11:23
No Lullaby (incl. Flute Solo) 9:00
Songs from the Wood 4:53
Quatrain 0:41
Aqualung 8:04
Locomotive Breath (incl. Dambusters March) 15:40
Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die 4:17
My God/Cross-Eyed Mary 6:59

----------

A performance from October 1978 recorded for the BBC television show "Old Grey Whistle Test".  The TV broadcast only included 50 minutes of the performance; the CD is 78:40 and the DVD is 93:09.  Not much more information is available, but presumably this is the same band as on Bursting Out, which was recorded in May-June 1978.

The link above is to the CD rip.  Sound quality seems pretty good.

[Stadler]

Ian Anderson looks like he's checking out some chick's ass far more often than he should. 

[Orbert]

In the video, or in general?

[TAC]

Ian Anderson looks like he's checking out some chick's ass far more often than he should.

But that’s not a chick. That’s Martin Barre.

[DragonAttack]

The BBC started broadcasting approximately fifteen minutes into the show. 

Start of Concert Recording (audio only)

"Sweet Dream"
"One Brown Mouse"
"Heavy Horses"
Start of broadcast – video

"Opening"
"Thick as a Brick"
"No Lullaby (incl. Flute Solo)"
"Songs from the Wood"
"Band intro"
"Quatrain" (Instrumental)
"Aqualung"
"Locomotive Breath (incl. Dambusters March)"
End of broadcast – video (During "Locomotive Breath")

"Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll: Too Young to Die"
"My God/Cross-Eyed Mary"
Encore

"Locomotive Breath (incl. Dambusters March)"
***************

When listening to the audio, it is so damn odd to hear a repeat of a couple of songs that the band had just played!!!!   I can imagine how weird and confusing that had to be to the SRO audience.

Other than that....yet another live performance that I wish I could have listened to from the 90s onward. 

[Orbert]

When listening to the audio, it is so damn odd to hear a repeat of a couple of songs that the band had just played!!!!   I can imagine how weird and confusing that had to be to the SRO audience.

I guess I don't follow what you mean.  What songs are repeated?

[DragonAttack]

"Locomotive Breath (incl. Dambusters March)"

Additional info:  First ever Transatlantic simultaneous TV broadcast. Officially released on CD & DVD in 2009. Audience: 20,000.

The first of four shows at MSG, one supposedly cancelled due to Yom Kuppor

[Orbert]

Wow, that's weird.  I didn't notice.  For the encore, they played something they'd already played earlier, only three tracks ago?  Kinda lame, really.

[TAC]

Oh boy, that's shaky..

[Orbert]

You've heard this one before, but it's slightly on-topic:

My very first concert was The Grand Illusion by Styx, and the opening act was Ram Jam, one-hit wonders with the song "Black Betty" all over the airwaves at the time.  They played their set, thanked the audience, and prepared to leave.  But they were really good, and we screamed for an encore.  They came back out and confessed that they literally had just played all the songs they had (they only had the one album).  So they played "Black Betty" again.  Bam-ba-lam! ♫♫

[TAC]

The Grand Illusion tour is a great first concert! I love that album.

[Orbert]

Still my favorite album from Styx, although that entire late 70's run from Equinox through Cornerstone was really solid.  Paradise Theatre was the first one that I thought didn't really bring anything new, and by Kilroy Was Here, I'd moved on.  Still a great band, though.  They always kept one foot in the prog, at least on album while Dennis was still in the band.  Tommy and James are both great rockers, but when they try to go deep it's really just kinduv embarassing.

[TAC]

Paradise Theater is awesome too. I saw them in the mid 90's on the Return To paradise tour, and they did a Grand Illusion tour as well. Both were great concerts!!!

[Stadler]

In the video, or in general?

In general.  He has that creepy leer that seems to make it's way into a lot of pictures. 

[Orbert]

Well, it is Rock and Roll.  One of the main reasons to play live music is to check out the babes, so it makes sense that it ends up getting captured on film or video a lot.

Seriously though, I think that's just his stage persona.  He is very expressive, always making faces and using his eyebrows to exaggerate his expressions and stuff.  I never thought of it as a "creepy leer" but that's a valid interpretation.

[Orbert]

Remember Derek Shulman?  Good friend of Ian Anderson, fellow Scotsman transplanted to England, even born the same year?  Fronted Gentle Giant and later as an Atco Record exec signed Dream Theater?  Oh yeah, him.

Anyway, Derek once asked Ian "Whatever happened to Gerald Bostock?"  Gerald Bostock of course was the fictitious eight-year-old poet who'd written the magnum opus Thick as a Brick, which Jethro Tull set to music and recorded as their 1972 album of the same name.  Ian was inspired to explore possible answers to that question.

Thick as a Brick 2 (2012)



From a Pebble Thrown 3:05
Pebbles Instrumental / Might-Have-Beens 4:21
Upper Sixth Loan Shark / Banker Bets, Banker Wins 5:41
Swing It Far 3:28
Adrift and Dumfounded 4:25
Old School Song 3:07
Wootton Bassett Town 3:44
Power and Spirit / Give Till It Hurts 3:11
Cosy Corner / Shunt and Shuffle 3:37
A Change of Horses 8:04
Confessional 3:09
Kismet in Suburbia 4:17
What-ifs, Maybes and Might-Have-Beens 3:36

----------

Ian Anderson - Vocals, Flutes, Acoustic Guitars
Florian Opahle - Electric Guitar
John O'Hara - Accordion, Hammond Organ, Piano, Keyboards
Pete Judge - Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Tenor Horn, E-flat Tuba
Ryan O'Donnell - Additional Vocals
David Goodier - Bass Guitar, Glockenspiel
Scott Hammond - Drums, Percussion

----------

I still have a little trouble with this whole "Is it Jethro Tull or not?" going on during this period.  Ian had at some point made the decision to end Jethro Tull, and points to the official end of the band as occurring sometime between the release of The Jethro Tull Christmas Album and this album.  He also spent most of this period touring on the strength of Jethro Tull's catalog and reputation, but also making sure that his own name was prominent.  And what does he do on his first solo album since the official break-up?  He releases the sequel to one of Jethro Tull's most well-known albums, credited to "Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson".  But it is what it is.  To many people, Ian Anderson was Jethro Tull.

Unlike Thick as a Brick, which was one continuous piece of music (originally broken across LP sides and since refused on CD), this sequel is broken into tracks, as it explores five different possible scenarios for how the life of Gerald Bostock might have turned out 40 years later.  He could have been a greedy investment banker; a homosexual homeless man; a soldier in the Afghan War; a sanctimonious evangelist preacher; or a most ordinary man, married and childless, who runs a corner store.

The packaging for Thick as a Brick was an elaborate faux-newspaper called "The St. Cleve Chronicle".  In keeping with modern times, the 2012 sequel appears to be the headline of online news source StCleve.com.

The music includes multiple callbacks to the original work, but mostly only enough to provide some continuity and rarely distracting.  What I find more distracting are the interruptions with Ian's spoken word introductions to the various sections.  Honestly, I'd rather just listen to the music.  But again, it is what it is.  The concept of the album lends itself to storytelling, and that it something that Ian does well.  The music is fine, perhaps not on the same level as Jethro Tull in their prime, but this could easily have been the next Jethro Tull album in terms of sound.

The only other thing I can think of to mention is that the recording engineer for this album was Steven Wilson.  Yes, that Steven Wilson.

[Evermind]

I like this album.

That being said, it feels like Ian had one big idea (the main melody and riff that repeats in the banker song, soldier song and the final song) and he wrote the whole album around it. I say this because I haven't listened to this album in a while, but as I try to remember what exactly I liked I can only come up with that descending riff and the vocal melody that goes with it during the verses. I like the quieter version of that melody in the soldier song, always get goosebumps when Ian sings "hourglass sands run through my veins".

All in all, I think this is a worthy follow up to the original album, unlike Homo Erraticus, but we'll get there soon enough I guess.

[TAC]

Finally got a chance to run through this today. It's not bad at all.

I love the heaviness of the Upper Sixth Loan Shark/Banker song.

I also quite liked Adrift And Dumfounded.

The last minute of A Change Of Horses was awesome, even if it took too long to get there.

[ErHaO]

Christmas album: Great sendoff for a great band. Will be listening to it again on, well, Christmas.

Thick as a Brick 2: I really enjoy it. I like the recurrent themes and the second vocalist works well. Upper Sixth Loan Shark / Banker Bets, Banker Wins and Kismet in Suburbia are probably my favourites. One of the better sounding Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull productions as well.

[Orbert]

Homo Erraticus (2014)



Part One: Chronicles
Doggerland (7000 BCE) 4:20
Heavy Metals (750 BCE – 43 CE) 1:29
Enter the Uninvited (43 CE – 410 CE – 1960!) 4:12
Puer Ferox Adventus (313 – 600 CE) 7:11
Meliora Sequamur (1100s) 3:32
The Turnpike Inn (1750) 3:08
The Engineer (1847) 3:12
The Pax Britannica (1815 – 1914) 3:05

Part Two: Prophecies
Tripudium Ad Bellum (1914 – 1939) 2:48
After These Wars (1950s) 4:28
New Blood, Old Veins (1960s) 2:31

Part Three: Revelations
In for a Pound (2013) 0:36
The Browning of the Green (2014) 4:05
Per Errationes Ad Astra (2024) 1:33
Cold Dead Reckoning (2044)  5:28

----------

Ian Anderson - Lead and Backing Vocals, Flute, Acoustic Guitar
Florian Opahle - Electric Guitar
John O'Hara - Piano, Organ, Keyboards, Accordion
David Goodier - Bass Guitar
Scott Hammond - Drums, Percussion
Ryan O'Donnell - Additional Vocals

----------

The final Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull studio album thus far is another concept album, something of an offshoot from the Thick as a Brick albums.  The lyrics are once again attributed to Gerald Bostock, the literary child prodigy who wrote Thick as a Brick and whose many possible futures were explored in Thick as a Brick 2.  He is now in his fifties, and has discovered in his town's bookstore a "dusty, unpublished manuscript, written by local amateur historian Ernest T. Parritt, (1873 -1928)" which is entitled either "Homo Britanicus Erraticus" or "Homo erraticus (The St Cleve Chronicles)".

Homo Erraticus is Latin for "wandering man".  I mention that because apparently I never progressed beyond my adolescence in the 1970's, which means that I cannot take anything with the word "homo" in the title seriously, and if you're like me (which is a frightening thought, actually) you need to have some kind of definition or explanation, otherwise all you can think of is why in the hell anyone would name an album this way.

Anyway, Gerald Bostock is intrigued by the illustrated manuscript he has found, which appears to be some kind of historical document, summarizing key events in Britain's history, and apparently some prophecies as well, thus the years which accompany the track titles, including future dates.

I haven't commented much on the lyrics for any Jethro Tull or Ian Anderson albums in this discography for the simple reason that I don't have most of these albums in physical form, and can't seem to concentrate on the lyrics when I'm listening to them.  I always end up distracted by the music, and while certain phrases jump out at me from time to time, the only time I really notice the lyrics is during those times or when Ian does the thing where he repeats the song's title over and over, with different phrasing and inflections each time.  He hasn't done that in a while, though, which means that I've just been enjoying the music.  And the music here is great.  I like it better than Thick as a Brick 2 and put it nearly on par with the original Thick as a Brick.  I guess I'm just a sucker for Scottish folk music in a Rock and Roll setting featuring Ian Anderson's damned flute.  I could put on pretty much anything by Jethro Tull or Ian solo and just let it play, and have done so many times.

I think the music here is terrific.  If this ends up being Ian's final opus, he's gone out on a high note.  According to AllMusic.com, this album is "as close to 1970s progressive rock as is possible in 2014".  Okay, I don't quite agree with that, but that's only because I'm aware of a lot of contemporary neo-prog, much of which recalls 70's prog, in attitude if not always in sound.  This album does, however, come pretty close to 1970s Jethro Tull.  If we had Martin Barre on guitar rather than Florian Opahle, we'd be even closer, but Opahle does a perfectly fine job here.  John O'Hare is no John Evan on keyboards, either, but I don't think he's trying to be.  The main difference between Jethro Tull and solo Ian Anderson may be that, though Ian pretty much wrote everything and called all the shots, with Jethro Tull each of the musicians was given some latitude in their contributions, whilst on the solo albums, everyone just plays what Ian has written.  That's an oversimplification, though, or at least I'd hope so.  Ian is a well-known control freak, but I would think that he'd want his supporting musicians to put at least a little bit of themselves into their performances, and not literally just play the notes they've been given.  But I honestly don't know.

[DragonAttack]

Since I was on vacation for a week, I'll go back to TAAB 2 for a second.  I made it through about fifteen minutes on my one and only listen back when this first came out.  Reminded me to much of Qryche's O:M 2 sequel 'I'm a sucker for buying this' feeling.  I'll give it another try over the weekend.

As to 'Wandering Man'....I'll be honest, I was not aware of it.  Orbert, could you list a couple of individual highlights/lowlights for us? 

[Orbert]

It's pretty consistently solid, to the point where picking out individual highlights is tough.  Also, since I tend to listen to albums, not songs, I don't even think of them in terms of individual tracks.  But here are some impressions:

The opening track, "Doggerland" is good.  It sounds very much like classic Tull to me.  The flute, the Scottish folk vibe, and even the electric guitar sounds like it could be Martin.  Not exactly, but very close.

"Heavy Metals" goes the other way, evoking the classic Tull acoustic sound.  Suitably, it's short and sweet.

"Puer Ferox Adventus" is the longest track, the mini-epic, and features the most instrumental fireworks.  This is where the keyboardist first really got my attention.

"The Turnpike Inn" is short, but it goes into a quick jam that reminds me of the jam from "Minstrel in the Gallery".

"In for a Pound", at only 37 seconds, says what it wants to say quickly and is done.  Another short little acoustic piece.  But musically it reminds me of "Life is a Long Song" and I wish it had been developed more, musically.

"Per Errationes Ad Astra" is the dreaded spoken-word track.  I really hate those.  Since I'm not paying any attention to the lyrics and thus not following the concept at all, I have no interest in hearing a guy talk for a minute and a half.  I just don't care what he has to say.  This is easily the lowlight for me.

"Cold Dead Reckoning" is the closing piece, and it's pretty good, but concept albums tend to have "grand finales" and this one never seems to reach that.  It's just the last song, not particularly grand.  Plus it ends rather oddly, leaving an overall odd feeling to the entire experience.

It's hard to tell how much Ian is trying to sound like classic Tull, or if this is simply what he came up with and it happens to sound like classic Tull because it was written by the same guy and he happened to be in the same head space at the time.  But I think it's great.  If you're a Jethro Tull fan, take an hour and listen to it.  Or if you're on your PC, just click and let it play while you surf DTF.  That's what I do.

[Evermind]

Orbert, I'm sorry, but there's one good song on the album for me, and that's Doggerland. Other than that, I think the album is shit. I have a deluxe digipack of it or some sort of that edition (a small book with 2 CDs I think, can't check right now), and it's easily one of the worst albums I physically own. If anyone wants it, I can ship it to you, except you'd have to pay the shipping costs and those will be fairly huge I'm sure.

I won't argue about Homo Erraticus as I'd have to listen to it again then, and obviously I've absolutely no desire to do it.

[Orbert]

Wow, okay.  I certainly don't want to "argue" about it.  I'd still like to discuss it, and at least find out why you think it's so horrible, but I guess I understand if you don't even want to do that.

[Orbert]

Some would argue that the real difference between Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson's solo work is the presence or absence of Martin Barre.  Sure, Ian's distinctive voice and flute work are usually the first thing people think of.  Still, most fans of the band, musicians or not, would agree that you have to have Martin Barre on electric guitar (and occassional second flute) or you don't call it Jethro Tull.  He joined on the second album and played on every Jethro Tull album from that point forward.

We didn't get a huge announcement when Ian Anderson decided to end Jethro Tull.  It just kind of happened, quietly, during a time that there wasn't much news.  Ever since then, it's been a bit unclear exactly why, as though everyone involved has been sworn to secrecy.  The few brief references to it we've gotten over the years have left a lot of room for interpretation and speculation.

Until now, as Martin appears to finally say something specific about it.


Martin Barre opens up on the moment Ian Anderson disbanded Jethro Tull

"It was Ian's decision," he says. "Because in that year, I can't remember the gig, we were in America and me, Doan (Perry) and Ian sat in a room to talk, Ian asked us and then he dropped that bombshell. He didn't wanna play Jethro Tull. He didn't wanna do Jethro Tull concerts. Me and Doan were just speechless, really, because Ian has always been a very careful, planned out person, he knows exactly what he wants and what he's gonna do.

"In the back of my mind. I thought that this isn't something he's done on the spur of the moment, he really thought through it. It was a very abrupt ending for me and Doane. In a way, it shook me up because I think Tull were getting very lethargic [as a] band and  the sets were becoming very much the same every tour and nobody wanted any change. I always try to get changes within the group and ideas in production and line up, but but there was no interest in doing it.

[Orbert]

As one might expect, the 2012 release of Thick as a Brick 2 led to a tour, on which Ian Anderson's touring band played Thick as a Brick and Thick as a Brick 2 in their entireties.  The performance in Iceland on June 22, 2012 was released on CD as well as DVD and Blu-ray in 2014.

Thick as a Brick Live in Iceland (2014)



Disc One - Thick as a Brick

Disc Two - Thick as a Brick 2

----------

Ian Anderson - Lead and Backing Vocals, Flute, Acoustic Guitar
Scott Hammond - Drums, Percussion
David Goodier - Bass Guitar, Glockenspiel
John O'Hara - Keyboards, Accordion
Florian Opahle - Electric Guitar
Ryan O'Donnell - Singing, Dance and Mime
Anna Phoebe - Violin

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The live show begins with video on the big screen; Gerald Bostock has arrived for his appointment with his therapist Dr. Quad (portrayed by Ian Anderson), who immediately asks about Gerald's feelings of rejection, when they first began, etc.  He encourages him to "tell all", which leads into Thick as a Brick.  The YouTube rips above are CD rips, so you hear the video play out (about a minute) before the music starts.  The rip of Thick as a Brick 2 doesn't include the video introduction segment, which is Sir Archibald Parritt (also portrayed by Ian Anderson) of St Cleve TV outside his home.  It's an odd, rambling bit that goes on for about 3.5 minutes, and the clip itself is presented as the result of a YouTube search for "Posh bloke in garden".

I couldn't find a DVD rip, but here is handheld footage of an entire show from Fort Myers Florida later in the same tour.  What you hear on the live discs makes a lot more sense when you can see what's happening on the video screens.

It also makes it clear when Ryan O'Donnell is singing and when Ian Anderson is singing, which I'd actually forgotten about and which took me by surprise.  Ian's voice sounds okay (though not great) on the parts he does sing, but Ryan sings most of the higher and otherwise more demanding vocal parts, as Ian just can't do them anymore.  A shame, but I'm glad that Ian is realistic about it and has hired someone to sing the parts and present the songs properly.  The show must go on.  Ian has always tried to keep the highest standards for live shows, and he knows that this one's an exceptionally important one.

[TAC]

I'm off tomorrow. I'll hit Homo Erraticus then.