Rolling Stone Record Guide & Tull 1979

[tootull]

tullist mentioned Rolling Stone, so...in the 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide Tull stars were:

This Was 4stars
Stand Up 4stars
Benefit 3stars
Aqualung 3stars
Thick As A Brick 2stars
Living in the Past 5stars
A Passion Play 2stars
WarChild 2stars
Minstrel in the Gallery 3stars
M. U. The Best of 3stars
Too Old To 2stars
Songs From the Wood 3stars
Repeat Best of Vol II 3stars
Heavy Horses 2 stars
Bursting Out 3 stars

May you constantly amaze us. May your answers not be wrong. May your head be on your shoulders. May your tongue be in your cheek. And most of all we pray that you may come back next week!

[Tullist]

Hope I did not mention this in a previous post in my semi-senility, I looked at the same guide maybe ten years ago and they had given 5 stars toSFTW after thouroughly panning in in one star fashion at the time of its release. I remember I had maybe a 1972 or 3 version of that book which printed the original reviews of things and Benefit was given something like 2 stars with the reviewer talking about it being riff heavy and taking stabs at the whole Tull concept. Now I might give Benefit something like 2 stars relative to the rest of the Tull catalogue, but largely as a result of goosing it unmercifully as a boy. So the remastering was a real revalation to me, did not have to be good just give me a different light, ditto on Bursting Out which to me seemed like a vast improvement, but it could have been merely different, in any case, worked for me! Possibly the SFTW review to which I refer is available in that remarkable, and I do mean remarkable, gift from Tull heaven, site that was the Tull Press. Still exists, last I knew, but not updated since 2002 or something. I have to re-emphacize even at the height of their popularity news of Tull was very rare indeed, and some of the American mainlines. re Rolling Stone and Creem, it was guaranteed to be way negative. Stones review of SFTW was 9 parts we cannot possibly be seen with this thing, Elvis Costello, the Clash, or the Jam might see us with it, and one part fact. That same RS guide I saw, maybe updated annually, gave both Roots and Dot Com 2 stars or thereabouts which is fine save for my suspicion that they never actually listened to it. I love my memory of one review of a Tull record I saw in A New Day maybe twenty years ago with my favorite put down that I can recall, it went something like, Jethro Tull, are they still around then, I shall have to give that swivel eyed little turd a good slagging. Hey Now!