Chris Tuthill wrote this review which ran originally on GMR.
Ian Anderson likes to poke fun at the idea of an anniversary tour, and his band has had many. I’m old enough now, that though I missed the band’s heyday, I have seen 25th, 30th, 35th and 40th Jethro Tull anniversary tours; on his website, Anderson notes playfully that he ‘look(s) forward much more to celebrating the 41st anniversary’.
I was curious to see how the new band sounded; the departure of keyboardist Andy Giddings at the beginning of the year was a surprise, since he had been with Tull since the early 90s and was a fan favorite at every show I had seen. Jonathan Noyce’s exit was less jarring to longtime fans, since he had been with the band a mere (!) eight years. The show was at Jones Beach on Long Island, which is a venue of 20,000 and looked about sold out. The acoustics were good as was the weather on this fine night last August.
The new band did not disappoint. They played a set worthy of Jethro Tull’s long and storied career, including a number of songs from the really early days — from ‘My Sunday Feeling’ to ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo,’ and even ‘Dharma for One’. On ‘Dharma’ Anderson played claghorn, an invention of his from 1968 which he described as ‘a bamboo flute body, an alto sax mouthpiece, and a little bit of gaffer tape to bind it all together. It’s a homemade instrument that actually, amazingly, sounds really, really fucking awful.’ The comments sent the crowd into some prolonged laughter. Moments like these help make Tull concerts celebratory events; one of Anderson’s strong points through the years I’ve been seeing them is fan interaction and the mix of bawdy jokes and humorous insults (usually aimed at guitarist Martin Barre or drummer Doane Perry) that keep people smiling.
It was an amazing thing to hear ‘Heavy Horses’ all the way through; this is a mini-masterpiece that I had never heard live before and it was fantastic. As Anderson sang of the ‘day when the oil barons have all dripped dry’ it seemed almost prescient. ‘Farm on the Freeway’ has always been a favorite of mine and was nice to hear live. ‘Reasons for Waiting’, ‘We Used to Know’, and ‘With You There to Help Me’ were also included on a wonderful set list. The crowd got very into ‘Thick as a Brick’; fans of all ages, from little kids to older hippies, filled the amphitheater and everyone stayed through the encore, which featured, of course, ‘Aqualung’ and ‘Locomotive Breath’. On the final number I halfway expected to see Giddings’ dramatic showmanship on the keyboards that had been a staple of shows over the past fifteen years, but by that time it was clear that new keyboardist John O’Hara was a worthy successor. Martin Barre’s playing also seems to get better with age. Anderson’s voice was strong and overall it was a memorable, fun show.
On the way out to our truck my wife and I saw a kid who could not have been more than seventeen or so sitting in the parking lot, serenading outgoing fans with his own version of ‘Aqualung’ on an acoustic guitar. New generations come and go, and Tull’s music is as resonant as ever. Let’s hope Ian Anderson sees fit to keep the band going another decade or so at least.
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