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5/25/06 - Ian Anderson Awarded at "Ivors": Ian Anderson walked away with the Lifetime Achievement award at the Ivor Novello Awards, a yearly songwriting awards show presented yearly by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.

5/25/06 - Orchestral Tull Dates in the U.S.: Ian Anderson will be performing shows with various orchestras throughout the U.S. this summer. For more, check the latest tour dates.
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TULL TICKER ARCHIVE

Let's bungle in the jungle -- it's all right by me

Chuck Darrow
Sunday, October 9, 2005

THE EXCITEMENT HAS been building inside me for a c
Monday night, I again will again sharing the same physical space with my all-time favorite group -- a groundbreaking British rock band that has sold millions of records since the 1960s. The one with the charismatic, one-of-a-kind lead singer. The one to whom I pledged my unswerving loyalty as a teenager, loyalty that has flagged not a whit in more than 35 years.


What's that? You, too, can't wait to see the Rolling Stones tomorrow at Wachovia Center? Oh, yeah. I forgot. The Stones are in town, too, aren't they?


Actually, the group to whom I was referring is Jethro Tull. It is that legendary English act and not the Stones (whom, by the way, I, indeed, worship), I'll be seeing at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pa.


While many (especially those who earn money writing about rock music) would sneer at such an admission, I unabashedly proclaim my allegiance. Say it loud: I love Tull and I'm proud!


I revel in my fealty to the eclectic unit led, since its 1967 inception, by singer-composer-flautist Ian Anderson. I continue to thrill to and delight in the band's singular melding of bone-crunching riffing, delicate British folk, jazz, blues, classical and Third-World modes.


I cherish the annual tours that bring the group to these shores. I'm not ashamed to describe the group as "my Grateful Dead," by virtue of having seen approximately 60 Tull concerts since May 1972.


And I boldly challenge the dolts who control entry into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame to justify why Anderson -- he of the soaring flute solos and one-legged posing -- doesn't deserve a place in the pantheon of rock greats.


At this point, you can't help but ask, Why? Why, of all musical acts, has Tull grabbed me and held me in a way no other has. (Related questions, I suppose, include "Have you no life?" and "Are you insane?").


By way of response to the former, I can tell you about Anderson's ability to write great riffs and memorable melodies, and how Anderson has few peers as a showman -- at least had, in his 1970s heyday. Only, it seems, Mick Jagger can perform at the same level he did when Richard Nixon was president.


I can launch a spiel about how lead guitarist Martin Barre is worthy of mention in the same breath as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and other six-string deities.


I can even prattle on about Anderson's Monty Pythonesque sense of humor, the ultimate manifestation of which was the letter-perfect send-up of a British newspaper included in the Thick As A Brick LP package in 1972.


But any words I write would come nowhere near as close to nailing my feelings as do those of novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. In a June 4, 1995 essay in The New York Times, Eugenides rhapsodized about Jethro Tull and his passion for the band. Among his thoughts was this passage:


". . . I was struck by the denseness of Mr. Anderson's lyrics. They combined Elizabethan diction and syntax . . . with the oblique sensibility of modernism . . .


"He spoke to our troubled, idealistic, cynical souls. The sneer in his singing voice, his attacks on religious hypocrisy, his social critiques -- all accorded with our youthful rebelliousness; beneath that, of course, was our longing for purity, which was ministered to by the sound of his flute."


To which I can only say: Amen.


See you at the Keswick!


In his On the Loose column on Sundays, Chuck Darrow offers his takes on the world around us and the things, big and small, that color our lives. He can be reached at (856) 486-2442 or cdarrow@camden.gannett.com