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Jethro Tull | Stand Up (Chrysalis, 1969)
It may seem surprising to some, but musical taste in the UK is driven much more by what’s "cool" than in the US.  While there’ll always be elitism wherever you go, here in Britain it’s never a matter of simply listening to what you enjoy.  The possibility of committing serious musical blasphemy is worryingly high.  Admit to owning James Blunt records, for example, and you could be run out of town by an angry mob of music journalists.

Occasionally, acts get taken off the endangered list.  Punk-era commentators such as Mark Radcliffe or Jonathan Ross are coming round to the idea that perhaps not everything that came out between the Small Faces and the Sex Pistols is quite as vile as was made out during the ’77 revolution.  It’s suddenly okay to like ELO again, and even such starkly unpunk acts as Slade, Donovan, Sparks and Rick Wakeman (who regularly turns up as a guest on trendy comedy panel shows and safe daytime TV alike) are now quite cool.

The one band which has been cited by both Ross and Radcliffe as impossible to like under any circumstances, and which can never ever be cool, even in an ironic way, is Jethro Tull.  Tull is the major musical pariah of the 20th Century, the pre-punk antithesis of everything wrong with the generation before.  A beardy idiot with a flute, hippy-dippy Pagan folderol (Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge without the metal), impenetrable prog-rock albums made up entirely of a single endless song, and those stupid pseudo-medieval costumes.

Yet, what the punk crowd have yet to discover is that in the late 60s and early 70s, Jethro Tull were one of the most exciting and influential blues-rock bands around, up there with the likes of Cream, Traffic and Terry Reid, all acts now worshipped as minor deities.

Jethro Tull are, of course, one of the most instantly-recognisable bands of all time.  Watch any footage on YouTube of frontman Ian Anderson in full flow, hopping about on one leg, gurning wildly at the camera and groaning and gasping into his flute, and underneath you’ll find any number of comments saying, “What drugs is this guy on?”  None at all, is the answer, it’s all a performance.  And this is perhaps why the cool set hate the intelligent and candid Anderson so much--he’s one of the very few musicians honest enough to realise that rock music is just showbiz, and that there’s no reason to live that lifestyle privately, too.  Offstage, he’s articulate, sensible and small-c conservative.

Every band has their common-consensus "classic" LP, and in the case of Jethro Tull that LP is the mighty Aqualung, a brooding concept album about homelessness on one side and Christianity on the other--all pretty serious stuff.  The record which really captures the warmth and joi de vivre  of early Tull, however (and the one favoured by Anderson himself) is 1969’s Stand Up.

The band’s first album, This Was (recorded while Mick Abrahams was still in the line-up), is pretty much straight blues and jazz, and is less interesting for it.  Disgruntled by Anderson deciding to stretch his songwriting muscles in different directions, Abrahams quit, and the result is Stand Up.  The difference is apparent from the outset--the opening track, "A New Day Yesterday," is an exciting explosion of fast, heavy blues-rock structured around a nagging ascending/descending riff played simultaneously on bass and guitar, with a breathlessly attractive melody thrown over the top of it all for good measure.

And if that doesn’t underline the new change of ethos sufficiently, track two swerves alarmingly in a whole different direction, and suddenly you’re listening to a pretty psychedelic ditty for flute (played by guitarist Martin Barre) and mandolin (played by flautist Ian Anderson!), the later instrument swirled and kaleidoscopic through a revolving Leslie speaker.  The middle song in the "Jeffrey Trilogy"--the others being "Song For Jeffrey" and "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me"--with guilty nods to bass player and school chum Jeffrey Hammond, omitted from the original Tull line-up (but happily, along with Barrie Barlow and John Evan, reunited for later line-ups), "Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square" is a foreshadowing of the band’s more folksy direction during the 1970s, yet in its own right is airy and attractive enough to fit comfortably in with the late '60s pantheon of British psychedelic pop.

The most famous track on the album is the band’s cover of Bach’s Bouree in E Minor, showcasing not only Anderson’s self-taught flute virtuosity, but the beautifully fluid, fluent bass playing of Glenn Cornick.  The archetypal hippie sporting beard, circular glasses and headband, Cornick was unfortunately sacked by Anderson for drug use a couple of years later, yet in his day was the perfect foil for Anderson, not only musically but also visually, the pair making an eccentric and energetic double-act for the front of the band.  (An interesting point of trivia: Anderson actually hated the classical version of "Bouree" due to a music student housemate practising it over and over long into the night; clearly it wormed its way into his head enough for him to record what he described unkindly as a “lounge jazz” version of it.  Revenge perhaps?)

Following the mid-tempo rocker "Back To The Family"-–a young man’s frustration at returning to the parental home, which like the Beatles’ "Cry Baby Cry" references nursery rhyme "Sing A Song Of Sixpence"-–comes the gorgeous "Look Into the Sun," yet another change of direction for the album in the form of a world-weary piano and acoustic guitar ballad with psychedelic overtones, Anderson’s vocals bizarrely but effectively treated with a heavy tremolo.

Side two opens with the nakedly optimistic "Nothing Is Easy," Anderson’s own "don’t worry, be happy" manifesto, all wrapped up in a furious high-energy jam, with Clive Bunker’s drums being beaten to within an inch of their lives.  You’ll be breathless on the band’s behalf by the end of it.

"Fat Man" is the closest to folderol the early incarnation of the band put onto record, yet any tweeness is offset by the astoundingly un-PC lyrics, a cruel ditty about--as the title suggests--fat men.  The fat man can’t get a girlfriend and no one takes him seriously, but “roll us both down a mountain and I’m sure the fat man would win.”  Nice!  It’s all too silly to really be offensive, though, and the mandolin and rhythm-pole backing is sheer entertainment.

This all comes in huge contrast with the next track, "We Used to Know," a breathtaking 6/8 rock ballad (which many suspected was ripped off by the Eagles for "Hotel California," the two bands sharing a bill during 1973 and the two songs sounding suspiciously alike).  New guitarist Martin Barre comes into his own here with thrilling, howling instrumental breaks on wah-wah pedal, as does drummer Clive Bunker, whose constant rolling fills hold the whole piece together.  Bunker and Cornick are one of the great underrated rhythm sections of rock, the playing of both musicians utterly effortless and eloquent.

An achingly beautiful love song, "Reasons for Waiting," is one of Anderson’s finest compositions, a simple one-man acoustic guitar ballad swollen by Barre’s sensitive flute playing (cleaner and purer than Anderson’s) and later full orchestration.  The band never really attempted anything this simple or pretty-for-the-sake-of-it again-– even the much-loved "Wond’ring Aloud: is more mannered in the "classic" Tull style, which is a shame as this is one of the standout tracks of their whole catalogue.

The album rounds off with the startlingly bitter "For a Thousand Mothers," an ill-tempered finger-poking session at Anderson's own mother for her apparent lack of belief in his career arc.  Of course, I don’t know Mrs Anderson, and this could well all be justified-– certainly Ronnie Lane’s mother took a very similar approach to the one outlined in this song, and was forever adamant that her son should get a "proper job," even when he was a member of two of the most successful bands on the planet.  Along with "Back to the Family" (and "Son" on the following album, Benefit), the song paints a picture of an excruciatingly frustrated young Ian Anderson desperate to escape the suffocating influence of his family.

It’s a strange note-–if fittingly exciting piece of rock music--to end an otherwise joyful album on.  With its intricate wood-carving cover design and pop-up cardboard figures (if you own the original vinyl), Stand Up is a near-perfect slice of late 60s post-psychedelic rock.  Making no attempts to be world-changing or portentous, it’s just honest entertainment from four honest musicians.

Go to: Adam S. Leslie