This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for one dollar a month at patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey. Whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy this one. The story of Jefferyl Toll is, ultimately, the story of Ian Anderson, who has been the only consistent member of the band since it formed 57 years ago. Anderson was born in Scotland, but moved to Blackpool with his family when he was 12. By which time he had already got his first guitar and started learning. In 1963, the same year he left school and started going to art school. Anderson formed his first band, The Blades, named after the club that James Bond would go to in Ian Fleming's novels. The initial lineup of The Blades was Anderson on guitar, Jeffrey Hammond on bass. Hammond hadn't played bass before Anderson told me like a musician and should learn. And John Evans, who got the name Evan because it was thought that sounded better on drums. Even though Evan realised he preferred playing keyboards and the group advertised for a new drummer and got him Barry Barlow. Like most bands formed by teenagers, the band went through multiple lineup changes in a short space of time. Unlike many beat groups of the year, they soon found themselves more interested in playing blues and R&B material in the same sort of vein as the Graham Bond organisation. By the time of the first existing recordings of the group from late 1966, they were known as the John Evan Blues band. And there were a seven piece band consisting of Anderson, Evan, bass player Bo Ward, drummer Richie Dahmer, guitarist Neil Smith and home player Tony Wilkinson and Neil Valentine. Soon the rhythm section would be replaced by Barry Barlow returning on drums and bass player Glenn Cornick and would change their name again to the John Evans smash. After supporting the Pink Floyd and deciding their need for the more 1966 sort of name, under that name they appeared on a TV talent show singing one of Anderson's songs Take the Easy Way and also went down to London to record their first demos. They got signed by the Alice Wright Agency, a small booking agent and management organisation whose biggest clients were ten years after. Soon they were back in the studio again, this time with producer Derek Lomonds, who had been a protégé of Joe Meek and produced records by people like The Pretty Things. They had an initial demo session after which he suggested they change their name again to Candy Cooler Drain. Up to this point, Anderson had stopped to the standard blues instruments of guitar and harmonica but then he tried to collect on a debt he was owed. The debtor didn't have the money and gave Anderson a flute instead. He started teaching himself, inspired by the jazz musician Rasan Roland Kirk's album I talked to the spirits. The first song Anderson learned on the flute was Kirk's Seven Eight to a Cocoo. Candy Cooler Drain, or the John Evans Mash, or the John Evans Band as they were named on the session sheets. Went back into the studio with Lomonds again and caught a couple of tracks which remained on release at the time, both songs by Anderson. One of them, Airver Plain, also featured Tony Wilson, a future founding member of Hot Chocolate, on backing vocals. Before the group fell apart before the recordings could be released, and Anderson and Cornick put together a new band with two members of a band they played on the same bill as, guitarist Mick A. Braham's and drummer Clive Bunker. That group fulfilled the outstanding dates for the old band and also started getting booked into more gigs themselves. Their manager, Terry Ellis, booked them under many different names. The default was Ian Anderson's Bag of Nails but there were lots of names, sometimes there were the Bag of Blues, sometimes Anderson was Ian Henderson rather than Anderson, so they could get multiple bookings the same night by pretending to be different bands. The name they were under when they were booked for the Marquis Club was Jethro Tull, a name suggested by someone at their booking agency. The real Jethro Tull was an 18th century agriculturalist who invented a horse drawn seed drill. Anderson disliked the name, but the promoter at the Marquis liked the band and wanted to book them for a residency and so that was the name they were stuck with. At the same time they were playing the Marquis, there were also signs to MGM records by Loans. Their first single was actually only the new band on the A side, which again featured Wilson on backing vocals, a song by A. Braham's called Sunshine Day. The B side was ever playing from the earlier band's demo sessions with Loans. The single was not quite released as by Jethro Tull though. The name on the label was Jethro Tull. Depending on who you ask, that was either a deliberate decision by Loans because he disliked the name or a result of someone at MGM mishearing the name over the phone. Without level of attention to detail, it's perhaps unsurprising that the record only sold somewhere in the region of 100 copies, mostly to family and friends of the band members. The L.S. write agency was so disappointed with the lack of sales that they actually started their own record label, Chrysler's Records. Named as upon on Chris, write and Terry Ellis and got themselves a distribution deal with Ireland. Chris write later said, Chris L.S. records might have come into being anyway, you never know what might have happened, but Chris L.S. records really came into being because Jethro Tull couldn't get a record deal and MGM couldn't even get their name right on the record. The first single on Chris L.S. records and the first single released under the band's right name was A Song for Jeffrey. A song which Anderson had written for his former bandmate Jeffrey Hammond and which the group did on their first John Peel session a few days before the tracks release. That single was the only single to be released from the group's first album, this was. The single didn't chart, but the album made the top ten. The album also featured orchestral arrangements from D. Palmer, who would work with the group first as an outsider ranger and later as a full member until 1980. A side note, Palmer is trans and didn't come out until late 90s, so many of you will have records accredited by her dead name. I'm using the name she goes by now and would appreciate it if nobody dead names or misgenders have in the comments. This is important to note with a band like Jethro Tull, because many of the other band members used slight variations of their own names as joky stage names, and this isn't one of those. But the retention's growing between Abraham's and Anderson. Both were songwriters and both thought of themselves as the most important member of the band, but slowly Anderson was becoming the group's frontman. He developed an eccentric stage appearance, often wearing a long great coat that made him look like a tramp and standing on one leg while he played the flute. Abraham's was also primarily interested in blues and jazz. He wanted to be in a blues band with a little verse and roll and Kirk influence, while Anderson was getting more interested in folk music and the new progressive rock. The group put out a non-album single Love Story, which made the top 30. But shortly after that, Abraham's and Anderson fell out for good. Abraham's formed a new band, Blogwin Pig, which also featured a flute player who doubled on saxophone, influenced by Rassanville and Kirk, and they released two top 10 albums of more bluesy material. The first guitarist, the group turned to Tony Iomi, didn't fit well with the group. He played one actual gig with them, a BBC session, and also performed with them on the Rolling Stones rock and roll circus, where the group performed song for Jeffrey. But because that was such an important show and they hadn't really rehearsed with Iomi, that performance was to her backing track, with only Anderson's flute and vocals live. Iomi left the band after those two shows and went back to his old band, Earth. Iomi did, however, learn the importance of professionalism and rehearsal from his brief ten with Jeff Rottel, and did his best to impress those values on his bandmate, Skisabutler, Bill Ward and Ozzy Usborn. We'll find out if that worked in a future episode. Iomi's replacement, Martin Bar, would be with the band for the next 43 years, and for a good chunk of that time, the only constant member other than Anderson. Bar joined the group just before a US tour, supporting bands like Spirit, Blood Sweat and Tears, The Vanilla Fudge, Led Zeppelin and Credence Clearwater Revival. While they were in the US, they recorded another non-album single, Living in the Past, a song that should, in theory, have been hugely uncommercial. Living in the Past was a song in five four times with jazz flute solos, and Rumpi lyrics about how the hippie lifestyle, with protests about war and talk about revolution, wasn't for Anderson, who was also very staunchly opposed to drug use, and in general found little common cause with the hippies, despite his bearded long-haired eccentric appearance. Anderson's set of the song later. When I sang, now there's revolution, but they don't know what they're fighting. I was just saying forget all that stuff, let's stay in a more realistic world with more straightforward values, not necessarily my personal viewpoint all the time, but has a reaction to that rather trendy, pretensive revolution and infatuation with the present, in the sense of living for today and having a good time, something I usually felt a bit awkward about. But this combination of reactionary lyrics and experimental music was a huge hit in the UK, reaching number three on the chart. It wasn't issued at the time in the US, but when it came out there more than three years later to promote a compilation album, it made the top 20 there too. Anderson later said of it, to be honest I've always loathed and detested that song. In fact when it was first a hit I used to hide in a corner in cringe, but the guys in the band now are keen to play it and you know I'm beginning to come accustomed to the damn thing. But the song had made Jethro a tool into a major commercial force in the UK. The album that followed, stand up, became a UK number one album and went top 20 in the US. The album was not mixed with different styles, with Eastern influences, Hard Rock and one track which became one of their regular live highlights, a reworking of Bach's Spuray and E minor as a jazz rock instrumental featuring a flute to it by Anderson and Bach. Anderson has often said that stand up was his very favourite Jethro a tool album and it's a favourite of both fans and critics. The group spent the remainder of 1969 touring almost nonstop and their next album, Benefit, while being their third album, is the epitome of the difficult second album. They made up of dead fast songs written while they were on the road and Anderson was missing his girlfriend. For that album, Anderson and Cornix old bandmate John F and John F and the band as a keyboard player. Initially a session musician, he would be in the band for the next decade. Benefit made number three in the UK a number 11 in the US, despite rolling stone calling it, layman Dumb. The group taught through most of 1970, including an appearance at the 1970 Isle of White Festival we talked about in the episode on All Along the Watch Tower. And an appearance at Carnegie Hall. The first rock band to appear there since the Beatles in 1964. By the end of 1970 there had been another lineup change. Cornix and Anderson weren't getting on very well. Cornix enjoyed drinking, taking drugs and partying while Anderson was very serious-minded and wanted to be a professional doing a serious job. Cornix was sacked before the next album and replaced with Anderson's old friend Jeffrey Hammond. The bass player here formed his very first band with. The original three blades were now back together, though Hammond, who started to be credited by the double-babbled name Hammond Hammond, mostly as the joke. Both his parents had had the same surname before marrying, had not played bass in several years, and was not used to playing the complex music as old bandmates were now playing. Only two weeks after Hammond rejoined his old bandmates, they were in the studio recording a new album. The first band to appear in the studio was now back together, and was back together. The first band to appear in the studio recording a new album and replaced with. The first band to appear in the studio recording a new album and replaced with. The first band to appear in the studio recording a new album and replaced with. Aqualung is often talked about as a concept album, mostly because the two sides are given their own overall titles. Side one is titled Aqualung, and side two is titled My God. As all the songs are by Anderson, apart from the title track which is a co-write by his then wife, they tend to have thematic resonances just because they're all written by the same person in the same period, and the things he was thinking about at the time will show through. And so there are multiple songs which are about, or can be read as being about, homelessness, as the title track is, or about Anderson's dim view of religion. But Anderson has always strenuously denied that the album is in any way a concept album, and certainly there's no clear narrative to the record. Aqualung featured the two songs that were become most identified with the group, the title track which we heard just now, and locomotive breath. Neither was released as a single, both being long songs, and by this point the group essentially stopped having single success, other than the reissue of living in the past. But there were fixtures on FM radio at the time, and as a result made it a classic rock radio, and remains some of their most well-known tracks. Despite there being no singles, Aqualung became the group's best-selling record to that point, selling 7 million copies. But the response to it annoyed Anderson, who dislike people saying it was a concept album. He decided to write an album that was a parody of the whole idea of concept albums. But first was another change in line up. By the fifth album, Jeff O'Tullard not yet made two albums with the same set of musicians, and now it was Clive Bunker's turn to leave and be replaced by one of Anderson's old Blackpool friends. Barry Barlow jokingly renamed Barrymore Barlow, replaced Bunker, and this would be the most stable lineup the group would ever have. The next four albums would feature the exact same line up, and the only change between 1971 and 1979 would be Hammond Leving in 1975 to be replaced by John Glaskock, and D Parma graduating in 1976 from Harry Deranger to full-time to having band member. So this is the start of what we might consider the definitive lineup of Jeff O'Tull. Four of whom would all start it out together in the John Evan Blues band. The first album together, Thick as a Brick, was one long piece of music stretching over two sides of an album. I may make you feel that I can't make you think. Yes, Spins in the Gata, he loves in the sink. So you ride yourself over the seas, and you make all your animals seas, and your wives men don't know how it feels. The album was, supposedly, a musical adaptation of an epic poem by a fictional eight-year-old child fodder, named Jeville Bostock, nicknamed Little Milton after the religious poet, and came in an elaborate package that mocked up a 12-page newspaper full of joke articles, including a front page one about how Bostock had won a poetry prize, but had been disqualified because of a decision by child-type characterist that. The boy's mind was seriously unbalanced and that his work was a product of an extremely unwholesome attitude towards life, his garden country. Anderson intended the album to be a parody of the work of Bansy Found Pompass, like yes, and Emma Sunlake and Palmer. Most of the listeners didn't get the joke though, and took it entirely seriously. Here went to number 5 in the UK and number 1 in the US. The group toured the album with an elaborate stage show with props, which involved a live performance of the whole album in one go without a break at the start of the show, full of Anderson saying, for our next number, the next few albums were all commercially successful concept albums, but were less well regarded both critically and by the band. Anderson called the album that followed. A piece loosely inspired by Dante and Bunyan entitled A Passion Play, over a range to know for produced and overcooked, and reaction to it was so bad that the band announced they were quitting. This was later revealed to be a publicity stunt that the record label had carried out without their knowledge. The album that followed that, made up of songs for an unmade film which once again explored the realms of heaven and hell, contained a song attacking rock critics, which was always a sign of a band slowly losing its way in unwilling to acknowledge it. The followed a depressed album made in tax exile, and a record titled Two Old to Rock and Roll Two Young to Die. Another concept album, this time about an aging rocker left behind by new musical trends. By 1977, the group were going in a very different direction. Songs from the Ward was an album inspired by the folk rock of bands like Fairport Convention and Steel I Span, and the rest of the albums the group made in the 70s were very much in that vein. The acoustic songs inspired by folklore and traditional music. However, sadly in 1979, John Glaskock, the bass player who had replaced Hammond, became serious ill with heart problems. Dave Pegg, the bassist with Fairport Convention, substituted for him on tour, but Glaskock died in the middle of the tour. The resulting fallout from this led to most of the other band members leaving or being fired. Barlow quit, depressed his friend's death, and went on to do session work, while Palmer and Evan, depending on which story you read, either read in my daymaker that they were about to be sacked and quit before Anderson could fire them, or got rather cursory letters from Anderson informing them of the dismissal. They formed an unsuccessful new band, Talice. Jethro Tull continued, and a record that had been planned as the Anandasins first solo album, which featured Barvin Pegg, came out as a Jethro Tull album instead. Anderson Barvin Pegg were constant members for the next 15 years, without a musician's coming and going, and they released several albums with a more synth heavy sound, as well as an album of instrumental remakes of their biggest hits with the London Symphony Orchestra, which saw a deep harm at briefly collaborating with their old bandmates again, providing the new orchestral arrangements as she had during their commercial peak. Some of these albums were successful. The group famously won the Grammy Award for Hard Rock and Heavy Metal for their 1987 album Crest of a Nave. A result that was so unexpected. Everyone assumed Metallica would win, and on the slim chance they didn't, that it would be a geek-pup or Jane's addiction, both of whom were also nominated, that the group themselves didn't turn up to the ceremony, and the audience first laughed at Talice Cooper when he announced the result, assuming it was a joke, and then booed and heckled. When Metallica won the Grammy in 1992, Lars Ulrich thanked Jethro Tull for not putting an album out that year. Peg left the band in 1995 to concentrate on Fairport Convention, and the last new album Anderson and Bar recorded together was a Christmas record in 2003. But they continued touring together until 2011, when Anderson announced a bar that he was tired of being a Jethro Tull, and wanted the two of them to concentrate on their solo side project. That happened until 2019, when Anderson renamed his touring band Jethro Tull, and started releasing new albums under the band name. Starting bar currently tours with his solo band, while Anderson tours under the band name. Anderson now suffers from COPD and is not as fit as he used to be, but rather astonishingly for a band that started more than 60 years ago, if you count the blades and the John Evan band, and have had 25 different members, all the members of the classic lineup are still alive, and almost all the members before and after them. Of the musicians who played on Jethro Tull tracks we've heard in this episode, I believe only Kornick and Glasscock are no longer with us. Some of the members no longer perform, but many still do to this day. Perhaps it's the mother of Abstimius, professional ethic, and the lack of tolerance for drugs that has kept them all going so long, but it seems that at least as of 2024, even in their 80s, some of them might now be too old to rock a mole, but they're still too young today. Long way that continue. On the down, round and round, we'll sway with these waves in the spell of the broken
