About: Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull
Ian Scott Anderson, MBE (born 10 August 1947) is a British
musician, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work
as the lead vocalist, flautist and acoustic guitarist of British rock band
Jethro Tull. Anderson plays several other musical instruments, including
keyboards, bass guitar, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica, and a
variety of whistles. His solo work began with the 1983 album Walk into Light,
and since then he has released another five works, including the sequel of
Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brick (1972) in 2012 entitled Thick as a Brick 2
and his latest solo release “Homo Erraticus” (2014) which charted very well in
the UK (14th) and Germany (13th). Ian Anderson continues
to astound by showing that his connection to the muse hasn’t waned one bit and
has embarked on a World Tour for 2015 / 2016.
-----------------------------------
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull Career:
Jethro Tull were 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/flutist/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 were 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 "Bourée," 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, Georgia, 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
nonexistence, 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
America 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 sold-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
began 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 unproduced 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
themselves 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 Bursting Out: Jethro Tull Live, was released to modest
success, accompanied by a tour of the United States and an international
television broadcast from Madison Square Garden.
The year 1979 was pivotal and tragic 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, who had announced
their 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 box set covering
Tull'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, Tull 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.
The band issued the worldbeat-infused Roots to Branches in
1995, followed by the similarly themed J-Tull.Dot.Com in 1999, the latter of
which was the group's 20th studio outing. Released in 2003, Jethro Tull
Christmas Album, a collection of holiday songs both old and new, turned out to
be the group's biggest seller since Crest of a Knave, though it would also be
the group's last official album. In 2012 Anderson released a sequel to Thick as
a Brick (Thick as a Brick 2). It was followed in 2014 by another Thick as a
Brick-related collection of new material, Homo Erraticus, his sixth solo
outing. That same year Anderson announced that for the foreseeable future, he
would be issuing all his music under his own name.
Discography:
Jethro Tull
1968 - This Was
1969 - Stand Up
1970 - Benefit
1971 - Aqualung
1972 - Thick as a Brick
1973 - A Passion Play
1974 - War Child
1975 - Minstrel in the Gallery
1976 - Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die!
1977 - Songs from the Wood
1978 - Heavy Horses
1979 - Stormwatch
1980 - A
1982 - The Broadsword and the Beast
1984 - Under Wraps
1987 - Crest of a Knave
1989 - Rock Island
1991 - Catfish Rising
1995 - Roots to Branches
1999 - J-Tull Dot Com
2003 - The Jethro Tull Christmas Album
Ian Anderson:
1983 - Walk into Light
1995 - Divinities: Twelve Dances with God
2000 - The Secret Language of Birds - (2000)
2003 - Rupi's Dance
2005 - Ian Anderson Plays the Orchestral Jethro Tull
2012 - Thick as a Brick 2
2014 - Thick as a Brick - Live in Iceland
2014 - Homo Erraticus
CONTACT: http://jethrotull.com/management/
Locomotive Breath – (Live Isle of Wight Festival – 2015)
Thick as a Brick – (Live in Iceland - 2014)
Ian Anderson - Homo Erraticus -
(Full Album – 2014)
Ian Anderson talks about “Homo
Erraticus” Deluxe Edition
- 2014
Ian Anderson – Enter the Uninvited – (Live UK Tour - 2014)
Ian Anderson Interview with Rick Wakeman – (2013)
Banker Bets Banker Wins – (Live UK – 2012)
Ian Anderson & Cady Coleman
flute duet in space - (2011)
Ian Anderson Plays The Orchestral Jethro Tull – (Live DVD -
2005)
Ian Anderson - Rupi’s Dance – (Full Album - 2003)
Roots to Branches – (Live 2001)
Ian Anderson - The Secret Language of
Birds – (Album: The Secret Language of Birds – 2000)
Dot Com – (Album: Dot Com – 1999)
Hunt By Numbers – (Album: Dot Com – 1999)
El Nino – (Album: Dot Com – 1999)
Roots to Branches – (Album: Roots to Branches – 1995)
Valley – (Album: Roots to Branches –
1995)
Beside Myself – (Album: Roots to Branches – 1995)
Rocks on the Road – (Album: Catfish
Rising – 1991)
The Sparrow on the Schoolyard Wall – (Album: Catfish Rising
– 1991)
Rock Island – (Album: Rock Island – 1989)
Heavy Water – (Album: Rock Island – 1989)
Strange Avenues – (Album: Rock Island – 1989)
Farm on the Freeway – (Album: Crest
of a Knave – 1987)
Budapest – (Album: Crest of a Knave – 1987)
Jethro Tull - Full Concert – (Capitol Theater 1984)
Under Wraps – (Album: Under Wraps – 1984)
Ian Anderson – Walk into Light – (Full Album – 1983)
Broadsword – (Album: The Broadsword & The Beast – 1982)
Black Sunday – (Album: A – 1980)
North Sea Oil – (Album: Stormwatch – 1979)
Orion – (Album: Stormwatch – 1979)
Thick as a Brick - (Live at Madison Square Garden NY - 1978)
Heavy Horses – (Album: Heavy Horses – 1978)
The Whistler – (Album: Songs from the Wood – 1977)
Hunting Girl – (Album: Songs from the Wood – 1977)
Velvet Green – (Album: Songs from the Wood – 1977)
Too Old to Rock n Roll: Too Young to Die – (Album: Too Old
to… – 1976)
Minstrel In The Gallery – (Live in Paris - 1975)
The Minstrel in the Gallery – (Album: The Minstral in the
Gallery – 1975)
Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day – (Album: War
Child – 1974)
Bungle in the Jungle – (Album: War Child – 1974)
A Passion – (Play Part 1) – (Album: A Passion Play – 1973)
A Passion – (Play Part 2) – (Album: A Passion Play – 1973)
A Passion – (Play Part 3) – (Album: A Passion Play – 1973)
A Passion – (Play Part 4) – (Album: A Passion Play – 1973)
A Passion – (Play Part 5) – (Album: A Passion Play – 1973)
Thick as a Brick – (Album: Thick as a Brick – 1972)
Locomotive Breath – (Album: Aqualung – 1971)
Cheap Day Return & Mother Goose - (Album: Aqualung –
1971)
Cross Eyed Mary - (Album: Aqualung –
1971)
Aqualung – (Album: Aqualung – 1971)
Teacher - (Album: Benefit – 1970)
Living in the Past (Live 1969) – (Single – 1969)
Fat Man - (Album: Stand Up – 1969)
Look into the Sun – (Album: Stand Up – 1969)
Bourée – (Album: Stand Up – 1969)
A Song for Jeffry – (Album: This Was – 1968)
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull LINKS:
Official Website
Official Website
Soundcloud
Jethro Tull – Last FM
Ian Anderson - Wikipedia
Jethro Tull - Wikipedia
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull - Facebook
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull - Twitter
VIDEO
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull - YouTube
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull – Tull Management
BUY MUSIC
IAN ANDERSON
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull – Official Store
Ian Anderson - iTunes
Ian Anderson - Amazon
Ian Anderson - eMusic
JETHRO TULL
Jethro Tull - iTunes
Jethro Tull - Amazon
Jethro Tull - eMusic
http://www.emusic.com/artist/jethro-tull/10567444/
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