Jethro Tull – Stand Up
Jethro Tull’s 1969 album Stand Up was the follow up to the inconsistent debut, This Was, and the first to feature Birmingham-born mainstay Martin Lancelot Barre on guitar.
It was also the album that signposted the path down which Jethro Tull (or the mighty Tull, dependant on personal opinion) were headed, largely doing away with the blues influence of the previous release and drifting, via the road of progressive rock, into more folkish pastures.
The change came about following the departure of Mick Abrahams, who’d left following creative differences between him and Tull’s main man Ian Anderson, over musical direction. When replacement and future Black Sabbath axeman Toni Iommi failed to work out it was left to Martin Barre to take up the mantle, which he did, remaining to this day.
Stand Up retains the blues edge for opening track ‘A New Day Yesterday’, almost as though it’s a peace offering for the fans of This Was, left outside the door to gently ease them into the Tull’s new sound. Not that there’s anything gentle about its electric-blues heavy rhythm.
From then on in Stand Up weaves various elements into the mix as it stands on the harbour wall and bids the blues farewell. Ian Anderson brings the songs down to a more personal level than before (although the previous album was weighed down with instrumentals) and the album is all the better for that. ‘Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square’, ‘Back to the Family’ and ‘Look into the Sun’ are all classic Tull and it’s also here that we first sample what has become a Tull standard over the years, the instrumental, jazzified flute arrangement of J.S. Bach’s ‘Bourée’.
But it’s track 8 that provides the highlight of Stand Up; the gradually intensifying lament of ‘We Used to Know’. It’s said that this song inspired the Eagles’ infinitely better known ‘Hotel California’ and it’s true, the chord progression at the start of both songs is as good as identical (I’ve no idea what that means either. They just sound the bloody same and that’s that). Second to ‘Heavy Horses’, ‘They Used to Know’ is possibly the best song Jethro Tull ever did. With so many to choose from that’s a bold statement to make.
‘We Used to Know’ is followed by ‘Reasons for Waiting’, another princely track from the Tull’s enviable oeuvre and the pacy, uptempo ‘For a Thousand Mothers’ – sounding like the rhythm section chasing each other around a percussion factory – leads us out nicely.
With 4 bonus tracks on the 2001 reissue, including the chart bothering ‘Living in the Past’, Stand Up is in strong contention for the title of best Tull album. It’s certainly the moment in history when Jethro Tull suggest they’d one day be worthy of the moniker, the mighty Tull.
Stand Up is reissued by Chrysalis and available from Amazon.co.uk
Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed
Recent Comments