Jethro Tull Stand Up (1969)

From classicrockreview.com

1969’s Stand Up is an early classic by Jethro Tull. The album was produced in the wake of a splitting of musical directions, as the band’s original guitarist Mick Abrahams left the group due to differing musical philosophies with Jethro Tull’s lead vocalist and primary composer Ian Anderson. The band’s 1968 debut album, This Was, was primarily blues-rock based, which Abrahams wanted to continue but Anderson was moving towards folk, jazz, and classical fusions of rock and roll. Stand Up would strike a nice balance of both musical directions as well as strike a chord with music fans, as it went all the way to #1 on the UK album charts.

The origin of the band dates back to the early 1960s in Blackpool, England, when several future members of Jethro Tull were involved in a a seven-piece Blue-eyed soul band. In 1967 Anderson and bassist Glenn Cornick migrated to London and joined forces with Abrahams and drummer Clive Bunker to form the group which named itself after an 18th-century agriculturist. A long time guitarist, Anderson reportedly pursued the flute as a rock instrument out of frustration that he couldn’t play as well as Eric Clapton. After a single album where Anderson and Abrahams were co-equal musical visionaries, Anderson found himself in full control of the music and lyrics on Stand Up.

To replace Abrahams, the group first turned to guitarist Tony Iommi, then from a group called Earth, which would later rename themselves Black Sabbath. Iommi performed with Jethro Tull during The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus television show in late 1968, but soon returned to his former band. After auditioning several more guitarists (including future Yes guitarist Steve Howe, who failed his audition), Anderson eventually chose Martin Barre as Abrahams’ permanent replacement on guitar. While Jethro Tull has had over 20 band members through their long career, Barre has remained with the group consistently (as of 2014), making him the second longest-standing member of the band after Anderson.

Prior to releasing Stand Up, the group recorded “Living In the Past”, which was Barre’s first recording with the band. This became one of Jethro Tull’s best known songs while originally issued only as a single. Notable for it’s 5/4 time signature, this melodic tune driven by a catchy melody became the band’s first Top 20 hit, peaking at #11 in the US and #3 in the UK.

A doomy blues rocker, with an almost psychedelic vibe, “A New Day Yesterday” works the same riff over and over. Anderson adds harmonica licks through the verse sections and a flute lead later on, but the song is dominated by the rock rhythms provided by the other players along with reverb and panning effects throughout. Probably influenced by Cream, this song is atypical for Jethro Tull and fresh–sounding. “Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square” is the second in a series of songs which play tribute to Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, a once and future band mate of Anderson’s who would become Jethro Tull’s future bassist. The song features guitar and bass riff leads to folk-style verse melody in an odd and asymmetrical song.

The lone instrumental on the album, “Bourée” is also the only track not composed by Anderson. Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach centuries earlier, the piece influenced a popular French folk dance called a bourrée. While the flute takes the lead throughout, the bass by Cornick is the real highlight of the track, which breaks into a jazzy rock jam near the middle before two overdubbed flutes in final section make for great effect to close the song.

With a slight and slow intro and more great bass riffs, “Back to the Family” contains laid back verses which are sub-divided by more straight-forward rock in the bridge sections that each conclude with flamboyant flute leads by Anderson, with Barre joining in on guitar later in the second one. The fantastic first side concludes with the acoustic ballad “Look into the Sun”. A true folk ballad with fine guitars throughout by Anderson and instrumentation added throughout, such as electric blues riffs and bass guitar spurts.

“Nothing Is Easy” is a big time rock jam, especially towards the end. Bunker’s drumming burns with rudiments between jamming verses and solos. A lead by Barre in the middle is soon interrupted by Anderson’s flute, as the group may have tried a little too hard to be progressive with multiple parts, but nonetheless a great jam song. “Fat Man” contains Indian musical elements with sitar and hand percussion, while “We Used to Know” is another great acoustic ballad by Anderson. This latter song builds on repetitive chord pattern sections for lead instruments, including a couple of great leads by Barre where he chops out some great sonic motifs.

While certainly not as strong as the first side, side two does have its share of brilliant moments. “Reasons for Waiting” may be the best overall song on the album, with a fantastic melody and tone. Pretty much a ballad throughout with slight sections of rock tension thrown in after the choruses, Anderson’s dual flute lead is accompanied by strings provided by David Palmer, which persist throughout the second half of the song. “For a Thousand Mothers” starts with a slight drum intro by Bunker before the song kicks in with much the same style and sonic intensity as the opener “New Day Yesterday”, together paving way for emerging “heavy metal” music which would proliferate in the 1970s. After a grandiose false stop, Bunker restarts the tune for a closing instrumental section laced with about 30 seconds more of intense jamming to close the album.

Jethro Tull Stand Up (1969)

From starling.rinet.ru

As I said, Abrahams quit right after cutting This Was and was replaced by… Martin Barre? Nope, by Tony Iommi; and that’s not a stupid joke. Tony even played a couple of gigs with them, you can even see him on the Stones’ Rock And Roll Circus. Imagine what could happen if he’d decide to stay! Jethro Tull embracing heavy metal and Satanism? At least, there would be no Black Sabbath, that’s for sure… (Mind you, I’m nor saying that would be a good possibility. I’m trying to be careful in order not to offend any Black Sabbath fan. I just have a bone against evil music, that’s all…)

However, history can’t be re-written, so we have to digest the fact that Tony didn’t really get along with Ian. So Martin Barre came along – forgetting his amplifiers and spilling coffee on his guitars. He also played them – and did it much better than Mick Abrahams and maybe even better than Tony Iommi; at least, in the early days he had some incredible guitar tones, a good knack for mighty riffage and a heavy fuzzy lead attack that could have easily rivalled Jimmy Page’s and sometimes even beat it. Before he switched over to generic crappy metal in the late Eighties, that is.

Meanwhile, Ian got some more flute practice, wrote some more songs and finally decided they just had to develop a style – it was 1969, by gum, and if you didn’t have a style back then, you pretty much sucked. Those were the days, eh? To that end, there’s just one blues number on the entire record, and even so it is an absolute Tull classic. And why? Because of the great ‘double-descending’ riff which you don’t hear that much on a generic blues number.

Of course, I’m speaking of ‘A New Day Yesterday’ – what else could I possibly be speaking about? And you just don’t know how I love an original and memorable guitar riff every now and then – helps me more than aspirin. The leap from ‘My Sunday Feeling’, the ‘blues groove’ that opens This Was, to ‘A New Day Yesterday’, the ‘blues groove’ that opens Stand Up, is indeed astonishing: the band now sounds like a rip-roarin’ blues tank, with a skillfull mastery of overdubs, a steady twin-guitar-flute attack and Clive Bunker’s perfected drumming style.

And the other numbers? Hard to believe it, but they’re all absolute rippers. For starters, there’s a couple of resplendent ballads in a glossy pop style which Ian has never been able to reproduce again: even though ‘Look Into The Sun’ and ‘Reasons For Waiting’ sound rather alike, they are just beautiful oh so beautiful, with some strings popping out now and then in the right moments and Barre’s acoustic guitar shining through, with subtle shift of dynamics (watch, for instance, the solemn and tender verses of ‘Reasons’ seamlessly flow into the ominous, strangely menacing flute refrain, then just as seamlessly flow back into the main guitar melody – that’s what perfection is).

And the album’s main highlight is Anderson’s flute arrangement on Bach’s ‘Bouree’, one of the most stunning rock-classic fusions ever. The flute, bass and guitar mingle together to incredible effect on here; the song is thus like an ‘elder brother’ to ‘Serenade For A Cuckoo’, but it’s a trillion times more effective, catchy and beautiful.

Taken on the album scale, however, it’s the hard numbers that really make this record. People might rave on about Aqualung, but it’s Stand Up which is doubtlessly their most hard-rockin’ album before the infamous metal period in the late ’80-s, and they really could play ‘hard rock’ (as opposed to ‘heavy metal’) better than almost any of their contemporaries – better than Beck, better than Led Zep! In order to be convinced, just take a listen to the gargantuan coda on ‘Nothing Is Easy’, with that bitchin’ aggressive interplay between Barre’s guitar and Ian’s flute (another trademark, that one), and to the accelerating drum pattern in the end (the one that goes ‘bang – bangbang – bangbangbang – bangbangbangbang’, and the ‘stone-rolling-down-a-hill’ conclusion).

Nobody made music that rocked so bleedin’ hard in mid-1969! ‘Back To The Family’ is another fearless rocker with Ian spitting out satirical lines about how he’s being neglected in the forkin’ suckin’ society before the final frantic battlecharge of all the instruments; ‘We Used To Know’, whose eerie melodical connection with ‘Hotel California’ has often raised many weird hypotheses, features breath-taking, cathartic wah-wah solos; and ‘For A Thousand Mothers’ closes the album on another hard note, even though I don’t like it quite as much as the other numbers, maybe because of the fact that Ian’s vocals are unexpectedly buried down deep in the general chaos.

And finally, I nearly forgot to mention the Indian-flavoured ‘Fat Man’ with Ian complaining about his gaining weight. It is certainly to be considered the ‘groove’ of the record: some jolly sitar-imitating lines contribute to the funny atmosphere, while the lines ‘Don’t want to be a fat man/People would think I’m just good fun/Would rather be a thin man/I’m so glad to go on being one/Too much to carry around with you/No chance of finding a woman who/Will love you in the morning and the night time, too’ are probably among Ian’s best lines of all time.

I’ll admit right here and now that I do not consider him a great poet (all the prog-rockers liked to think of themselves as tremendous lyricists when in reality they were just overbloated humbugs), but for the time being he was no prog-rocker ‘cos prog-rock didn’t exist as yet which meant he actually had to take pains to think over his lyrics instead of committing to paper all the nonsense that came into his head.

In fact, this is certainly the best advantage of this album, and the reason I prefer it to Aqualung: this is no prog rock, just a great collection of rock’n’roll songs. Buy it now, if you haven’t heard it you’ve no idea of how great they once were. Hell, Melody Maker nominated them second best of 1969, right after the Beatles but even before the Rolling Stones. I wouldn’t go as far, but it’s definitely a fabulous album all the same, and certainly the best ‘hard-rock’ record of the year, if not all time. Prog-rock? Forget it!