By Tom Collins (tmc@u.arizona.edu)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 13, 1997

A Tale of Tull

Tanith L. Balaban Arizona Daily Wildcat Ian Anderson, the lead flautist and vocalist for Jethro Tull, performs at Centennial Hall Sunday.

By Tom Collins (tmc@u.arizona.edu)

I.

"What you're wanting me to say is that really I wish I was born in the time of elves and goblins and people wearing tights and not getting arrested for it, and I think you'd like me to say I prefer the countryside and the mountain streams and the sound of lowing cattle."

Ian Anderson, chief flautist, singer, songwriter and freak for the band Jethro Tull called me on the telephone last month.

We talked about rock 'n' roll and remastering records, Kerouac and peppers. And, like an idiot, I asked if he was born at the right time.

Anderson left home and school about the age of 18 to be a musician.

"My sole possessions were a flute, which I was as yet unable to play, a small brown leather brief case, a tiny little suitcase, really, my aunt had given me . . . an overcoat my father gave me, saying it was going to be a cold winter . . . and a book by Jack Kerouac called Desolation Angels, you know, that kind of saw me through the very cold bleak winter of 1967."

The rest, as they say, is history. Today the guy has greenhouses where he raises different breeds of jalapeños and others peppers.

By 1968, Anderson and Jethro Tull were playing out, Anderson on lead flute. What followed were the '70s and albums of what would become classic rock radio, high school kid faves. Songs like "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath" and "Thick as a Brick."

It's this last one that put the band on the road this year for a breakneck North American tour. They swept by bus from Poughkeepsie up through Canada and down through the western states: Washington, Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

Ostensibly, the tour supports the 25th anniversary remastered release of the Thick as a Brick album, the band's most high-concept record. The album is one 40-minute song and its liner notes are a newspaper that tells the story of "Little Milton," the 12-year-old boy who "wrote" the record.

The tour avoided every major U.S. city except Las Vegas, Seattle and Phoenix, if those count. A strange route for a band that is cousin to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and is arguably the first heavy metal group.

And then there's the tights.

When Tucsonans Tom and Donna Perry saw Jethro Tull 25 years ago they were all in costume. Anderson is as known for his medieval outfits as he is for his baroque-era musical influences. And back in 1972, the Perrys said, Anderson performed the whole concert on one leg, without speaking a word.

II.

The Jethro Tull tour rolled through Tucson Sunday night. The band did a show over at Centennial Hall. The crowd was like the Beach Boys fans at the county fair, except they had longer hair, looked a little more grizzled and smoked-out.

The concert hall was very gabby before the show, as if everybody in there knew everybody else, had blasted down Route 83 in Joe's Rambler singing "Cross-Eyed Mary." The stage was set, sparse as that of some teen-age band playing at Skrappy's: a few amps, a keyboard and a drum set. No statues or lemons or candles or pomp.

The band came and launched into "Song for Jeffrey," a bluesy rave-up from one of their first albums. There was guitarist Martin Barre, short and uncomfortable looking, and with him on stage ... kids. Jethro Tull has gone through more band members than I can count.

As was later pointed out, the current bass player was, like, 6 when Thick as Brick first came out.

Anderson, a showman, hung offstage, waiting for his moment, making damn sure the fans wanted him. Then he began to play. It was the rock 'n' roll flute and all the weird little mouth noises from the records. He struck the pose, the one-legged, Passion Play stance and the room erupted.

That's rock.

Tanith L. Balaban Arizona Daily Wildcat Before the Jethro Tull concert on Sunday, Martin Barre, a guitarist, talks about touring at 50 and his marathon running.

III.

Martin Barre steps on stage looking very Moody Blues. Black satin pants and a black satin cowboy shirt. And those tennis shoes. (Barre's a fitness freak and is often interviewed by running magazines. At nearly 51, he runs an eight-and-a-half minute mile.) Befuddling.

On stage he's a technician. He plays like he played on albums long ago. In fact, he said, live, the band is better, tighter than it was before. Back then they jumped around a lot and missed notes. Today there is no jumping.

Anderson, he doesn't quite sound like a record. Despite the Greek theater presentational theatrics and flute twirling, his voice isn't there. He tries to sing, but the high notes are out of reach. You can see Anderson's neck crane as he tries to grab those notes.

But all the same, the band, the kids and Barre, are tight. They slam though a 10- or 15-minute edit of "Thick as Brick," and kick into the electric second half like a machine. And then ...

Dun-dun-dun da dun.

And the crowd is on its feet. Anderson, with his hairy eyeball looks and his old voice, is Aqualung. Later in the show, he truly is Locomotive Breath. He is an elf and a goblin. Too old to rock 'n' roll.

The show ends, as it has since the Passion Play tour, with big balloons released into the audience. As the audience follows the balloons, the band quietly steps out from behind their instruments. The music keeps playing. It is seamless.

You have to wonder. Seeing a keyboardist with a keyboard that could mimic any sound known to man, you have to wonder:

Who really played here Sunday night?

IV.

This is the mystery.

At Centennial's stage exit, there were about 35 people waiting to get a glimpse of the band exiting for their bus. There were a couple of tapers dressed in black Tull T-shirts from 10-year-old tours. One of them said he'd had his daughter listening to the Tull since she was 4. Bootlegs, albums, the whole bit. They carried balloon pieces for autographs. One of them talked about pressing his tape of the show as a compact disc.

I thought it was a bad show. Our photographer left at the intermission.

We missed something.

And then, maybe that's just fine.

How do you play fan at 40?

Anderson and Barre snuck out a different door. The bassist and keyboardist signed autographs and headed for the Frog and Firkin. These older guys, fans old enough to be fathers of much of the current band, found them. They stood outside the iron fence of the bar, like 10-year-olds outside a baseball batting cage. Just to compliment them one more time for being in.

I imagine it must be a shitty job, playing for Jethro Tull. Old guys in the band, old guys in the crowd. No chicks. Just town to town like truckers. Tull is what they listened to as kids, like I did. Something that fit in between Cat Stevens and the Stones - From "Skating Away" to "Sweet Dreams." Always with mysterious lyrics, but never much more interesting than the Blue Oyster Cult.

It's the flute, though, the flute that cast the spell. And it sounded so different. Until Sunday night.