Stand Up is the second album by Jethro Tull. Prior to this album, the band's original guitarist Mick Abrahams had left the band due to musical differences with Ian Anderson. Abrahams wanted to stay with the blues-rock sound of This Was, while Anderson wished to branch out into other musical forms.
Stand Up represents the first album project on which Anderson was in full control of the music and lyrics. The album also marks the first appearance of guitarist Martin Barre who appeared on every Jethro Tull album from this point on. The album goes in a different direction from Ian Anderson's earlier work, revealing influences from Celtic music, folk and classical music. The instrumental "Bourée" (one of Jethro Tull's better-known songs) is a re-working of "Bourrée in E minor" by J.S.Bach.
Stand Up is the second studio album by the British rock band Jethro Tull, released in 1969. Stand Up represents the first album project on which Anderson was in full control of the music and lyrics. The result was an eclectic album with various styles appearing in its songs, yet an album which remained somewhat in the blues rock mould, which would be the last such album from Jethro Tull. The album quickly went to number 1 in the UK charts.
Jethro Tull was a unique phenomenon in popular music history. Their mix of hard rock; folk melodies; blues licks; surreal, impossibly dense lyrics; and overall profundity defied easy analysis, but that didn't dissuade fans from giving them 11 gold and five platinum albums…
While audiophile editions of Thick as a Brick, Aqualung, Living in the Past, and A Passion Play are easily obtainable, Tull's very earliest albums have languished in substandard editions on CD for ten years. This triple-CD box from England, part of EMI's 100th Anniversary reissue series, rectifies the problem, featuring newly remastered versions of This Was, Stand Up, and Benefit, each packaged in a miniature re-creation of the original LP sleeve…
Jethro Tull's first album, THIS WAS, recorded and released in 1968, shows a band that is a far cry from their better-known incarnation as a prog rock outfit in the late 1970s. Instead, Tull come across here as a solid and talented blues band with elements of jazz, folk, and psychedelia thrown in. The band's sound was heavily influenced by guitarist, singer, and songwriter Mick Abrahams, whose bluesy singing and leads distinguish this disc in Tull's discography. Frontman Ian Anderson also shines with tunes like "Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You" and the excellent cover of Rashaan Roland Kirk's "Serenade to a Cuckoo."
With five decades behind them, there are certainly plenty of career overviews and compilations to be had for listeners looking to indulge in the choicest bits of the stalwart British progressive folk-rock band's career. The aptly named 50 for 50 sees Jethro Tull's longtime director of operations, Ian Anderson, deliver his picks, which range from instantly familiar classic rock radio staples "Aqualung" "Locomotive Breath," and "Cross-Eyed Mary" to later, more stylistically diverse offerings like "Steel Monkey" (from 1989's Grammy Award-winning Crest of a Knave) and the Middle Eastern-tinged "Rare and Precious Change" (from 1995's Roots to Branches)…