Jethro Tull

Group / 1967 - present / United Kingdom

progressive rock folk rock blues rock hard rock rock classic rock progressive folk art rock

Biography

Jethro Tull are a British rock band formed in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 1967. Emerging from the 1960s British blues scene, the band soon developed a distinctive progressive rock sound, blending hard rock, English folk music and classical music, while undergoing numerous stylistic shifts throughout its history. The band was founded and has been continuously led by Ian Anderson, its principal composer, lead vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist best known for his flute playing. The group has featured a succession of musicians throughout its history, including significant contributors such as long-time guitarist Martin Barre, bassists Glenn Cornick, Jeffrey Hammond, John Glascock, Dave Pegg and Jonathan Noyce, drummers Clive Bunker, Barrie "Barriemore" Barlow and Doane Perry, and keyboardists John Evan, Dee Palmer, Peter-John Vettese and Andrew Giddings.

Source: Wikipedia -- text available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Image via Wikipedia -- Jethro Tull (band).

Elsewhere

Analysed songs (10)

Hymn 43

Jethro Tull

A caustic broadside against the American co-option of Christianity, pairing frontier violence and cowboy mythology with the…

religious hypocrisy American mythology and violence colonialism

Living in the Past

Jethro Tull

A brief, almost hymn-like song built around a deceptively simple refrain, this track uses the tension between contentment and…

escapism generational disillusionment nostalgia

Look Into the Sun

Jethro Tull

A quiet, folk-inflected meditation on a relationship that stalled through hesitation rather than betrayal, sung by a narrator…

romantic regret missed opportunity hesitation versus action

My God

Jethro Tull

A sustained attack on institutional religion, contrasting the rigidity of church ritual with a pantheistic sense of the divine…

institutional religion vs. personal spirituality hypocrisy pantheism/immanence

Reasons for Waiting

Jethro Tull

A gentle, hushed love song built on the image of watching a sleeping partner and holding onto quiet, private moments. It moves…

tender devotion distance and longing the fragility of romantic idealism

Up to Me

Jethro Tull

A jaunty, loosely-plotted romp through post-war British working-class social life, sketched in vignettes of dance halls,…

class and working-class identity masculine bravado casual cruelty dressed as charm

Velvet Green

Jethro Tull

A pastoral seduction song that turns increasingly ambivalent, using the image of a lush green hillside as both a real place and…

pastoral seduction innocence versus experience double standards around sexuality

We Used to Know

Jethro Tull

A wistful meditation on aging and the passage of time, framed as an address to old companions whose paths are diverging. The…

nostalgia aging and mortality disillusionment

Wind-Up

Jethro Tull

Wind-Up closes Aqualung's second-side critique of institutional religion with a direct autobiographical account of a schoolboy…

institutional religion vs personal faith education as indoctrination inherited belief

Wond'ring Aloud

Jethro Tull

A brief, intimate acoustic sketch of a morning after, in which small domestic details—breakfast, crumbs, the memory of a shared…

domestic intimacy impermanence and time love as reciprocity