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Jethro Tull – “Too old to rock ’n’ roll: too young to die!”

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What does it sound like?:

It’s the latest Steven Wilson remix of the Tull back catalogue, and it sounds fantastic. Interestingly they were unable to find all the original multi tracks of the album sessions, so only 5 tracks from the original album received the Wilson remix treatment here. Fear not however – amongst the extras is a TV special filmed for the Beeb where the union rules of the time required the band to re-record the music, and happily these multi tracks are present and correct and sounding sparkly after the Wilson magic has been applied. Pause and think about that for a moment.….they re-recorded the whole flipping album, in a couple of days, for a TV show. Lucky other prog bands, used to taking 18 months to produce their latest magnum opus, weren’t into making TV specials! This is an oddity on the Tull canon, being the album most fans of the band are a bit “meh” about…originally including this reviewer. The packaging of the original album was terrific, with a full strip cartoon telling the story of Ray Lomax, an old school un-reconstituted rocker who finds himself out of place and time but who, by a series of chance events, finds himself back in vogue. The box set does this high standard proud, with extra tracks recorded for the stage show. I never fail to be amazed at the volume and quality of music the Tull have, unreleased, which they didn’t release for whatever reason. There’s a 5.1 mix, a flat transfer of the original album master, and the aforementioned DVD of the TV special (featuring Pan’s Person Cherie Gillespie dancing to “Salamander”…).

What does it all *mean*?

Back in ’76, after the pinnacles of “Aqualung’, “Thick as a Brick”, “A Passion Play” (yes, it was a pinnacle, civilians) and “Minstrel”, TOTRR seemed a bit, well, ordinary. Any old band can knock out a decent set of acoustic and electric numbers, eh? Well, true, but like all things Tull, there was more to it than there seemed, even if it takes a few decades to realise it. This was Ian Anderson’s move to write a stage show, so it is designed more as a narrative, building to a singalongaclimax on “The Chequered Flag”. There are quiet moments, moving moments, loud punchy bits – but unfettered from the need to blow everyone’s (centre parted) hair back on every number, IA focussed on depth, on lyrics, on telling a story. Spotty 17 year olds don’t “get” this (well, this one didn’t, anyway). Listening to it now these are, in fact, cracking tunes and quite different from what went before and what was to come (many a fan’s fave “Songs from the Wood” was a year down the road, and there are shadows of the arrangements and harmonic structure of that album here if you know what you’re listening for. “Heavy Horses” classic’s “One brown mouse” appears in the extras in an early incarnation. Watching the TV special, which is quite hilarious in parts (Ian Anderson’s prancing in outrageous “glam rock” outfit is a seriously “un-see, un-see” moment), I was struck by the irony of a band who played like a dream and didn’t take themselves remotely seriously being slowly circled by gobbing, proudly inept musicians, who took themselves very seriously. Mind you, the popular theory that this was IA putting up the white flag in the face of the New Wave is clearly wrong as the album was written in 1975 when the likes of Mick Jones and John Lydon were still in their bedrooms listening to Mott the Hoople, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young like proper teenagers.

Goes well with…

The DVD TV Special went very well with the first fire of the year, a glass of heavy red and the contentment of knowing Mrs.T was off socialising in town and his nibs was slumbering in the pit. The album goes with anything…I played the whole set today on a long drive and sang along loudly all the way.

Release Date:

Might suit people who like…

At this point no reissue is going to win the mighty Tull many new fans – most people have taken their position, even if they wrongly and hilariously group them with the likes of ELP as “bad” prog, showing that in fact they haven’t actually listened to them at all. I’ll say it might suit people who like the Tull who have never given it a proper play. There’s a lot to enjoy here.

6

Comments

  1. I can’t wait to get hold of this – sounds like it maintains the same value and quality standards as the previous re-issue boxes. It is also one of the Tull LPs that I haven’t previously heard prior to buying it as a re-issue, so I look forward to discovering it. A night with a bottle of red wine and the TV special sounds very appealing!

    Also, thank you for another great Ian Anderson interview regarding this album.

  2. This is a great package – the DVDs include the film of the tv show Twang refers to above, given the full 5.1 treatment, and there’s a superb 80 page book too.
    This album always seemed a bit of a one-off, sitting between the end of the prog albums and the start of the folk rock period, but it certainly bears re-evaluation, and it more than maintains the high standard set by previous Tull rereleases.

  3. I’m on the fence about this one – I have all the SW reissues on vinyl, so I’m hoping there’s going to be a vinyl release of this one. I don’t really have any use for the DVDs so I don’t want to fork out for that.

  5. Incidentally, given Twang’s question in the recent podcast interview, interesting to see one of the pieces in the accompanying book is ‘IA on his motorbikes’!

      • Can I be very dumb and ask how one goes about recording from such sites? If I click on the tracks, it just takes me to a black screen where I can play the song, yet they say that’s how I’m supposed to download it :-/

        • Bart, you want to “save page as” from the file menu if you’re on a Mac. Once you’ve started the save process you can quit that page and start the next. The track will be saved as an mp3 in your downloads folder (probably).

          I’m sure there’s something similar for pc that involves hunting around in various menus for thirty minutes …

              • Thanks both – yes, ‘right click’ gives you a ‘save link’ option which works perfectly. Now I just need to find a way of getting this album into the same folder as all my other Tull stuff – good old iTunes has decided that it’s by an identically named new band…

    • Broadsword is an excellent album and example of their mid period (by which I mean post-proggish classics and pre-more mainstream rocky stuff, within the loosely folk rock period (we’ll forget “A” for the purposes of this point..) )*. If you like Broadsword, try “Songs from the wood”. No such thing as not a real fan. We all start somewhere!

      🙂

      *I don’t think I’ve ever nested brackets in a blog post before.

    • For me Heavy Horses was them at the top of their game; best line-up, songwriting, playing, everything was all building up to that. Then the Bursting Out album is a monster. I love Broadsword too but I suppose whatever got you into them – whatever “clicked” is going to be your favourite.

  8. Broadsword was my entry point into the world of Tull, and it remains one of my favourites to this day. There is no wrong way to come to Tull. Unless it’s J-tull.com, which is dogshit.

  9. I finally got this set last week and I think it is terrific. As I said above, I had never heard this LP previously but I really like it a lot. I know it’s not generally highly regarded by fans (or IA himself judging by the booklet) but I think there is some fantastic material here – I love the title track and ‘The Chequered Flag’ is gorgeous and there are some solid rockers here like ‘Quiz Kid’ , ‘The Big Dipper’, ‘Crazed Institution’ and ‘Taxi Grab’ – as the young people say these days “What’s not to like?” In fact the only song I’m not 100% keen on is ‘Salamander’ and that is only because it is a re-write of ‘Cold Wind To Valhalla’ – which is one of my favourite Tull songs.
    As usual the remastering/remixing and packaging are all top notch and makes the set extremely good value. These re-releases are making me quite evangelical about the Tull – a band I had never listened to until about 4 years ago.

  10. Jethro Tull’s front man Ian Anderson joins Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone to talk about the reissue of his 1976 TV special Too Old To Rock N’ Roll: Too Young To Die. This Sunday BBC6 Music 8pm.

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