I told you about my Jethro Tull long scarf adventure last week. Well, I’m in a bit of a Tull phase at the moment. You know what it’s like. Things just obsess you for a few weeks, even things you’ve loved for 50 years, you discover anew. For me at the moment this involves playing all the mid 70s stuff, especially Passion Play, War Child, Minstrel In The Gallery, ending in the brilliance of Songs From The Wood and the Chateau D’isaster double that came out a couple of years ago. Incidentally, if you’ve not heard it, I thoroughly recommend it. The idea that the music was rejected and reworked into Passion Play is amazing, as it’s top notch. Critique Oblique is especially great.
I’ve just ordered War Child II, which I’m looking forward to hearing, as it has tracks from that period. As they changed from a bluesy band to a proggy band to a sort of folk rock version, I liked them more and more, culminating in Songs From The Wood which I still think is their pinnacle. That blend of acoustic melodies and heavy electric guitars was intoxicating along with Ian Anderson’s gnarly, cryptic vocals.
This was another strand to my emerging adult self. The love of nature and its myths and legends felt like a natural addendum to my Hillage spacey faroutedness, rooted in the same basic mysticism. Songs like Jack In The Green, really appealed to my sense of wonder at the world and the feeling there were forces at play that we couldn’t see, that life was infinitely more complicated and deeper than what we could see.
And things like Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of A New Day simply didn’t sound like anyone else. They were not like anyone else. Uplifting and creative, they made me believe in a brighter tomorrow at a time in life when, because home life was fairly awful, I really needed it. I shall always be grateful for that.
I think for a few years I lived like I was The Minstrel In The Gallery, “hands still rubbing
on the parts they never mention.” It makes me want to put it on again now! That 16-minute second side Baker Street Muse is so brilliant. I mean, no one made music either sonically or conceptually like that.
And here’s the weird thing. When I was listening to these records for the first time from aged 14-17, it gave me a sense of timelessness, songs about notions of things ancient and of different times and in a way it prepared me for being older, to not be concerned with the ephemera of the modern world. I wish I’d listened to that more closely at certain times in life, but returning to it now, it’s like hugging an old friend who saw me through some turbulent times.
