(In one other Vinyl scene, as if to drive the purpose house, coke-addled document mogul Richie Finestra rips an precise Jethro Tull document off a turntable and cracks it over his knee.)
Jethro Tull, a blues-rock band from Blackpool in Northern England, joined Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues in a sloppy second British Invasion on the shut of the Sixties. Nominally an ensemble, Tull had however one core member, Ian Anderson. Ian wrote the songs, and he pursued a meandering musical imaginative and prescient, altering kinds — generally radically, generally inside a single album — to go well with his stressed muse and to slake the altering tastes of a fickle public.
By their second album, Stand Up, Tull had strayed from their blues-jazz roots into exhausting rock, people rock and each different rock hyphenate within the pop pantheon of 1969. By the fourth Tull album, Aqualung, Ian sounded torn between taking part in solo guitar in a coffeehouse and fronting a heavy steel band. Album 5, Thick as a Brick, dove headfirst into prog. After a pair of album-long suites, Tull segued right into a spirited, up-tempo model of Ren-fest rock that Rolling Stone termed “Elizabethan boogie.” However whereas folk-rock purists reminiscent of Fairport Conference revived historical English balladry, Ian Anderson wrote his personal materials and stored one foot firmly planted within the prog universe, experimenting with classical themes, grad-school chord progressions and sword-and-sorcery motifs. Jethro Tull albums of that period made preferrred soundtracks to Dungeons & Dragons classes.
Through the years, Jethro Tull misplaced the help of the rock-music press even because it gained an unlimited and constant fanbase, a passel of principally male patrons who caught with the band by means of many stylistic shifts.
Basic-rock radio lengthy supplied a house for such pretty Tull chestnuts as “Trainer” and “Dwelling within the Previous.” However these songs at the moment are half a century previous, artifacts of a fading ’70s soundtrack from artists missing Zeppelin-sized legacies. Many modern music followers know Jethro Tull solely because the band that robbed Metallica of a 1989 Grammy award – in heavy steel, of all disciplines.
The Jethro Tull catalog cries out for reappraisal. On the flip of the Seventies, the band spun off a outstanding sequence of eclectic albums, a run capped by the excellent 1972 assortment Dwelling within the Previous. Subsequent releases have not aged so effectively, however Ian Anderson remained an amazing songwriter, blessed with a outstanding sense of melody, counterpoint and tune construction. A lot of Tull’s later output buried these items beneath layers of teeth-rattling guitar or hid them inside earnest prog symphonies. When the band shut up and let Ian strum his acoustic, his songcraft resurfaced for a couple of valuable minutes.
Right here, then, is an album-by-album overview of Ian Anderson’s best songs. We’ll cease within the mid-Eighties, when Tull settled right into a folk-rock maturity, producing fewer stylistic troughs but additionally fewer compositional peaks.
Facet Considered one of This Was, 1968. 
Jethro Tull’s debut holds up higher than most long-players from blues-obsessed Britain within the late ’60s. The document pairs Ian Anderson together with his solely actual collaborator of that period, Mick Abrahams, an ideal blues-rock guitarist who would depart after one album to type Blodwyn Pig. Abrahams apparently cowrote “Beggar’s Farm,” maybe the best tune on the disc. The Ian Anderson authentic “My Sunday Feeling” and the spirited duet “Some Day the Solar Will not Shine for You” rock exhausting and bluesy. “Serenade to a Cuckoo,” overlaying jazzman Roland Kirk, exploits Ian’s novel expertise on the flute. Facet two is generally filler, however “A Tune for Jeffrey” is a swamp-boogie traditional.
All of Stand Up, 1969. 
I feel Stand Up is Jethro Tull’s finest album by a large margin. Three tracks, “Bourée,” “Nothing Is Straightforward” and “Fats Man,” rank as deathless Tull classics. “A New Day Yesterday” and “Again to the Household” are melodic hard-rock gems, whereas “Look into the Solar” and “Causes for Ready” supply pretty acoustic meditations. The Eagles pilfered the chords from “We Used to Know” and retooled them as “Lodge California.” The one draw back is the lack of Abrahams.
All of Profit, 1970. 
Whereas not as compositionally sturdy as Stand Up, Tull’s third album includes a brace of sometimes melodic exhausting rock songs. “With You There to Assist Me,” the opener, gives pretty harmonies over a busy chord development. “Nothing to Say” and “To Cry You a Tune” are riff-driven epics, marred solely by a creeping heavy-handedness on the guitars. “Inside” and “Trainer” are joyous romps.
Most of Aqualung, 1971. 
You both love “Aqualung,” otherwise you hate it. Maybe the ascent of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath impressed Ian to open his fourth album with a pair of steel epics, “Aqualung” and “Cross-Eyed Mary.” They’re enjoyable songs: “Aqualung,” for higher or worse, grew to become Tull’s “Free Chook.” However for my ears, the true treasures lie farther down the monitor record, when the band steps again and Ian straps on his acoustic for a sequence of magical acoustic ballads, beginning with “Low-cost Day Return” and ending with “As much as Me.” Facet two will get preachy (and noisy) with “My God,” however “Hymn 43” and particularly “Locomotive Breath” present the complete band at its gut-busting finest.
All however facet three of Dwelling within the Previous, 1972.
This double album absolutely ranks among the many best compilations of ’70s rock, pulling collectively a outstanding run of singles, album tracks and EP cuts that span the genres of blues rock (“A Tune for Jeffrey”), exhausting rock (the beautiful “Love Story”), people rock (“The Witch’s Promise”) and Ian’s personal model of orchestral pop (“Life Is a Lengthy Tune”). A number of of the perfect songs, together with the infectious “Singing All Day” and the title monitor, had not seen launch on any prior Tull LP, a testomony to the power of Ian’s songcraft. I usually skip facet three, a principally instrumental exercise recorded at Carnegie Corridor.
“Skating Away” and “Solely Solitaire” from Struggle Youngster, 1974.
Tull bookended Dwelling within the Previous with pair of full-album suites, Thick as a Brick and A Ardour Play. Many followers and a few critics take into account Brick a masterpiece. To paraphrase Chuck Berry, I feel each recordings lavatory down in needlessly advanced chord progressions and time signatures, finally shedding the great thing about Ian’s melodies. On Struggle Youngster, the band retreated to correct – albeit uneven — songs. “Skating Away” is the glowing standout, a stunning acoustic tune dressed up right into a pop hit. “Solely Solitaire” is one other fascinating acoustic tour, Sir Ian lashing out on the rising crowd of critics.
“One White Duck” from Minstrel within the Gallery, 1975.
This album alerts Ian Anderson’s embrace of the medieval bard, a persona he would inhabit into the following decade. Many of the songs begin out as pretty acoustic ballads after which explode into folk-metal exercises. They don’t seem to be unhealthy songs, however too usually, Sir Ian’s easy melodies disappear beneath the din. “One White Duck,” the mild acoustic suite that opens facet two, is a forgotten gem.
“Salamander” from Too Outdated to Rock ‘n Roll: Too Younger to Die, 1976.
This rock ‘n roll musical ranks amongst Tull’s weaker albums. The title monitor is sweet, however the album’s finest tune is that this delicate acoustic monitor. If Ian had operated like Robyn Hitchcock, maybe he would have stockpiled these acoustic treasures for launch on one nice LP on the decade’s finish.
“The Whistler” and “Fires at Midnight” from Songs from the Wooden, 1977.
Critics greeted this album as a rousing return to type. Compositionally, Songs from the Wooden might be Ian’s strongest set since Dwelling within the Previous, though the late-’70s synth textures and folk-pop manufacturing sound dated in the present day. Nonetheless, “The Whistler” is a breathless, lovely tune, and “Fires at Midnight” closes out the LP like a cup of steaming cocoa.
“And the Mouse Police By no means Sleeps” from Heavy Horses, 1978.
The second album in Tull’s Elizabethan cycle sounds nearer to a real folk-rock album. The songs aren’t essentially stronger than these on Songs for the Wooden, however Heavy Horses advantages from an easier manufacturing. “Mouse Police” is a hypnotic gem of a tune.
“Dun Ringill” from Stormwatch, 1979.
Unfairly maligned, Stormwatch is a positive album, moody and menacing just like the North Sea, if a tad overproduced. The crown jewel of this assortment is “Dun Ringill,” a type of Nordic fairy story set to an attractive melody and answered by a stunning contrapuntal determine on Ian’s acoustic guitar. It is in all probability my favourite Ian Anderson tune.
“Flyingdale Flyer” from A, 1980.
Pretty multi-part harmonies adorn this tune, a standout from a weaker Tull outing.
“Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow” from Broadsword and the Beast, 1982.
Broadsword marked one other modest comeback for Tull, 5 years after Songs from the Wooden. Like that album, Broadsword sounds very a lot of its period. (Not many albums launched in 1982, come to consider it, transcend the ghastly manufacturing strategies of the time.) “Jack Frost” was an outtake that popped up on a late-’80s Tull boxed set, and it is my favourite Broadsword tune by far, jubilant, dynamic and devilishly catchy.
“Below Wraps #2” from Below Wraps, 1984.
A stunning, understated tune from an album many Tull followers select to neglect.
Daniel de Visé is a frequent AllMusic contributor and creator of King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King.
