stand up

Jethro Tull found their own sound with the eclectic folk, classical jazz, and heavy blues of this bright city bourrée.  Their debut album 'This Was' had its roots deep in the blues with diversionary roads into rock, folk, and baroque.  Guitarist Mick Abrahams left the band after it was completed as Ian Anderson was taking more of the limelight.  After attempts to replace him with Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi (who played with them for the Rolling Stones' Rock 'N Roll Circus) and Davy O'List from the Nice, the group settled on Martin Barre.  

Barre says:   "They did different kind of music when I joined so everything changed anyway. We were just starting from nothing, whatever songs were like no other music. We were starting from, I think, absolute zero. But I think it took not only my guitar playing but the way the music went. They all would be saying: 'Why won’t you play like this or like that?' That’s why I never listened to other people, because I just feel what is the right thing...I can’t play proper jazz but I can make it sound like that. I just pretend to play jazz. I can’t also play country and western but I pretend, and I can pretend to play classical music. It’s just my version of it because I listened to jazz and I listened to classical music. So it’s easy to copy and I copy in my own way but I’m not playing it properly."

Produced by Ian Anderson and Terry Ellis at Morgan Studios, London with strings arranged and conducted by David Palmer;  'Stand Up' features Ian Anderson on vocals, flute, acoustic guitar, Hammond organ, piano, mandolin, balalaika, and mouth organ;  Martin Lancelot Barre on electric guitar and flute;  Glenn Cornick on bass guitar;  and Clive Bunker on drums and percussion;  with engineer Andy Johns adding bass guitar to "Look into The Sun".  




The album went to number twenty in the US, five in Norway, and number one in the UK.  Anderson looks back:   "The original 'Stand Up' album was the album that was -- on our second tour, I think, in the summer of 1969 -- released and went to the top of the charts. I was sitting in Loews Midtown Manhattan Hotel having breakfast and Joe Cocker came in and said “Congratulations, your album has just gone to number one in the UK...And we thought ‘wow, that’s great’ because we were, at that point, just starting off in the US, and not terribly well-known...It was essentially the beginning of Jethro Tull’s US career. It gave us confidence that the music that we were then playing live on stage during our shows was already successful in the UK and in Europe and when it was released in the US it hopefully would mimic that European success. And indeed it did quite well for us, inasmuch as that album was contemporaneous with those early tours of that year, 1969...Back then in a recording studios people were always inventing new things, you know, things you could do, things perhaps you weren’t supposed to do...On the 'Stand' album it was just a bit of wacky improvisation really, standing on top of a speaker and swinging the mike around mimicking I suppose the effects of a Leslie cabinet, you know the rotating speaker cabinet, spinning around in the cabinet and keeping the microphone still.  We just kept the speaker still and moved around the mike. it was a bit of fun, and it was an amusing sound, and it had its effects and it was a way of doing something new and different.  By the traditions of professional recording techniques that we were young musicians – we tried different stuff, and as long as we didn’t break anything, we got away with it."





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'Living in the Past' was recorded during the sessions but released separately as a single.  'Living in the Past' also become the title of a compilation album released in 1972, during which time the single was re-released.  It would become their highest charting single in both the UK and the US, peaking at number four and number eleven respectively.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8


Happy and I'm smiling,
Walk a mile to drink your water.
You know I'd love to love you,
And above you there's no other.
We'll go walking out
While others shout of war's disaster.
Oh, we won't give in,
Let's go living in the past.

Once I used to join in
Every boy and girl was my friend.
Now there's revolution, but they don't know
What they're fighting.
Let us close our eyes;
Outside their lives go on much faster.
Oh, we won't give in,
We'll keep living in the past.

Oh, we won't give in,
Let's go living in the past.
Oh no no we won't give in,
Let's go living in the past.






'Bourée' was a jazzed out rearrangement of J. S. Bach's Bourrée in E minor BWV 996 (fifth movement).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5_hZV9U4aA








We Used To Know/For A Thousand Mothers (Isle of Wight)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJPWEdMa43o








'Stand Up'
full album:




A New Day Yesterday   4:10
Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square  2:12
Bourée  3:46
Back to the Family  3:48
Look into the Sun  4:20
Nothing Is Easy  4:25
Fat Man  2:52
We Used to Know  3:59
Reasons for Waiting  4:05
For a Thousand Mothers  4:13
Living in the Past  3:23
Driving Song  2:44
Sweet Dream  4:05
17  3:07

heavy horses

Jethro Tull described modern life in the country with metaphor and menace with the rural poetry of this centerpiece of their progressive folk rock trilogy.  Inspired by the traditional music of contemporaries Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention and by Ian Anderson's move to a farm in the English countryside, the band had found renewed acclaim with the first installment of the trilogy, 'Songs from the Wood'.   Anderson produced 'Heavy Horses' at Maison Rouge Studio in Fulham, London with engineer Robin Black.  The sessions featured Ian Anderson on vocals, flute, mandolin, acoustic guitar, and whistles; Martin Barre on electric guitar; Barriemore Barlow on percussion and drums; John Evan on organ and piano; David Palmer on keyboards, pipe organ, and orchestral arrangements; and John Glascock on bass guitar and backing vocals; with Darryl Way playing violin on 'Acres Wild' and 'Heavy Horses'.  

Anderson would reveal:    "It's a rather more menacing sort of album; not menacing in the sense that it's a 'downer' or negative, but a little more bite. I think the group are playing better on it as well. It's a cross-section of the ways that we record, which is a very important part of making an albums. There are so many different ways you can make a record: you can rehearse a song absolutely note-perfect and then just go in and get it down, all playing, one vocal overdub and finished, or you can go into the studio with a vague idea and slowly build it up and add things and take things away, like an artist working with a painting, and arrive at the product that way ... and it's the product of a lot of imagination, a lot of creativity, which is very spontaneous and which hasn't been rehearsed. Sometimes I go in and do just vocals and a guitar track and then leave the other get on with adding things around it; or they go in and do something and I haven't even written the lyrics yet. Then I have the problem of working around something they've done.  All this is is trying to avoid using any kind of formula in making records — we try to apply all the different ways of making a record. Hopefully the songs have their own individuality and identity as a result of that variety of processes of recording. That is one of the reasons it has taken us a while, because obviously we tend to start work on certain songs in the studio and find out they're not going the right way and have to throw them out. I mean as usual we must have recorded twenty pieces, of which six or seven pieces in some tape lying around will never be dug out again, half-completed things...Some of them have been written in hotels on tours during the last twelve months. I usually try to write at least one song on the train, out from Marylebone station to ... the other end, and I did that again, so there's another train song. One or two I have actually written at home, surrounded by animals and goodness knows what else. The thing is, it's always easier to write songs about your own surroundings and your own real feelings not when you're in the middle of them but when you're sitting in the Holiday Inn or wherever it might be, because then you have a far more objective look at your own life, or the lives of other people for that matter too. The artificiality of the Holiday Inn room existence is an incredible bonus ... I mean just think what works of pure wonder Beethoven would have turned in had he been ensconced in the Holiday Inn, Miami, for the last ten years of his life ... half a dozen more symphonies ... 'Heavy Horses', as you may or may not know, is the term given to the very large working horses indigenous to this country: the Shire and the Suffolk and the Clydesdale, and the borrowed Percheron from France. I have a soft spot for horses. I don't ride them: I don't like sitting on top of them, but I make friends with them and I have a few at home. Not that sort of horse, but ... I suppose ... I suppose it's rather like ... I shouldn't be saying this, it's silly to say ... but it's a bit like an equestrian Aqualung, if you like, where the downtrodden creature that I'm singing about is the poor old heavy horse who used to be in his heyday as the all-round working animal, both in industry and of course in agriculture. And very nearly disappeared altogether but for a few breeders who took a delight in preserving the species, and now it is beginning to come back again as a working animal.  I wrote that one while we were in America, and it's one of the rather long ones. There are two long songs on the album, and that's one of them. It has a mixture of several different styles and a degree of ups and downs and level ... what do they call it, dynamics or something. So that's the title track. One thing looking at the list of songs, now, is that they are all actually about something, which makes me happy, when I can actually see they are about something. The worst thing in the world is to find yourself writing a lyric which isn't really about anything at all; it's just an excuse for opening your mouth while the group make a funky, danceable, exciting, crowd-waving-their-arms sort of sound, which is pointless rock 'n' roll. Maybe some people would say it's not pointless and that it is in fact what rock 'n' roll is all about: unfortunately I do aspire to these higher pretensions and I must insist that it has to be about something. I mean Johnny Rotten sings about something, and in a very different way so do I ... people always have this idea that nature is soft and sloppy and something even worse than hippies going on about love and peace, but it isn't at all.  Nature is ... I mean most people can't face up to it: that's why we all live in towns and live in houses with central heating and want nice warm motor cars, because it's actually too tough for all of us. I'm just keen to point out that some of these things are a bit hairier than people imagine ... the sort of issues that I could be publicly angry about don't readily translate into pop music. I mean it would be silly of me to start putting forward political (or anything like political) views that I might hold, and to be trying seriously to deal with other issues. It's the wrong time, now. If I want to do that I ought to be either a politician or a sleeping politician and write books about it, but not in terms of these songs. I think I'm dealing more with fantasy, and interpretations of things that otherwise might be taken for granted. I really don't want to use rock music as a social or political platform ... I'm not just singing about cats, I'm singing about something that translates into human terms, and in all the animals that I ever sing about there is something of a personification going on. I'm singing about people as well. That's what I think makes them good songs. They're not just literal. As I explain them they might sound a bit banal, and who knows, they may sound a bit like that when you hear them, but for me, if they're worth anything (at least as far as the lyrics are concerned) it's because they do have other shades of meaning, which is what makes them good."

'Heavy Horses' cantered to twenty-seven in Sweden, twenty in the UK, nineteen in the US, eighteen in Austria, and thirteen in Norway.  The final installment of the trilogy would come a year later:  'Stormwatch'.







http://jethrotull.com/







"Heavy Horses"





lyrics




'Heavy Horses' 
full album: 


All tracks written by Ian Anderson with additional material by Martin Barre and David Palmer.

Side one
1. "...And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps" 3:11
2. "Acres Wild" 3:22
3. "No Lullaby" 7:55
4. "Moths" 3:24
5. "Journeyman" 3:55
Side two
6. "Rover" 4:17
7. "One Brown Mouse" 3:21
8. "Heavy Horses" 8:58
9. "Weathercock" 4:02
bonus tracks
10. "Living in These Hard Times" 3:10
11. "Broadford Bazaar" 3:38

thick as a brick

Jethro Tull stretched progressive rock as far as it would go with this dense and difficult mock epic. Ian Anderson says he wrote 'Thick as a Brick' as a response to descriptions of 'Aqualung' as a concept album, "because everyone was saying we were a progressive rock band, so we decided to live up to the reputation and write a progressive album, but done as a parody of the genre." The album features a single song that weaves through several changes and themes like a symphony; expanding on their sound with the addition of harpsichord, xylophone, timpani, violin, lute, trumpet, saxophone, and a string section; and taking on the hypocrisy and materialism of mainstream society. The album cover features a concocted newspaper 'The St. Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser' with articles that poke fun at local journalism and limited perspectives and "sand castle virtues." The titular track comes from a poem written by fictional Gerald Bostock that won a local poetry contest but lost it again due to public outrage over the content of the poem. Anderson said that the goal was to “come up with something that is the mother of all concept albums, and is really a mind-boggler in terms of what was then relatively complex music, and also lyrically was complex, confusing, and above all, a bit of a spoof. It was, quite deliberately, but in a nice way, tongue-in-cheek, and meant to send ourselves, the audience, and the music critics, perhaps, though not necessarily in that order, a bit of a message.” 'Thick as a Brick' went to number one in Australia and the US.






http://jethrotull.com/







'Thick as a Brick' 

full album:

Really don't mind if you sit this one out.

My words but a whisper -- your deafness a shout.

I may make you feel but I can't make you think.

Your sperms in the gutter -- your loves in the sink.

So you ride yourselves over the fields and

You make all your animal deals and

Your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick.

And the sand-castle virtues are all swept away in

The tidal destruction

The moral melee.

The elastic retreat rings the close of play as the last wave uncovers

The newfangled way.

But your new shoes are worn at the heels and

Your suntan does rapidly peel and

Your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick.

And the love that I feel is so far away:

I'm a bad dream that I just had today -- and you

Shake your head and

Say it's a shame.

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth.

Draw the lace and black curtains and shut out the whole truth.

Spin me down the long ages: let them sing the song.

See there: a son is born -- and we pronounce him fit to fight.

There are black-heads on his shoulders, and he pees himself in the night.

Well make a man of him

Put him to trade

Teach him

To play monopoly

Not to sing in the rain.

The poet and the painter casting shadows on the water --

As the sun plays on the infantry returning from the sea.

The do-er and the thinker: no allowance for the other --

As the failing light illuminates the mercenary's creed.

The home fire burning: the kettle almost boiling --

But the master of the house is far away.

The horses stamping -- their warm breath clouding

In the sharp and frosty morning of the day.

And the poet lifts his pen while the soldier sheaths his sword.

And the youngest of the family is moving with authority.

Building castles by the sea, he dares the tardy tide to wash them all aside.

The cattle quietly grazing at the grass down by the river

Where the swelling mountain water moves onward to the sea:

The builder of the castles renews the age-old purpose

And contemplates the milking girl whose offer is his need.

The young men of the household have

All gone into service and

Are not to be expected for a year.

The innocent young master -- thoughts moving ever faster --

Has formed the plan to change the man he seems.

And the poet sheaths his pen while the soldier lifts his sword.

And the oldest of the family is moving with authority.

Coming from across the sea, he challenges the son who puts him to the run.

What do you do when

The old mans gone -- do you want to be him?

And your real self sings the song.

Do you want to free him?

No one to help you get up steam --

And the whirlpool turns you `way off-beam.

Later.

I've come down from the upper class to mend your rotten ways.

My father was a man-of-power whom everyone obeyed.

So come on all you criminals!

I've got to put you straight just like I did with my old man --

Twenty years too late.

Your bread and waters going cold.

Your hair is too short and neat.

I'll judge you all and make damn sure that no-one judges me.

You curl your toes in fun as you smile at everyone

You meet the stares. You're unaware that your doings aren't done.

And you laugh most ruthlessly as you tell us what not to be.

But how are we supposed to see where we should run?

I see you shuffle in the courtroom with

Your rings upon your fingers and

Your downy little sidies and

Your silver-buckle shoes.

Playing at the hard case,

You follow the example of the comic-paper idol

Who lets you bend the rules.

So come on ye childhood heroes!

Won't you rise up from the pages of your comic-books

Your super crooks

And show us all the way.

Well! make your will and testament.

Won't you join your local government?

We'll have superman for president

Let robin save the day.

You put your bet on number one and it comes up every time.

The other kids have all backed down and they put you first in line.

And so you finally ask yourself just how big you are --

And take your place in a wiser world of bigger motor cars.

And you wonder who to call on.

So where the hell was biggles when you needed him last Saturday?

And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you though?

They're all resting down in Cornwall --

Writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition

Of the boy scout manual.

Later.

See there! a man born -- and we pronounce him fit for peace.

There's a load lifted from his shoulders with the discovery of his disease.

Well take the child from him

Put it to the test

Teach it

To be a wise man

How to fool the rest.

Quote

We will be geared to the average rather than the exceptional

God is an overwhelming responsibility

We walked through the maternity ward and saw 218 babies wearing nylons

Cats are on the upgrade

Upgrade? hipgrave. oh, mac.

Later

In the clear white circles of morning wonder,

I take my place with the lord of the hills.

And the blue-eyed soldiers stand slightly discoloured (in neat little rows)

Sporting canvas frills.

With their jock-straps pinching, they slouch to attention,

While queueing for sarnies at the office canteen.

Saying -- hows your granny and

Good old ernie: he coughed up a tenner on a premium bond win.

The legends (worded in the ancient tribal hymn)

Lie cradled in the seagulls call.

And all the promises they made are ground beneath the sadist's fall.

The poet and the wise man stand behind the gun,

And signal for the crack of dawn.

Light the sun.

Do you believe in the day?

Do you believe in the day?

The dawn creation of the kings has begun.

Soft venus (lonely maiden) brings the ageless one.

Do you believe in the day?

Do you believe in the day?

The fading hero has returned to the night -- and fully pregnant with the day,

Wise men endorse the poets sight.

Do you believe in the day? Do you? believe in the day!

Let me tell you the tales of your life of

Your love and the cut of the knife

The tireless oppression

The wisdom instilled

The desire to kill or be killed.

Let me sing of the losers who lie in the street as the last bus goes by.

The pavements are empty: the gutters run red -- while the fool

Toasts his God in the sky.

So come all ye young men who are building castles!

Kindly state the time of the year and join your voices in a hellish chorus.

Mark the precise nature of your fear.

Let me help you pick up your dead as the sins of the father are fed

With the blood of the fools and

The thoughts of the wise and

From the pan under your bed.

Let me make you a present of song as

The wise man breaks wind and is gone while

The fool with the hour-glass is cooking his goose and

The nursery rhyme winds along.

So come all ye young men who are building castles!

Kindly state the time of the year

And join your voices in a hellish chorus.

Mark the precise nature of your fear.

See the summer lightning casts it's bolts upon you

And the hour of judgement draweth near.

Would you be

The fool stood in his suit of armour or

The wiser man who rushes clear.

So come on ye childhood heroes!

Wont your rise up from the pages of your comic-books

Your super-crooks and

Show us all the way.

Well make your will and testament.

Wont you join your local government?

Well have superman for president

Let robin save the day.

So! where the hell was biggles when you needed him last saturday?

And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you through?

They're all resting down in Cornwall -- writing up their memoirs

For a paper-back edition of the boy scout manual.

Of course

So you ride yourselves over the fields and

You make all your animal deals and

Your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick.

aqualung

Jethro Tull mixed folk and hard rock and found mainstream success with this album of deep, dark, whimsical wanderlust. The themes and characters of 'Aqualung' ran the gamut from homelessness and prostitution to childhood alienation to the conflict between faith and organized religion.

Ian Anderson insists "I always said at the time that this is not a concept album; this is just an album of varied songs of varied instrumentation and intensity in which three or four are the kind of keynote pieces for the album but it doesn't make it a concept album. In my mind when it came to writing the next album, 'Thick as a Brick', was done very much in the sense of: 'Whuh, if they thought 'Aqualung' was a concept album, OOOO-K, we'll show you a concept album.' And it was done as a kind of spoof, a send-up, of the concept album genre. ... But 'Aqualung' itself, in my mind was never a concept album. Just a bunch of songs."

http://jethrotull.com/

The mini-epic 'Aqualung' has become a rock classic. Ian Anderson wrote it with his wife Jennie, who had shown him photos she had taken of homeless men.

"Sun streaking cold --

an old man wandering lonely.

Taking time

the only way he knows.

Leg hurting bad,

as he bends to pick a dog-end --

he goes down to the bog

and warms his feet."

'Hymn 43'

"Oh father high in heaven -- smile down upon your son

who's busy with his money games -- his women and his gun.

Oh Jesus save me!"

'Locomotive Breath'

"Old Charlie stole the handle

And the train, it won't stop going

No way to slow down"

'Aqualung' 
full  album:




All tracks written by Ian Anderson, except where noted.

Side one: Aqualung
1. "Aqualung" (Ian Anderson, Jennie Anderson) 6:34
2. "Cross-Eyed Mary" 4:06
3. "Cheap Day Return" 1:21
4. "Mother Goose" 3:51
5. "Wond'ring Aloud" 1:53
6. "Up to Me" 3:15
Side two: My God
1. "My God" 7:08
2. "Hymn 43" 3:14
3. "Slipstream" 1:13
4. "Locomotive Breath" 4:23

5. "Wind-Up" 6:01