Trivia / Jethro Tull

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• Award Category Fraud: Controversy over Tull winning the 1989 Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, with other nominees including the heavily favored Metallica and the highly influential Faith No More, led to the category being split into two separate awards the very next year.
  • The worst part? Tull didn't even attend the ceremony. They thought they had no chance of winning. Ian Anderson said there was no way they could have accepted the award the way things went down.
    Eddie Trunk: If you're Jethro Tull and you get nominated in the Metal category, I wouldn't show up either! There's no way I'm winning that!
• Black Sheep Hit: They had one during their early blues era. "Living in the Past" was their first hit that broke away from their blues sound and towards their prog-folk sound. Allegedly, Anderson wrote it in 5/4 because he didn't want it to be a breakout hit, but the masses ran with it anyway.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Ian finds Minstrel in the Gallery, along with A Passion Play, too dark and unfocused for his tastes, but they remain popular among hardcore fans. "Teacher" (allegedly mistaken by Jethro Tull's then-record company co-founder to be about him, much to Ian's annoyance) and "Bungle In The Jungle", two attempts to write a commercial pop single, often come up for criticism too.
  • Dave Pegg didn't like how Under Wraps turned out, saying that cut material from their previous albums would've made for a better package.
  • In the liner notes of the 2006 remaster of 1989's Rock Island, Ian called the video for "Kissing Willie" "not one of (his) proudest moments".
  • Ian appears to have regret the adoption of the name of the 18th-century agriculturalist/botanist Jethro Tull as the name of the group he fronted for more than forty years ^note the band's managers kept booking the band at the Marquee under various and ridiculous names, as they played one disastrous gig after another, in order to allow the band to be booked—Jethro Tull, whose name was suggested by a History junkie, was the name they had when they "stopped sucking"., likening it to some sort of "identity theft". His most recent (as of Spring 2015) project, a solo live show with classic and brand new material paying tribute to the "real Tull" (or at least an alternate future version of him) is an attempt to reconcile this issue.
• Creator Breakdown: The Minstrel in the Gallery album is filled with equal measures of reflection, regret, sarcasm, sadness, and Self-Deprecation; it reflected Ian Anderson's then-recent divorce and the pressures of stardom, as well the the splintering and unfocus of the lineup of the band that recorded it.
  • Stand Up had a lot of this, too, as Anderson was having a hard time adjusting to touring and being away from his girlfriend at the time.
  • Disproven by Ian in the liner notes to the 40th Anniversary boxed set of Minstrel, as he explains the lyrics track-by-track. Although he takes a bit of influence from each song from his personal life, most to all of the songs invoke fictional situations. The Creator Backlash has more to do with Ian's recording/writing experiences than anything.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Both A Passion Play and Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll: Too Young to Die! were originally planned to be stage musicals. Sadly, neither turned out that way.
  • The songs that eventually became War Child were created for a film project, which would have starred John Cleese and Leonard Rossiter.
  • Tull were invited to play the Woodstock festival, but Anderson took a disliking to the idea of playing to naked hippies playing in the mud, and turned down the opportunity (although he knew it would be an important festival).
  • "Aqualung" almost had a flute solo instead of Martin Barre's famous guitar solo. The rule was that if a guitar solo couldn't be nailed in one or two takes, it would be replaced by Ian's flute. As the song was being recorded, Led Zeppelin were working on Led Zeppelin IV next door, and when Jimmy Page started waving to them, Martin had to try his hardest not to be distracted to avoid blowing the solo and waved back at Jimmy in record time. Ian Anderson joked that Martin's wave is heard when the volume is turned up during the solo.
  • The Broadsword And The Beast was intended to be released as as a double album.
  • A Passion Play began as an album of shorter songs, with a concept of relating human beings to animals (it would have beat Pink Floyd to the punch by four years had it been released as intended).
  • 1980's A was intended to be an Ian Anderson solo album, deliberately exploring a more synthesizer-heavy musical style than Tull regularly approached at the time (courtesy of guest keyboardist Eddie Jobson of Roxy Music and U.K.). However, Chrysalis Records was going through financial troubles and, as the album shared much in common with Tull anyway (including Martin Barre's guitar and new Tull bassist Dave Pegg's involvement) they asked Ian to release the album as a Tull release. Before Ian could break the news gently to his other bandmates, Chrysalis president Terry Ellis sent a press release informing of the new "Tull" album and lineup changes. Ian would tell ousted bandmates Dee Palmer and John Evans they were free to return to the band, but they decided not to return for The Broadsword And The Beast. Ian would not release a solo album proper until the even more electronic Walk Into Light in 1983.

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