Jethro

War Child was Jethro Tull's first album after two chart-toppers, Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play, and was one of those records that was a hit the day it was announced (it was certified platinum based on pre-orders, the last Tull album to earn platinum record status). It never made the impression of its predecessors, however, as it was a return to standard-length songs following two epic-length pieces. It was inevitable that the material would lack power, if only because the opportunity for development that gave Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play some of their power. Additionally, the music was no longer quite able to cover for the obscurity of Tull's lyrics ("Two Fingers" being the best example). The title track is reasonably successful, but "Queen and Country" seems repetitive and pointless…

The 40th Anniversary edition of Jethro Tull’s Minstrel In The Gallery. Original album plus seven bonus tracks (six previously unreleased) and all to stereo by Steven Wilson. The album has been expanded to include the b-side Summerday Sands, several studio outtakes, and alternate session material recorded for a BBC broadcast. The second disc features a live recording of Jethro Tull performing at the Olympia in Paris on July 5, 1975, a few months prior to the release of Minstrel In The Gallery. During the show, the band played songs from several of its albums, including War Child and Aqualung, as well as an early performance of Minstrel In The Gallery.
Minstrel in the Gallery was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harked back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse")…

Stand Up was the first album where Anderson controlled the music and lyrics, resulting in a group of diverse songs that ranged from the swirling blues of “A New Day Yesterday” and the mandolin-fueled rave-up of “Fat Man,” to the group’s spirited re-working of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Bouree in E Minor.” In a recent interview, Anderson picked Stand Up as his favorite Jethro Tull album, “because that was my first album of first really original music. It has a special place in my heart.” The first disc features Steven Wilson’s new stereo mixes of the original album, along with a number of rare recordings, including an unreleased version of “Bouree.” Other highlights include four songs recorded at the BBC, plus stereo single mixes for “Living In The Past” and “Driving Song”…

Also known as Jethro Tull: This Is the First 20 Years. It consists of interviews with fans, record company executives and frontman Ian Anderson giving a rough chronology of the band, interspersed with clips from music videos and live performances…

Released just as punk was taking hold on the public's imagination in America and making groups like Jethro Tull seem like dinosaurs on their way to extinction, Bursting Out became a seemingly perpetual denizen of the cutout bins for years afterward. However, it happened to be a good album, a more-than-decent capturing of a live Tull concert from Europe. The sound is remarkably good, given the group's arena rock status at the time, and the repertoire is a solid representation of the group's history, going all the way back to "A New Day Yesterday" from their second album and up through 1978's Heavy Horses, with stops along the way for "Bouree," "Aqualung," "Locomotive Breath," "Cross-Eyed Mary," and a compact reprise of Thick as a Brick.

To some, Jethro Tull will always be associated with Ian Anderson's flute playing and more rocking, arena-worthy moments. But like Led Zeppelin, Tull was all about balancing their sonic mood swings; they could effortlessly transform between being loud & proud rock & rollers to more tranquil folksmen in the blink of an eye. The 2007 compilation, The Best of Acoustic Jethro Tull is self-explanatory, since the 24-track set focuses solely on the "unplugged" side of Tull. But some of Tull's finest moments were acoustic guitar-based, including such early classics as "Mother Goose," "Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of the New Day)," and "Fat Man" (here's a fun game to play: the next time you watch the movie Boogie Nights, try to spot the scene that uses the latter song)…

Each era of rock music has had its own craftily marketed phenomenon – it was the "live album" in the '70s, "unplugged" recordings in the '90s, and since the late '80s through the present day, the "tribute album." But the early 21st century saw another addition – veteran bands revisiting classic albums and performing them in their entirety. Jethro Tull's most enduring release is largely agreed to be 1971's classic Aqualung, and in late 2004 Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, and their latest Tull mates dusted off the album once more in front of a small audience for XM Radio's Then Again Live series. Since 33 years had passed between the original and the re-reading, the performances on Aqualung Live are slightly more restrained.

Minstrel in the Gallery was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harkened back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse"). Although English folk elements abound, this is really a hard rock showcase on a par with – and perhaps even more aggressive than – anything on Aqualung. The title track is a superb showcase for the group, freely mixing folk melodies, lilting flute passages, and archaic, pre-Elizabethan feel, and the fiercest electric rock in the group's history – parts of it do recall phrases from A Passion Play, but all of it is more successful than anything on War Child.

Following the end of the Stormwatch tour in early 1980, Jethro Tull would undergo its largest line-up shuffle to date, resulting in Barriemore Barlow, John Evan and Dee Palmer all leaving the band. Jethro Tull was left with Anderson (the only original member), Martin Barre and Dave Pegg.