Okay, this morning? Well, looks like it’s going to be a classic rock day. Up until the Jeep went into the transmission shop for a brand new transmission last week (where it still is), I was playing nothing but Jethro Tull on the cd deck. Hadn’t listened to them in a while, so the revisit was nice. They’re one of the few classic rock bands I still like a lot.
Most of the others? Yeah, I’ve heard those songs a billion times. But Tull doesn’t get a lot of radio play around here (at least on the stations we listen to), so their songs remain somewhat unscathed. (although, really, I don’t need to hear “Aqualung” again for a very long time)
So, Tull. Trying to find the video I wanted to share with you was tough, because one of my requirements was that it would feature my favorite band member (who isn’t always Ian Anderson). That fellow would be their keyboard player from 1970 to 1980, John Evan. He’s one of the few rock keyboard players I love, because he can actually play. (Terry Adams from NRBQ is my other top fave) One of my favorite Tull pieces is a piano jam on Living in the Past called “By Kind Permission Of.” It’s ten minutes of Evan vamping on Beethoven and I adore it.
There’s no live video of that one, though, so I had to keep looking. Eventually, I came up with this one. Here’s the band performing “Locomotive Breath” somewhere in the early ’70s (Youtube doesn’t say). You get to see (and hear) all three of the frontmen (Anderson, Evan, and Barre) do their stuff.
And you get a two-fer. Just cuz. Here’s Tull without Evan performing “Song for Jeffrey” in the Rolling Stones‘ odd little flick Rock’n’Roll Circus. Someone in the comments described them as “hobbits on drugs.” Not a bad description for their early persona before Anderson discovered the joy of wearing really tight pants (and codpieces) on stage. He was always prancing around on one leg, though.
M. Fenn 