Post by steelmonkey on Jul 5, 2012 15:48:47 GMT
So a young man in college in Canada e-mailed me a few questions aboput Tull fandom for part of a schhool assignment...here's how it came out after a couple exchanged e-mails:
Bernie Kellman has nearly 3,000 posts on the Internet’s foremost Jethro Tull forum. He’s seen the British band perform live about 70 times, and owns every album.
And to think it all began with a babysitting gig.
Forty years ago, with a sleeping child in the next room, Kellman discovered Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick in a collection of records. “I was expecting something more heavy … just from the name” he said. “Dark and plodding metal.”
Instead, Kellman was met with a flute. “It was a total surprise,” he said. “I had no idea it was what made Tull, Tull...”
Jethro Tull is an English progressive rock band formed in the late 1960s in the London area. The flute Kellman is referring to is band leader Ian Anderson’s. Unable to outshine idol Eric Clapton on guitar, Anderson became a flautist instead. And today, we invariably associate Tull with Anderson’s flute.
“The beating heart of Jethro Tull is Ian Anderson,” Kellman told listeners in a radio interview celebrating the 40-year anniversary of Aqualung’s release, Jethro Tull’s best-selling album. Anderson has always remained Jethro Tull’s frontman, despite the panoply of bass, drum, and keyboard players making brief appearances with the band since the ‘60s.
Ian Anderson has even released a few solo albums, including most recently Thick as a Brick 2 (TAAB 2). But for Bernie Kellman, the name on the album cover matters little. “I consider Tull and Ian solo to be the same... it is Tull regardless of who else plays on the album,” he said. “Ian and the janitor is Tull for me... many disagree.”
That is not to say that all Jethro Tull sounds the same ― on the contrary, the band has experimented with folding keyboards, synthesizers, Indian influence, orchestral sounds, etc. ― but rather that Anderson’s “song writing, flute playing and dedication” are Tull’s beating heart.
In fact, Kellman noted Anderson’s song writing prowess the night he discovered Thick as a Brick as a young boy. “The lyrics made perfect sense for a 14-year-old with a distant, unsympathetic father… they struck me as very personal and accurate for an outsider kid.”
Fifteen years later, Anderson’s lyrics were equally accurate and compelling. With the release of “Steel Monkey,” the first track on Tull’s Crest of a Knave, Anderson successfully depicted, “with minor adjustments,” the life of a bike messenger from California. Kellman’s life for 27 years. “I sweated and worked hard and rode a bike amidst lawyers and ad men and secretaries for most of my adult life,” Kellman said. “Underneath the fluff and façades of a downtown, namby-pamby office are real men doing real tasks like building, plumbing, stoking the heaters and riding bikes between offices.”
Most recently, with the release of TAAB 2, Bernie Kellman’s fandom experience has come full circle, to some extent taking him back to that “babysitting gig” years ago. “Anderson nailed his stated mission… respectfully doing a sequel of an album 40 years old... same palette of sounds and a story that follows up on the original,” Kellman said. “I would not have predicted such a near-perfect album… in league with Tull’s best ever.”
Today, Kellman still finds time to listen to Jethro Tull, post on the online forum, and is evidently always eager to discuss everything Tull.
Bernie Kellman has nearly 3,000 posts on the Internet’s foremost Jethro Tull forum. He’s seen the British band perform live about 70 times, and owns every album.
And to think it all began with a babysitting gig.
Forty years ago, with a sleeping child in the next room, Kellman discovered Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick in a collection of records. “I was expecting something more heavy … just from the name” he said. “Dark and plodding metal.”
Instead, Kellman was met with a flute. “It was a total surprise,” he said. “I had no idea it was what made Tull, Tull...”
Jethro Tull is an English progressive rock band formed in the late 1960s in the London area. The flute Kellman is referring to is band leader Ian Anderson’s. Unable to outshine idol Eric Clapton on guitar, Anderson became a flautist instead. And today, we invariably associate Tull with Anderson’s flute.
“The beating heart of Jethro Tull is Ian Anderson,” Kellman told listeners in a radio interview celebrating the 40-year anniversary of Aqualung’s release, Jethro Tull’s best-selling album. Anderson has always remained Jethro Tull’s frontman, despite the panoply of bass, drum, and keyboard players making brief appearances with the band since the ‘60s.
Ian Anderson has even released a few solo albums, including most recently Thick as a Brick 2 (TAAB 2). But for Bernie Kellman, the name on the album cover matters little. “I consider Tull and Ian solo to be the same... it is Tull regardless of who else plays on the album,” he said. “Ian and the janitor is Tull for me... many disagree.”
That is not to say that all Jethro Tull sounds the same ― on the contrary, the band has experimented with folding keyboards, synthesizers, Indian influence, orchestral sounds, etc. ― but rather that Anderson’s “song writing, flute playing and dedication” are Tull’s beating heart.
In fact, Kellman noted Anderson’s song writing prowess the night he discovered Thick as a Brick as a young boy. “The lyrics made perfect sense for a 14-year-old with a distant, unsympathetic father… they struck me as very personal and accurate for an outsider kid.”
Fifteen years later, Anderson’s lyrics were equally accurate and compelling. With the release of “Steel Monkey,” the first track on Tull’s Crest of a Knave, Anderson successfully depicted, “with minor adjustments,” the life of a bike messenger from California. Kellman’s life for 27 years. “I sweated and worked hard and rode a bike amidst lawyers and ad men and secretaries for most of my adult life,” Kellman said. “Underneath the fluff and façades of a downtown, namby-pamby office are real men doing real tasks like building, plumbing, stoking the heaters and riding bikes between offices.”
Most recently, with the release of TAAB 2, Bernie Kellman’s fandom experience has come full circle, to some extent taking him back to that “babysitting gig” years ago. “Anderson nailed his stated mission… respectfully doing a sequel of an album 40 years old... same palette of sounds and a story that follows up on the original,” Kellman said. “I would not have predicted such a near-perfect album… in league with Tull’s best ever.”
Today, Kellman still finds time to listen to Jethro Tull, post on the online forum, and is evidently always eager to discuss everything Tull.