www.torontosun.com/entertainment/music/2010/06/19/14447171.htmlJethro Tull blows into town
By JASON MacNEIL, Special To Sun Media
Last Updated: June 19, 2010 4:46amIan Anderson certainly likes to blow his own horn, er, flute. Almost as much as he likes standing on one leg awkwardly and playing the instrument.
Such a trick is right up there with walking and chewing bubble gum simultaneously, yet as the lead singer/multi-instrumentalist of 60's British folk-rock band Jethro Tull, Anderson has made it a jumping off point of sorts for the band for some four decades.
And for 90 minutes before a decent-sized crowd Friday night at Toronto's Molson Canadian Amphitheatre, Jethro Tull melded a collage of styles which enthused some and left others - to use a line from their song Hare In The Wine Cup - silently sitting.
The five-piece band opened their dozen-song set with Nothing Is Easy from their 1969 album Stand Up, a jazzy, heady, psychedelic-tinged tune that earned a standing ovation. Yet the response seemed to be the exception to what was otherwise a rather tame, reserved applause after each number.
"Good evening, nice to see you," Anderson said early on, reveling in his dual roles of flute god and medieval court jester. Often the performer paced the stage, eyes bulging out of his sockets in the midst of several flute solos when not playing off of longtime guitarist Martin Barre as was the case during A New Day Yesterday.
Thanking the audience, Anderson stated Jethro Tull would now perform a piece of "genuine 16th Century rock and roll" composed by Henry VIII regarding his many wives. "He cut their heads off because he tired of them...as you do," Anderson quipped before the Celtic-meets-minstrel tune Pastime With Good Company (King Henry's Madrigal) began. The song fared a bit better but seriously, how impressionable can a flute solo be? As a friend beside me quipped, "You don't see them selling Flute Hero for Xbox, do you?"
After a rather messy, genre-fusing Songs From The Wood, the band picked things up a bit with the classical-laced Bouree. Here Anderson tip-toed near the lip of the stage as the song took an ambling jazz direction. Equally interesting yet busy was the lengthy A Change Of Horses which fared better but lost a bit of steam near the backstretch.
The last third of the concert was a series of lengthy crowd-pleasers beginning with Budapest, a stronger number falling in a vein similar to the song Romeo And Juliet by Dire Straits. But the audience finally came to life when the initial notes to Aqualung - the band's signature tune - began. With some concert goers standing and belting out the lyrics, Anderson and crew energized the crowd before rounding things off with Locomotive Breath.
Opening for Jethro Tull was fellow British rock band Procol Harum. The group managed to do a fine job with organ-led, blues-fuelled numbers such as the swinging Conquistador, A Salty Dog and of course their closing signature (and classic rock staple) A Whiter Shade of Pale.
RATING: 3 out of 5
www.windsorstar.com/entertainment/Anderson+tried+true/3174163/story.htmlIan Anderson: tried & true
"Some stuff is really hard to duplicate live onstage."
By Ted Shaw, The Windsor Star June 19, 2010 It's hard to imagine a rock 'n' roll world without Jethro Tull, but for a few days at least in 1972, leader Ian Anderson was ready to pack it all in.
"It was the end of the Thick As a Brick tour of the U.S.A., and I got really depressed," said the 62-year-old leader of one of the late British Invasion's seminal bands.
"I said to myself I just couldn't go on fighting the hoots and the hollers of rather loud audience members."
As odd as that seems, Jethro Tull had forged a new acoustic identity on Thick As a Brick, but audiences in North America weren't buying it.
"What we were trying to sell them on was studio music, recorded music," Anderson said. "It didn't lend itself to the sometimes impatient and rather boisterous audiences we encountered, especially in the U.S."
All of this came flooding back to Anderson recently while listening to 38-year-old tapes of Thick As a Brick.
"People ask all the time when we're going to play that album all the way through in concert," he said. "My usual response is forget it. Some of the stuff on the album is really hard to duplicate live onstage."
Jethro Tull, which Anderson had formed five years earlier, was built initially on heavy blues-rock riffs, and the album prior to Thick As a Brick, Aqualung, was straight-ahead rock 'n' roll for the most part. Songs like Cross-Eyed Mary, Locomotive Breath, Hymn 43, and the title tune, Aqualung, had established Jethro Tull on FM radio as an adventurous, high-energy and alternative rocking band.
Then came 1972's Thick As a Brick with its two 20-minute sides of continuous music suites, much of it acoustic. The album opened tongue-in-cheek with the line, "Really don't mind if you sit this one out...."
Fortunately, after a few days to think about it, Anderson came to his senses and carried on with his unique musical vision for Jethro Tull. He compromised in terms of the live performances, but the sound of the band stayed the course after Thick As a Brick, incorporating even more English folk influences and steadily distancing itself from the older, bluesier version.
Over the years, Jethro Tull has dipped into Thick As a Brick with a set of highlights. A 1997 remastered edition of the CD contained a 12-minute concert version taped at Madison Square Garden in 1978.
That's about all anyone's likely to hear these days. Five years ago, Jethro Tull toured a live version of Aqualung, filling up half its shows with a track-by-track performance of the album. But don't expect the same for Thick As a Brick.
"We did a complete version for a few months when we were unveiling the album, but it was not an experience that was likely to have gone on for too long."
Today's Jethro Tull features Anderson as the only original, and longtime lead guitarist Martin Barre, who joined for 1968's Stand Up. The shifting sands of time have altered the lineup several times.
"We all have to accept the fact we are aging," Anderson said, when asked about the effects of watching himself as a much younger man in old films. "It's a fact of life whether you do what I do or you're a coal miner or a New York lawyer."
Recently, he was asked to write liner notes for a special three-disc version of Stand Up which will be released in the fall. It will contain an entire live 1970 Jethro Tull performance at Carnegie Hall lately discovered in the EMI vaults."I find the prospect of listening to the older stuff a little daunting," Anderson said. "But as daunting as it seems, it often ends up being a more uplifting experience than I imagined it would. The energy and the enthusiasm of the performance tends to overcome the technical shortcomings."
In the same way, when the band or he in a solo capacity perform at familiar venues like London's Hammersmith Odeon or New York's Beacon Theatre, the old juices start to flow.
"The familiarity comes flooding back and you're suddenly transported back in time," he said. "The people and the places don't really go away after time. Whenever I bump into an ex-member or someone I played with years ago, it sometimes feels just like yesterday."
The most recent full-fledged new Jethro Tull studio album was 2003's Christmas Album. It was probably the last. The band is playing two new Anderson songs on the current tour, but that's only a concession to keeping up their chops.
"It's a way of putting yourself to the test, really, rehearsing and performing material with which the audience has no familiarity, and getting it across."
But there is no new Jethro Tull album on Anderson's horizon, and from the start, what he says goes.
"Given the times we live in and the state of the industry, a new album is really on the back burner," he said.
"The cost of recording and marketing remain the same as they were 20 years ago, but record sales are maybe 10 per cent of what they were back then. People might think they want a new Jethro Tull album, but in reality what they want is a new, old Jethro Tull album, something that is in the style of an Aqualung or a Thick As a Brick."
