Jethro Tull in 1969: Ian Anderson, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Clive Bunker
In his 2012 autobiography, Steampunk, [1] Tony Iommi tells the fateful story of how he came to join Jethro Tull, kicking off what many credit as the first steampunk rock band:
Earth had gigged for just a couple of weeks when we opened for Jethro Tull, who were already getting very popular. [2] I thought they were very good, but obviously there was something going on behind the scenes, because during that gig their guitar player, Mick Abrahams, passed a note to Ian Anderson that said something like: “This is my last night.” After the gig, everything went pear-shaped, and I would later come to learn that both Abrahams and their bassist, Glenn Cornick, up and quit. (They would eventually form Blodwyn Pig, a pretty good blues rock band in their own right.) [3]
Anyway, after the gig, they asked me if I’d be interested in joining. I went: “Oh, bloody hell. I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I was shocked by it all.
On the way home in the van, I said to the others: “I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve been asked to join Jethro Tull. And I don’t know what to say.” And they were really supportive and said: “You should go for it.” Tull got in touch and I said, “Sure, I’ll give it a go.”
But it wasn’t as simple as that. They said: “You’ve got to come for an audition.” I protested, but they said: “Come down to London. You’ll be all right.”
So I went down there and I walked into this room and there were so many guitar players from known bands that I panicked, and walked out again. I knew John, one of their crew, from his time with Ten Years After. He rushed after me and said: “Look here, don’t worry, just go and sit in the caf across the road and I’ll come and fetch you when it’s your turn.”
I protested: “Well, I don’t feel comfortable with this.” But he insisted. “You’ve got to have a go; they really want you to play.” So I went, and then he came and fetched me from the caf, after everyone had gone. We did a twelve-bar blues and I got to solo. We did another two or three jams and then they said: “You’ve got the job.”
So before I knew it I was in rehearsals with Jethro Tull for the recording of our new album, the year before “Living In The Past” would go to No. 1. At this time, the band was still cycling through session bassists, auditioning everyone they could find to replace Cornick. Now, because I felt so out of place in London and I felt really bad about leaving Earth, I took Geezer down with me for moral support. [4] That first rehearsal, he just sat at the back of the room. Finally, I told John: “You should hear Geezer play.”
And that was that. Geezer sat in with us, we jammed a couple of tunes, and the rest is steampunk history.
Of course, it wasn’t all beer and skittles. They started at nine o’cock in the morning, sharp. With Earth we would just straggle in whenever we felt like it. But with Tull it was: “Gotta be there, on time.” The first day we got there maybe ten minutes late, and I could hear Ian Anderson screaming at John: “Nine o’clock, I said!” I thought, bloody hell, this is a bit serious. This is supposed to be a band!
Now Geezer, he’s pretty strung out on LSD at the time, wearing this long Indian hippie dress, and he just strolls over to Ian and says: “Stop being such a wanker.” Ian turns red in the face and looks like he’s about to explode, and John and I just start laughing, hard. Because if you knew Geezer at all, back in them days, he wouldn’t utter so much as a rude word to anyone. And here’s this stoned-out hippie, the guy who yells: “don’t hit me, I’m peaceful!” in bar fights, and Anderson is cocking his fist back to slug him in the jaw, and, well, it was just too ridiculous for words. Everyone started laughing, and all of a sudden all of the tension just dissipates. Ian claps Geezer on the back, and, well, their friendship is legendary even today. [5]
But we were there the next day at 9 o’clock sharp, I tell you. [6]
And, you know, some have called us the prototype for the “four musicians, four cabs” style of band; maybe there’s some truth to that. We never really hung out together all that much in our off time. I didn’t have that much in common with Ian. We were never going to be pals. But I respected the hell out of him, and we worked together for a long time. [7]
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Ian Anderson remembers it a bit differently. In a 1986 interview with Clockwork magazine’s John Davidoff, he was asked about a wide range of topics, including how Jethro Tull was formed. [8]
Davidoff: So, tell us about how you put together the classic Tull lineup.
Anderson: I think most people would say it all started in September of 1968, although Tull had already released an album [This Was –ed.], and were pretty popular already. Mick Abrahams was our guitar player at the time, and Glenn Cornick was on bass. We played a gig together with Tony’s original band, Earth, at university. We kind of got to know Tony [Iommi] and thought he was pretty good and seemed to have a style that was quite different from Mick’s, who was basically a blues guitarist. I don’t think any of us were thinking about Geezer back then at all, he hadn't been playing bass for very long and didn't make much of an impression on us.
And then Mick and Glenn up and left; Mick wanted to do more straight blues, and that just wasn't where we were headed as a band. So we started to look for a new guitarist. We weren't looking for a bassist at first; I was thinking an old mate of mine, Jeffrey Hammond, who had played with me in Blade back in Blackpool. But all of us thought of Tony right away as a potential guitarist.
And you know, Tony, he didn’t have that classic blues experience. Instead, he had this incredibly musical way of playing. He didn’t play a lot of major 7s. He played a lot of open fifths and fairly gutsy things, solo lines. So at the end of ’68, we got together with Tony and worked on a couple of new songs. And he brought Geezer with him, this crazy hippie wearing a kaftan, of all things, and the first day he just sort of sat in the back and didn’t say anything.
But then it turned out that Jeffrey wasn’t coming; I just couldn’t talk him into it. [9] And we auditioned a bunch of bassists, but here was this guy who played bass just sitting there during our sessions, and so I thought ‘what the hell’ and gave him a shot.
And you know, I was skeptical of the whole arrangement at first. I mean, everyone knows now about Tony’s physical limitations due to the injury to his fingers. I could see that there was this brilliant, unconventional musician who knew exactly where I was headed, what I wanted to do, but I was concerned that he just physically was never going to be able to play those complex blues chords.
Davidoff: What made you change your mind?
Anderson: Well, it was a lot of things. Remember that the blow-up I had with Mick and Glenn was about whether we were going to play straightforward blues or whether we were going to go in a new direction, go somewhere no one had ever gone. Tony got that, he understood the vision. And I came to embrace the challenge of writing music to work within Tony’s limitations, and transcend what anyone had done to that point.
So I came up with the idea that Tony should tune his guitar down a minor third, to C-sharp. Tony come up with the idea of wearing those little thimbles on his fingertips and loose-stringing his guitar. And, of course, Geezer helped immensely. He started down-tuning his base from E-A-D-G to C-sharp/F-sharp/B/E to match Tony. [10]
Davidoff: And you really had no idea he was on acid?
Anderson: No! I mean, half the world thought I was on acid at the time; I guess they took that crack about smoking fingernails seriously. I thought he was just eccentric. (laughs) If I had known he was on drugs, I never would have let him in the band. [11]
Davidoff: What about Ginger Baker?
Anderson (sighs): I’d rather not talk about that. (pause) After we released The Wizard album in 1970, our then-manager Terry Ellis asked our first drummer, Clive Bunker, to leave. Terry was concerned that Bunker was spending too much time with his girlfriend; that he wasn’t really “committed” to the band. [12] We were about to go through the whole interview process again, when Ellis came in one day, out of breath. He told us that he’d convinced Ginger to come play with us. Now Ginger had just released two albums as “Ginger Baker’s Air Force,” and he was contemplating moving to Nigeria, of all things. Terry asked – begged, really – him to sit with us, and obviously we were all huge fans of his drum work. When he said he’d do it, well, none of us had much of a choice. [13]
Davidoff: But he only stayed with Jethro Tull for one album, 1971’s Aqualung.
Anderson: Yeah, like I said, it’s complicated. We called him “Pops.” Everybody loved his drumming, but it just wasn’t going to work in the long run. I think we all learned something from him. I mean, he was big – bigger than any of us thought we had a right to be – and yet he wanted to play with us. It helped keep our egos in check, I think. And I do think Ginger helped contribute to that classic “Jethro Tull” sound, and some people consider Aqualung to be the greatest album of all time. [14]
Davidoff: And are you one of them?
Anderson (chuckling): Maybe? I mean, it’s hard to choose from all of the great albums we put out in the ‘70s.
Davidoff: You even have bands today that utilize the flute.
Anderson: If I may be immodest for a moment, I don’t think anyone has really done what I’ve done with flutes, although certainly a lot of musicians have tried and are still trying. More power to them. Where I think they’ve had success, is that I think we inspired a lot of musicians to bring back instruments that were overlooked in the 1950s and 60s: not just the flute, but the oboe. Obviously the electric violin. Billy Joel and the harmonica, that’s some clever stuff he’s done. But I have to say that when I hear someone like Phil Collins try to play the flute, I just want to say ‘stick to the drums, mate.’
Davidoff: What’s your favorite song right now that could be a Jethro Tull song?
Anderson: Oh, that’s a tough one. How about my friend Don Henley’s “Building the Perfect Beast,” that’s basically a pure steampunk song, something you never would have expected from the Eagles. It’s in sevenths. It has that great guitarwork, the harpsichord, the complex lyrics. I think it’s really the perfect Jethro Tull song. If we hadn’t done what we did back in the 1970s, I can’t imagine Don could have written it. [15]
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NOTES:
Thanks to Heavy Metal Poisoning for coming up with the POD; hopefully I’ve made it work. Obviously, the real challenges here are: (a) finding anyone who can work with Ian Anderson's colossal ego, and (b) alleviating the problem IOTL of Iommi feeling like he was the fifth wheel in an established band, instead of an equal partner in an up-and-coming band. I've also given Ian Anderson a slug of humility by pairing him with Ginger Baker for a year. Oh, and one more thing: Anderson's no longer surrounded by childhood friends who look up to him -- Jeffrey Hammond, Barrie Barlow, etc. -- so perhaps he learns to collaborate and compromise a bit more. We'll see.
[1] IOTL, Iommi’s autobiography is called Iron Man. Everything up through Chapter 12 is as OTL.
[2] Black Sabbath were originally called Earth IOTL.
[3] The POD. IOTL, only Abrahams quit; here, Cornick – who would be fired from Jethro Tull in December of 1970 – leaves as well. Possibly driving away half his band after the release of their first (and only moderately successful) album might have some impact on Anderson’s ego ITTL. Only time will tell….
[4] Geezer is, of course, Earth/Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, who really did travel with Iommi to London to offer nothing more than moral support. Butler was also the creative voice for much of Black Sabbath's lyrics, so we'll have to see how that influences Jethro Tull ITTL.
[5] As far as I know, Geezer Butler and Ian Anderson haven’t ever really spent any time together IOTL, so the whole grudging-respect-from-the-playground-bully ethic here is entirely my creation. But hey, it could happen.
[6] Iommi actually speaks well of the Jethro Tull work ethic that he learned from his brief time in the band, and I imagine he would have adjusted to it.
[7] IOTL, the Red Sox of the 1970s were called a team of “25 players, 25 cabs” – even though many of those teams were quite successful. Here, it’s adapted for a band of professionals. I really do think the “work together, don’t play together” can work once you’ve made it; Penn & Teller are sort of a case in point.
[8] Adapted from this interview with Guitar International magazine. You don’t need to be told there’s no such thing as Clockwork magazine IOTL, right?
[9] IOTL, Hammond’s first love was painting; he was persuaded to join the (much bigger) Tull in 1971 and played bass on the Tull classics Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, A Passion Play, War Child, and Minstrel in the Gallery – or basically, what most people know as Tull today. He also seems to be Ian Anderson’s dearest friend; “A Song for Jeffrey” was written about him, among others. After Hammond quit Tull in ’75, he burned his trademark black-and-white suit, and, in the words of Ian Anderson, “put down his bass guitar, never to play again.” It’s not hard to imagine that he wouldn’t join a (relatively) unknown Tull back in ’68.
[10] IOTL, this would be the “classic Black Sabbath” sound that went on to essentially define heavy metal guitarwork. Here, of course, it’s also strongly influenced by Anderson both in terms of composition (e.g., the emphasis on unusual meter) and instrumentation (Anderson will play five or six different flutes in concert, for example). I leave it as an exercise for the reader whether the idea to down-tune was really Anderson’s ITTL, or if he’s simply taking credit for it.
[11] In OTL’s Living in the Past compilation album, Anderson jokes that the band would clip Jeffrey Hammonds’s fingernails and smoke them. Some people apparently took that seriously both IOTL and ITTL. Anderson (and by extension, Jethro Tull) has always been anti-drugs. How that will play out ITTL is yet to be seen….
[12] The Wizard is Jethro Tull’s third studio album ITTL, replacing OTL’s Benefit. You may also recognize “The Wizard” as an early Black Sabbath song; you’ll have to wait to see what similarities, if any, there are between the two. As for Bunker, he stayed with Tull until ’71 IOTL, leaving after the Aqualung album to get married. IOTL, micromanaging manager Terry Ellis dismissed bassist Glenn Cornick in December of 1970 for being insufficiently dedicated to the band; here, without Cornick to obsess about, he focuses on Bunker instead.
[13] IOTL, Baker did indeed spend six years in Nigeria after releasing Ginger Baker’s Air Force 2. And, of course, his drum work is indeed phenomenal.
[14] Baker would be 31 at the time, eight years older than Anderson, nine years older than Iommi, and ten years older than Butler. Sadly, there’s just no way it would work for any length of time; it essentially turns Aqualung-era Tull into a supergroup, and those just aren’t stable.
[15] Amusingly enough, “Building the Perfect Beast” is indeed an OTL song, and is indeed in 7/4 time (although it does not have a harpsichord). I have no idea if Ian Anderson and Don Henley are acquainted IOTL, but obviously I couldn’t kick off another timeline without an appearance by Henley.
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