When we last caught up with legendary Jethro Tull guitarist Martin Barre, it was to commemorate the band’s iconic fourth album, Aqualung. The dark, anti-religious progressive hard rock pseudo-concept album (depending on who you ask) singlehandedly put Tull on the map, making them a driving force of the ’70s rock scene. If Barre wanted to, he could’ve toured this show around the globe for another year, as is par the course for most legacy bands these days. Instead, he retired Aqualung for something completely different, yet equally thrilling.
2023 is a landmark year for Tull. It marks 45 years of the folksy Heavy Horses, 50 years of the epic A Passion Play, and most importantly, 55 years of Jethro Tull themselves. Barre celebrates all of these anniversaries and more on the cheekily titled A Brief History of Tull Tour. In the same breath, condensing 55 years worth of musical brilliance into a show that runs a little over 2 hours is rather “brief”. Time constraints aside, Barre and his band treated the rabid audience with a selection of fan favorites and obscurities, many of which hadn’t been played live in decades.
The first half of A Brief History chronicled Tull’s early years, from roughly 1968 to 1974. The musical evolution the band went through in their first six years is nothing short of mindboggling, and was fully covered. Before finding their identity, the band wandered through the ’60s as an oddball blues/jazz/folk hybrid, exemplified by early cuts like “Look Into the Sun” and “Some Day the Sun Won’t Shine for You”. 1970’s Benefit saw the band sharpen their sound and focus, represented in this set by the cerebral melodies of “Sossity; You’re a Woman” and proto-doom intensity of “Nothing to Say”. From there, it was on to those “conceptual” behemoths: Aqualung (1971), Thick as a Brick (1972), and A Passion Play (1973), before closing set one with the title track of the unsung War Child (1974).
After a half hour intermission, Barre and his band returned to the stage for a second set that focused heavily on Tull’s ’80s output. Much like fellow acts of their era (i.e. Uriah Heep, The Moody Blues, Yes, etc.), the ’80s saw Tull largely trying to adapt to the times without sacrificing their core ethos and signature traits. Although largely disregarded by the masses and the classic schlock radio industrial complex, the decade produced some fine music from the now veteran band, including my personal favorite Tull album, The Broadsword and the Beast (1982). So you could only imagine my surprise when Barre and company played not one, not two, but three tracks off this cult classic! I headbanged and sang along in disbelief as they blazed through “Watching Me Watching You”, “Fallen on Hard Times”, and the colossal “Beastie”, accompanied by images of vikings and ogres.
Set two closed with the song Barre acknowledged as Tull’s “last hit”, “Steel Monkey”. Off of the band’s *ahem* Grammy award winning Crest of a Knave (1987), “Steel Monkey” served as a fitting closer for this Brief History lesson, before the audience was treated to a one-two punch of an encore: “Locomotive Breath” and “Hymn 43”. By the end of the night, not a single fan left the building unsatisfied. A Brief History of Tull is quite the course, and with Ian Anderson treading new waters with a revamped incarnation of the band, I couldn’t think of a better “Teacher” than Martin Barre!
Setlist
Set 1
- “Look Into the Sun”
- “Some Day the Sun Won’t Shine for You”
- “Cat’s Squirrel”
- “We Used to Know”
- “Serenade to a Cuckoo”
- “Sossity; You’re a Woman”
- “Bourrée”
- “Back to the Family”
- “Nothing to Say”
- “My God”
- “A Passion Play”
- “The Whistler”
- “Black Satin Dancer”
- “Back-Door Angels”
- “War Child
Set 2
- “Sealion”
- “Acres Wild”
- “Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow”
- “Under Wraps #2”
- “Under Wraps #1”
- “Protect and Survive”
- “Watching Me Watching You”
- “Beastie”
- “Fallen on Hard Times”
- “Steel Monkey”
Encore
- “Locomotive Breath”
- “Hymn 43”
