Today marks the 39th(!) anniversary of Jethro Tull's 14th studio album, The Broadsword and the Beast. Here are a couple tunes from that album performed live on the tour in support of it. They are both from the 12 September 1982 show at Poplar Creek Music Center in suburban Chicago.
I have a fondness for The Broadsword and the Beast as it was one of the first Tull albums I got into. Back in 1987 or thereabouts. That was a really fun time for me and music. I spent a fair amount of time investigating older bands whom I only knew from classic rock radio. For example, I knew a few Rush songs such as "Tom Sawyer" and "Spirit of Radio" but I bought there then latest effort, Hold Your Fire, and my love for the band was a done deal.
Similarly for Tull, I knew the tunes you'd hear on the radio, mainly from Aqualung, and then decided I'd take the plunge with their 1987 album, Crest of a Knave. As with Rush, I liked their latest and went back to dig around in their catalogue. My brother had a tape which had The Broadsword and the Beast on one side and Thick as a Brick on the other. It took me a while to really get Thick as a Brick but I took to The Broadsword and the Beast instantly. With a song about Viking invaders and a cover with Old Norse runes, it's little surprise that Dungeons & Dragons playing teenager loved the album. It was also, unsurprisingly, a big hit in Germany, although it was a modest success elsewhere.
But it's not a concept album about Viking hordes any more than Led Zeppelin III is. For instance, "Pussy Willow" is about a young woman with a boring office job who longs for something different, something more. (Vaguely reminiscent of the Typist in T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land".) "Fallen On Hard Times" reflects the early 1980's recession while "Clasp" laments loneliness and the dislocation inherent in modern - especially urban - life. "Slow Marching Band" is an intimate song about a parting of the ways.
The album has a curious reputation. It is seen by many as a return to form with Martin Barre's guitar on full display, plenty of flute, and a mandolin showing up here and there. This is the tack taken by David Rees in his biography of the band. He says, "Broadsword was in many ways a very calculated manoeuvre to return to the traditional qualities that had endeared the band to the fans from the outset." On the other hand, it is recognized as Tull fully incorporating synthesizers into their sound and as a pre-cursor to their full-on 80s synth/drum machine fest, Under Wraps. Going back to Rees, he says that the synthesizers here "were used more effectively within the traditional Tull elements of heavy rock and Celtic influences..."
Perhaps my take on this is colored by the fact that I got into Broadsword early on and it was one of just, say, three Tull albums I was familiar with at the time. I wasn't a long-time fan who saw it in relation to all of their previous work. But it seemed unlike Aqualung and Crest of a Knave to my ears. To my ears, the synths, the songs, and the drumming really make it stand apart from what came before instead of being an act of atavism.
I suppose it's that I don't view 1980s A as being that great of a departure from the established Tull sound. And I don't think Peter-John Vettese's use of synthesizers on Broadsword was all that different from Eddie Jobson's on A as they both inserted these little flourishes into the songs between the guitar and vocals. One of the reasons the synthesizers seem to fit in better on Broadsword is, I think, because there's more of those Celtic influences here. There's not much mandolin on A and acoustic guitar is limited as well so it wasn't like Jobson failed to meld his keyboards with that part Tull sound. It wasn't there to begin with. However you feel about this, there's little doubt in my mind songs such as "Clasp" and "Fallen On Hard Times" use synthesizers in ways that complement the flute and mandolin perfectly.
The songs on Broadsword are generally more straightforward than we're used to with Tull. There are no lengthy suites and the acoustic-electric dichotomy is less stark here. The dramatic shifts of tone and rhythm are here but are in smaller packages and don't come across as being so, well, dramatic. Part of this seems due to Gerry Conway's drumming which is more about economy than orchestrating drum parts. I don't offer this as a criticism because I love his drumming in "Clasp" and "Watching Me, Watching You" even though the almost mechanical precision of the latter has a tinge of drum machine to it. After several years of Barriemore Barlow's fancier and more seemingly composed drumming, Conway's work here seems new, not a throwback.
The Broadsword sessions yielded not only the 10 tracks on the album, but also an additional 15 outtakes that have come out over the years. Rumors tell of another couple songs from these sessions, "DJ" and "Dinosaur", so, if we get an anniversary box set, hopefully they'll be on there. The available outtakes show was a fertile period it was for Anderson and Tull. "Commons Brawl" was perhaps left off because it's pulsing synth was too similar to "Clasp" but it goes off in a different direction and feel. This song about governmental dysfunction was not only topical but also sees synths and mandolin and flute all living in perfect harmony. "Jack Frost And The Hooded Crow", a favorite Christmas song of mine, similarly sees the new and traditional come together in a most complementary way. A hold over from 1977, "Jack-A-Lynn" is a beautiful love song with a gentle acoustic guitar opening that gives way to a spirited electric guitar/synth finale.
Being a music nerd, of course I created an alternate Broadsword incorporating some of the outtakes.
So happy birthday to The Broadsword and the Beast.
No comments:
Post a Comment