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Review: Jethro Tull, Bristol Beacon
As long ago as Jethro Tull’s 40th anniversary tour (yes – that far back), the now rather more conservatively attired Ian Anderson was performing in front of projected film of his younger, hairier, more athletic self cavorting around the stage. He repeats the trick during the first couple of songs on this latest show. The 50th anniversary tour is well behind him and it’s another four years until he can legitimately go out on a 60th anniversary tour, so this one’s dubbed the Seven Decades of Jethro Tull tour, even though the band was creatively inactive for one of those decades.
Refreshingly, he doesn’t go for a familiar ‘greatest hits’ set presented chronologically, but picks songs from each of those decades that aren’t necessarily the obvious choices, while avoiding some of the more contentious albums (A Passion Play, Under Wraps) altogether, as well as many classics (no Too Old to Rock’n’Roll or Songs from the Wood tonight). My Sunday Feeling from the atypically blues-rocky debut This Was opens the show, followed by We Used to Know from Stand Up – Tull’s only UK number one album. New guitarist Jack Clark gets a great solo at the end of the latter, which Anderson claims as an influence on the Eagles’ Hotel California.
Obviously the 1970s presents an embarrassment of riches and the current, well-rehearsed iteration of Tull serve up a radically reworked Aqualung (still “eying little girls with bad intent,” mind) and the title track from Heavy Horses – the closest prog gets to pure poetry. It’s great to hear some stuff from 1979’s rather overlooked Stormwatch too: the Tull-get-funky instrumental Warm Sporran and prescient end times anthem Dark Ages, accompanied by some suitably depressing imagery.
is needed now More than ever
The absence of long-serving, hard-rockin’ guitarist Martin Barre is still keenly felt by many fans, but Anderson has successfully pulled off the Elder Statesman of Rock trick by recruiting some exceptional younger musicians. We all know his voice isn’t what it used to be, as one might expect of a man of 76, so expectations are recalibrated accordingly, but he sounds better than he did back in 2018 and occasionally calls on vocal support from Clark, bassist David Goodier and lavishly bearded keyboard player John O’Hara. And his unipedal flautistry is as impressive as ever.
The second of two sets opens with the only song from the 1980s: Farm on the Freeway from Tull’s most American-sounding album, Crest of a Knave, which infamously beat Metallica to bag the 1989 Best Hard Rock/Metal Grammy award. The welcome title track from Roots to Branches represents the 1990s. But the first decade of the new millennium obviously proved something of a challenge, since the only album released under the Tull name during that period was 2003’s Jethro Tull Christmas Album. So Anderson invites to celebrate the festive season earlier than even the retail trade would dare with a rendition of Holly Herald.
There’s nothing from the 2010s, since Tull didn’t release any new music during that decade. But Anderson has enjoyed a real creative purple patch in the 2020s and it’s great to finally hear songs from those two albums performed live. More than half a century ago, he upset easily offended Christians with the lyrics to My God. So it came as something of a surprise when he returned to the subject of Christianity for 2022’s The Zealot Gene, whose title track dealt with the rise of right-wing populism. Anderson still doesn’t do religious faith, but found himself inspired by Biblical storytelling. He picks two of the best tracks tonight. First up is Mine is the Mountain, about “an interventionist god who gives us stuff”. Better yet is powerful album opener Mrs Tibbets, whose subject is the mother of Paul Tibbets, the pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. “She remained very proud of her son,” Anderson tells us. “But my advice would be to keep your pants on next time.”
There’s no reason to suppose that Mr. Anderson listens to much Viking metal. But he happily muscles in on the genre’s lyrical territory on the splendid recent Norse mythology-inspired RökFlöte album. Two tracks from that are accompanied by their evocative animated videos: Wolf Unchained and The Navigators. Wouldn’t it be grand to hear an Amon Amarth cover of the latter?
The now familiar ban on cameras and mobile phones, which has Beacon stewards scurrying round to enforce it in the same way that they used to try to stop people smoking at Hawkwind shows in the Hall Formerly Known as Colston, is finally lifted for the encore: Locomotive Breath, inevitably, which prompts a sea of recording devices held aloft.
Tull’s enduring popularity means this show was always going to be a sell-out success. But would it be too much to ask for a tour in which those recent albums are performed in their entirety? It’s just been announced that they’re doing a Christmas show at Bristol Cathedral. That would surely be a perfect opportunity to do The Zealot Gene in full.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: April 2024
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