Jethro Tull
Place des Arts, Montréal, Québec, Canada
November 23, 2007
By Ryan Sparks
Set List: Someday The Sun Won’t Shine
For You | Living In The Past | The Donkey And The Drum | The
Water Carrier | Fat Man | Pastime With Good Company (King
Henry’s Madrigal) | My Sunday Feeling | Bourée | Birnam Wood to
Dunsinane | Nothing Is Easy [intermission] | Thick As A Brick |
Sweet Dream | A French Correction (Martin Barre Instrumental) |
Aqualung (orchestral version) | America | My God
Encore: Locomotive Breath
Forty years in any given profession
should be considered nothing short of admirable, and in the
world of classic rock it’s pretty much a rarity. You can count
on one hand the number of bands still together performing, and
more importantly, still performing at a high caliber. British
legends Jethro Tull, led by distinguished front man and flutist
extraordinaire Ian Anderson, will be commemorating said
milestone next year, so what better way to start celebrating
than with a round of North American concert dates to close out
2007.
The last time this reviewer witnessed Tull’s magic in person was
in 1994, so needless to say I was highly anticipating their
latest trek through town. Just prior to taking my seat, I took a
quick glance around to get a feel for the audience. I honestly
wasn’t expecting to see too many people under the age of twenty
five, but I’d have to say the average age was probably thirty
five to forty on this night. I figured that the majority of the
concert goers like me, had probably seen the band before and
knew what to expect.
As the lights went down Ian and longtime guitarist (and almost
original member) Martin Barre took the stage for the opening
number “Someday The Sun Won’t Shine For You”, a track which goes
back to the very first Jethro Tull album This Was, released in
1968. Anderson blew his harp emphatically and Barre strummed
feverishly along as the remaining members of the group took
their places onstage mid song, before kicking into the well worn
favorite “Living In The Past”. It quickly became apparent that
this 2007 edition of the band - which features bassist Dave
Goodier, keyboard and accordion player John O’Hara, along with
drummer Doane Perry- are more than capable of covering all the
musical bases as far as the bands back catalogue goes.
The first half of the bands two hour performance progressed
through an almost even mix of newer songs and classic Tull
material as Anderson pranced about the stage and delighted the
sold out crowd of almost 3,000 with his magnificent flute solo’s
and engaging pre-song banter. If you include “Living In The
Past”, “Someday The Sun Won’t Shine For You” and “My Sunday
Feeling”, a total of six songs out of ten played in the first
half, were taken from their first two albums. “Fat Man”, live
staple “Bourée” and “Nothing Is Easy” all from Stand Up (1969),
rounded out the first set.
One thing I’ve neglected to mention up to this point is the
current state of Anderson’s voice. As the first half of the
concert wore on, something was clearly amiss with Ian’s vocals
as he was not only having difficulty keeping up with the band,
he was also coughing quite a bit off mic. In addition to this he
certainly didn’t help his own cause by spending the whole
evening avoiding signing directly into the microphone. He would
stretch his neck and arch his head backwards when singing as if
searching for that ever elusive note, but it really looked like
he was straining himself. To be honest he seemed to fair better
on the mellower songs, but the harder tracks simply had no
punch.
The second set kicked off promisingly enough with “Thick As A
Brick” which drew a hearty round of applause from the
appreciative audience. A solid version of “Sweet Dream” looked
to keep things going in the right direction; however the group
lost some valuable momentum with the third number, inserting an
untimely Barre instrumental called “French Correction”. For Tull
diehards in the audience this momentum was probably killed even
more so by the re-arranging of one of their most timeless pieces
of music, “Aqualung”. Their orchestral interpretation,
introduced by Anderson as “Stairway To Aqualung”, didn’t come
anywhere close to matching the original rendition. I do think it
took a fair amount of balls though, to re-work what is
definitely one of their signature songs they way they did. So
I’d give that an A for effort and originality but unfortunately
the performance only weighed in as a C+. The concert thankfully
didn’t end on a low note, as Ian dedicated their instrumental
version of Leonard Bernstein’s “America” to Keith Emerson, who
of course originally first brought the song to rock audiences
with his version recorded while with The Nice in the late 60’s.
This was quickly followed up with another stellar track “My God”
from 1971’s Aqualung album. As the song ended the band took
their bows briefly and hurried offstage for a few minutes before
returning for their sole encore of the evening, “Locomotive
Breath”.
A powerful live rendition of “Locomotive Breath” should have
sent fans off happily into the night, but if anything it just
further magnified Anderson’s vocal deficiencies. Musically the
song delivered but Ian simply lacked the vocal power to deliver
a home run with the final song of the evening. Instead it fell
flat, like a bases loaded grounder to the pitcher to end the
game.
All night I truly felt like I was witnessing the demise of one
of my favorite classic rock bands right before my very eyes.
When you couple that with the fact that Ian Anderson has always
had an extremely high standard for Tull both on record and
especially live; it just made that much harder to accept.
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