Post by JTull 007 on Oct 25, 2017 1:04:35 GMT
Martin Barre taps into a smorgasbord of influences LINK
Longtime Jethro Tull guitarist brings his own namesake band to The Livery in BH
By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO - Sight & Sound Editor Oct 22, 2017
Martin Barre, who was the guitarist for legendary band Jethro Tull for 43 years,
performs with his new group Thursday at The Livery in Benton Harbor.
BENTON HARBOR — Martin Barre spent 43 years as the guitarist for Jethro Tull.
That’s Barre’s two-minute, oft-praised guitar solo on the legendary progressive-rock anthem,
“Aqualung.” His playing on the album “Crest of a Knave” earned him a Grammy Award in 1988.
But in the waning years of the Ian Anderson-fronted ensemble, Barre admits he grew weary of repetitive sets
and the stagnant nature of the band. So when Anderson announced Jethro Tull’s initial dissolution in 2012,
Barre took the opportunity to set out on his own.
“I’m always looking at that historical music of Tull,” the 70-year-old Barre says by phone during
a recent tour stop in Milwaukee. “I don’t want to be playing the same set tour after tour.
I am very aware that in the later years of Jethro Tull we played the same set gig after gig and year
after year, and nothing really changed or developed. So I am always looking to change things around.
That’s why we add three new Tull tracks every time we head out on the road. That in itself makes it good
for the band and the audience. We get fans coming to multiple shows so I want to make sure
they get something slightly different when they come back.”
The “we” Barre references is his own namesake ensemble, The Martin Barre Band, who performs
Thursday at The Livery. In addition to himself, the band includes vocalist and second guitarist Dan Crisp,
bass player Alan Thomson and drummer Dave Schoepke.
“We’ve got a big reservoir of music to draw from,” Barre says. “It’s either classic Tull or Tull songs that
I’ve adapted for the two-guitar lineup and only changed them slightly to make them a bit more my own personality.
We do some of my solo material, and then we might do a Beatles song and sort of mix things up.
We essentially do a show that’s really strong, really dynamic and a lot of fun both to play and to listen to.”
In 2015, Barre released “Back To Steel,” an eclectic blues-rock album featuring a smorgasbord of his
cumulative influences. In addition to standout originals like the title track and “Moment Of Madness”
are versions of Jethro Tull’s “Skating Away” and “Slow Marching Band,” the blues classic “Smokestack Lightning”
and Barre’s take on The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby.” While it is billed as a solo album,
Barre says it was really meant to be an introduction to his new band.
“It was an album to establish the band, really, because my other solo albums were specifically just
solo projects, but ‘Back To Steel’ is definitely more of a band album,” he says. “The tracks on it, a lot
of them we play live and it works really well. It did what it needed to do – provide us with a lot of new
material – and I’ve started on the next CD. I’ve done eight tracks and hope to get that finished in the next year.”
Barre, who grew up in Birmingham, England, learned flute in grammar school and guitar a few years later.
In 1966, after leaving Lanchester Polytechnic, where he was studying architecture, Barre moved to London,
where he joined The Motivation, which evolved through several musical styles from soul to R&B to pop,
changing its name to The Penny Peeps in 1967 and the blues band Gethsemane by mid-1968.
“By 1968 the blues had hit Britain through ‘The Blues (and Gospel) Train,’ a TV program that brought
all the great blues musicians over to the U.K.,” Barre says. “So there was a boom of music especially
for guitar players who played the blues and a lot of bands sort of followed that route.
Jethro Tull was one of those bands. I was in a separate band and I always played blues flute and we
knew of each other. Eventually we met up and got on really well. We got along well musically because
we had the same sort of ideas.”
Jethro Tull, who released their first blues-oriented album, “This Was,” in the latter part of 1968,
shared the bill with Gethsemane at the blues club, Van Dyke, in Plymouth, England.
A few months later, while Gethsemane was playing in London and about to break up because
of money woes, Jethro Tull’s manager, Terry Ellis, sent his card up from the audience asking
Barre to audition. Barre was offered the job after a second audition and he spent the Christmas
holiday of 1968 learning material that was to become the album “Stand Up.”
After Barre joined, the group did a few shows supporting Jimi Hendrix in Scandinavia,
then set out on an extensive tour of the U.S., supporting Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge.
The group first achieved commercial success in 1969, with the folk-tinged blues album “Stand Up,”
which reached No. 1 in the U.K., and set off their first headlining tour in the U.S.
“By the time we came over to the United States in 1969 the music had radically changed from
being another blues band doing 12-bar blues to exploring some really unique music,” Barre says.
“To me, that was really the starting point of Jethro Tull.”
Jethro Tull tested that artistic latitude on “Benefit” (1970) before fully shifting in the direction of
prog-rock with the albums “Aqualung” (1971), “Thick as a Brick” (1972) and “A Passion Play” (1973).
The band’s sound would shift again to hard rock mixed with folk rock with “Songs from the Wood” (1977)
and “Heavy Horses” (1978). And, in the ensuing years, Jethro Tull would accumulate 11 gold and
platinum albums, selling more than 60 million in the process.
“We were never writing music that fell into a time period or a genre,” Barre says.
“It was always unique to Jethro Tull, so it wasn’t time related. It wasn’t fashion related.
You can’t really date it musically and that’s why I think those tracks still work. They still sound good.”
While Anderson has revealed he’ll celebrate Jethro Tull’s 50th anniversary next year with a tour that
includes his solo band of bassist David Goodier, keyboardist John O’Hara, guitarist Florian Opahle,
drummer Scott Hammond and some “surprise virtual guests,”
it’s unclear whether Barre or any other former Tull bandmates will be directly involved.
Regardless, it’s hard not to acknowledge Barre’s contributions, including his best-known guitar work
on “Cross-Eyed Mary,” “Locomotive Breath” and that two-minute solo on “Aqualung,”
which was voted by readers of Guitar Player magazine as one of the top rock guitar solos of all time.
It also was rated as one of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos by Guitar World magazine and Barre earned
the 25th best solo ever in the U.S. and 20th best solo ever in the U.K., also for “Aqualung.”
“By the time we were doing ‘Benefit’ and ‘Aqualung’ as albums we sat down
and worked out arrangements in the studio,” Barre says.
“Ian came to the band with chords to the vocal parts and everything else the band wrote and arranged.
I came up with the whole idea of the solo and how it was going to work.
Literally, I had two runs at the solo and the first take is the one we used.”
Barre says the “Aqualung” solo is also indicative of his overall approach to playing.
“I like to improvise and the spontaneity of that moment where you are sort of looking for the melody
and following the chords,” he says. “It has that sort of edge to it. As soon as you start thinking about
it too much it loses that spontaneity. At the time, that track was no different than any other track on
the album. We didn’t know it was going to be the important piece of music that it became.”
He pauses, then asks, without really waiting for an answer, “But I think it holds up, doesn’t it?”
Contact: jbonfiglio@TheHP.com, 932-0364, Twitter: @hpbonfiglio
If You Go... Who: The Martin Barre Band When: 8 p.m. Thursday
Where: The Livery, 190 Fifth St., Benton Harbor
How much: $45 in advance, $50 at the door
Contact: 925-8760 or http://www.liverybrew.com
Artist info: www.martinbarre.com
Longtime Jethro Tull guitarist brings his own namesake band to The Livery in BH
By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO - Sight & Sound Editor Oct 22, 2017
Martin Barre, who was the guitarist for legendary band Jethro Tull for 43 years,
performs with his new group Thursday at The Livery in Benton Harbor.
BENTON HARBOR — Martin Barre spent 43 years as the guitarist for Jethro Tull.
That’s Barre’s two-minute, oft-praised guitar solo on the legendary progressive-rock anthem,
“Aqualung.” His playing on the album “Crest of a Knave” earned him a Grammy Award in 1988.
But in the waning years of the Ian Anderson-fronted ensemble, Barre admits he grew weary of repetitive sets
and the stagnant nature of the band. So when Anderson announced Jethro Tull’s initial dissolution in 2012,
Barre took the opportunity to set out on his own.
“I’m always looking at that historical music of Tull,” the 70-year-old Barre says by phone during
a recent tour stop in Milwaukee. “I don’t want to be playing the same set tour after tour.
I am very aware that in the later years of Jethro Tull we played the same set gig after gig and year
after year, and nothing really changed or developed. So I am always looking to change things around.
That’s why we add three new Tull tracks every time we head out on the road. That in itself makes it good
for the band and the audience. We get fans coming to multiple shows so I want to make sure
they get something slightly different when they come back.”
The “we” Barre references is his own namesake ensemble, The Martin Barre Band, who performs
Thursday at The Livery. In addition to himself, the band includes vocalist and second guitarist Dan Crisp,
bass player Alan Thomson and drummer Dave Schoepke.
“We’ve got a big reservoir of music to draw from,” Barre says. “It’s either classic Tull or Tull songs that
I’ve adapted for the two-guitar lineup and only changed them slightly to make them a bit more my own personality.
We do some of my solo material, and then we might do a Beatles song and sort of mix things up.
We essentially do a show that’s really strong, really dynamic and a lot of fun both to play and to listen to.”
In 2015, Barre released “Back To Steel,” an eclectic blues-rock album featuring a smorgasbord of his
cumulative influences. In addition to standout originals like the title track and “Moment Of Madness”
are versions of Jethro Tull’s “Skating Away” and “Slow Marching Band,” the blues classic “Smokestack Lightning”
and Barre’s take on The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby.” While it is billed as a solo album,
Barre says it was really meant to be an introduction to his new band.
“It was an album to establish the band, really, because my other solo albums were specifically just
solo projects, but ‘Back To Steel’ is definitely more of a band album,” he says. “The tracks on it, a lot
of them we play live and it works really well. It did what it needed to do – provide us with a lot of new
material – and I’ve started on the next CD. I’ve done eight tracks and hope to get that finished in the next year.”
Barre, who grew up in Birmingham, England, learned flute in grammar school and guitar a few years later.
In 1966, after leaving Lanchester Polytechnic, where he was studying architecture, Barre moved to London,
where he joined The Motivation, which evolved through several musical styles from soul to R&B to pop,
changing its name to The Penny Peeps in 1967 and the blues band Gethsemane by mid-1968.
“By 1968 the blues had hit Britain through ‘The Blues (and Gospel) Train,’ a TV program that brought
all the great blues musicians over to the U.K.,” Barre says. “So there was a boom of music especially
for guitar players who played the blues and a lot of bands sort of followed that route.
Jethro Tull was one of those bands. I was in a separate band and I always played blues flute and we
knew of each other. Eventually we met up and got on really well. We got along well musically because
we had the same sort of ideas.”
Jethro Tull, who released their first blues-oriented album, “This Was,” in the latter part of 1968,
shared the bill with Gethsemane at the blues club, Van Dyke, in Plymouth, England.
A few months later, while Gethsemane was playing in London and about to break up because
of money woes, Jethro Tull’s manager, Terry Ellis, sent his card up from the audience asking
Barre to audition. Barre was offered the job after a second audition and he spent the Christmas
holiday of 1968 learning material that was to become the album “Stand Up.”
After Barre joined, the group did a few shows supporting Jimi Hendrix in Scandinavia,
then set out on an extensive tour of the U.S., supporting Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge.
The group first achieved commercial success in 1969, with the folk-tinged blues album “Stand Up,”
which reached No. 1 in the U.K., and set off their first headlining tour in the U.S.
“By the time we came over to the United States in 1969 the music had radically changed from
being another blues band doing 12-bar blues to exploring some really unique music,” Barre says.
“To me, that was really the starting point of Jethro Tull.”
Jethro Tull tested that artistic latitude on “Benefit” (1970) before fully shifting in the direction of
prog-rock with the albums “Aqualung” (1971), “Thick as a Brick” (1972) and “A Passion Play” (1973).
The band’s sound would shift again to hard rock mixed with folk rock with “Songs from the Wood” (1977)
and “Heavy Horses” (1978). And, in the ensuing years, Jethro Tull would accumulate 11 gold and
platinum albums, selling more than 60 million in the process.
“We were never writing music that fell into a time period or a genre,” Barre says.
“It was always unique to Jethro Tull, so it wasn’t time related. It wasn’t fashion related.
You can’t really date it musically and that’s why I think those tracks still work. They still sound good.”
While Anderson has revealed he’ll celebrate Jethro Tull’s 50th anniversary next year with a tour that
includes his solo band of bassist David Goodier, keyboardist John O’Hara, guitarist Florian Opahle,
drummer Scott Hammond and some “surprise virtual guests,”
it’s unclear whether Barre or any other former Tull bandmates will be directly involved.
Regardless, it’s hard not to acknowledge Barre’s contributions, including his best-known guitar work
on “Cross-Eyed Mary,” “Locomotive Breath” and that two-minute solo on “Aqualung,”
which was voted by readers of Guitar Player magazine as one of the top rock guitar solos of all time.
It also was rated as one of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos by Guitar World magazine and Barre earned
the 25th best solo ever in the U.S. and 20th best solo ever in the U.K., also for “Aqualung.”
“By the time we were doing ‘Benefit’ and ‘Aqualung’ as albums we sat down
and worked out arrangements in the studio,” Barre says.
“Ian came to the band with chords to the vocal parts and everything else the band wrote and arranged.
I came up with the whole idea of the solo and how it was going to work.
Literally, I had two runs at the solo and the first take is the one we used.”
Barre says the “Aqualung” solo is also indicative of his overall approach to playing.
“I like to improvise and the spontaneity of that moment where you are sort of looking for the melody
and following the chords,” he says. “It has that sort of edge to it. As soon as you start thinking about
it too much it loses that spontaneity. At the time, that track was no different than any other track on
the album. We didn’t know it was going to be the important piece of music that it became.”
He pauses, then asks, without really waiting for an answer, “But I think it holds up, doesn’t it?”
Contact: jbonfiglio@TheHP.com, 932-0364, Twitter: @hpbonfiglio
If You Go... Who: The Martin Barre Band When: 8 p.m. Thursday
Where: The Livery, 190 Fifth St., Benton Harbor
How much: $45 in advance, $50 at the door
Contact: 925-8760 or http://www.liverybrew.com
Artist info: www.martinbarre.com