Jethro Tull
Stand Up

My eye often caught those olive green posters with the simple inscription "Jethro Tull", but I thought it was yet another "tribute band": there are so many around that sometimes it feels like being in the full '70s. Then, when you least expect it, a segment on the regional news, and there he is, the real Pifferaio Magico, the true one, soon to be in my area enchanting theaters and stadiums, defying his sixty years, perhaps even invigorated after Live8, a true triumph of musical gerontocracy.

Ian Anderson and the others have not yet stopped delighting the ears of connoisseurs with their very own progressive rock, based on the extraordinary versatility of an instrument more typical of classical music than rock: the flute. Jethro Tull for many means "Aqualung", their universally recognized masterpiece. But not the only one: already in this excellent "Stand Up" (1969) Ian Anderson's flute proves capable of delivering the most diverse sensations: from the wonderful pastoral idyll of "Reasons For Waiting" to the snake charmer oriental tones in "Fat Man", from the faintly Andean breaths in "A New Day Yesterday" to the medieval reminiscences of the beautiful "Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square", whose only flaw is being too short.

However, focusing all the attention on the flute would be a big mistake: if the Pifferaio Magico can express all his imagination, it’s also thanks to a robust sound base that counterbalances the natural lightness of the wind instrument. Clive Bunker (drums), Glen Cornick (bass), and Martin Barre (electric guitar) might not be names to shout about, but together they provide Jethro Tull with that unmistakable slightly jazzy sound, rich in folk elements, which is the natural ground for Anderson's flights. Thus, it shouldn't surprise if powerful rock like "A New Day Yesterday", with its hypnotic bass line, or "Nothing Is Easy", with its sudden accelerations and decelerations marked by the drums, let alone the complex "For A Thousand Mothers", decidedly leaning towards hard sounds, are already interesting in themselves, regardless of the class touch of the flute. And so the exotic charm of "Fat Man" derives mainly from the liveliness of various percussions and knick-knacks, including even a balalaika. "We Used To Know" is already a wonderful acoustic ballad in itself, upon which Ian Anderson then crafts his refined designs.

In short, as they say, there's a lot of substance, in the sense of solidity: a nice full sound and quite a bit of compositional creativity. And where the inventiveness of Anderson & Co. does not reach, they resort to that inexhaustible source named Bach (not coincidentally "stream" in German). Hence appears a curious name among the titles: "Bourée". From the early 1700s to the present, it has lost an 'r', but it's precisely her: the Bourrée from the Suite for Lute BWV 996 by Johann Sebastian Bach, usually played on the guitar nowadays, considering only Branduardi and a few other minstrels have the lute. Usually, classics enthusiasts like me abhor the reproduction of "their" music in rock version, even if technically well done as in the case of Emerson Lake & Palmer, but here the Jethro Tull have performed a miracle, respecting the original without just copying it. To do this, they behaved like jazz musicians: the beautiful riff serves as a base from which to launch into imaginative and intelligent variations featuring Anderson's flute, truly enchanting here. The return to Bach's theme happens when all trace of it may have been lost: it's the beauty of variations, and it's an additional sign of the seriousness and preparation of these musicians. The Bachian "Bourée" is the cherry on top of an already high-quality record.