A (album)
| A. | ||||
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| Studio album by Jethro Tull | ||||
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Publication |
August 29, 1980 |
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admission |
1980 |
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| Label (s) | Chrysalis | |||
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Format (s) |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
42:48 (LP) |
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| occupation |
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Ian Anderson , Robin Black |
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Studio (s) |
Maison Rouge Studio, Fulham |
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A is the thirteenth studio album by the progressive rock band Jethro Tull .
occupation
Jethro Tull played the album with Ian Anderson , Martin Barre , Dave Pegg , Eddie Jobson (as "guest") and Mark Craney. The lyrics and almost all compositions come, as is usual with Jethro Tull, by Ian Anderson, who also produced the album together with Robin Black . Eddie Jobson contributed "additional musical material".
history
The band recorded the album in the summer of 1980. A was planned as a solo album by Ian Anderson, which should be recorded by Anderson, Barre, Pegg, Jobson and Craney, but not by the previous Jethro Tull members John Evan and David Palmer . However, the record company insisted that the album should be referred to as the Jethro Tull album to avoid losing sales. Then Pegg, Jobson and Craney became members of the band, the other two musicians had to leave Jethro Tull. Drummer Barriemore Barlow had already left the band.
Pegg had already appeared on the previous album Stormwatch as a guest musician for the sick John Glascock . Glascock was also the reason for Anderson's intention to slow down in the rock circus, because he had since died of heart failure due to stress . The tapes are said to have been marked with "A" for "Anderson".
Fylingdale Flyer and Working John, Working Joe , were released as singles in 1980 . In 2004 the album was released on CD, supplemented by the DVD Slipstream with videos and titles played live.
album
Compared to the three previous albums, the folk influence on A is reduced, in most of the pieces electronic instruments have a heavy weight. The album ushered in a phase of turning to electronic music, which continued on the two subsequent Tull albums and Ian Anderson's first solo album.
LP version
Crossfire (“Kreuzfeuer”) is a piece with fast onset vocals, a catchy chorus, an electric guitar solo and the use of a flute and synthesizer. It's about a police officer in the middle of an exchange of fire. While working on the piece, the title of which had already been determined and which, according to Ian Anderson, thematically "went in this direction anyway," Anderson's wife interrupted the rehearsals to draw attention to the coverage of the bloody hostage-taking in the Iranian embassy in London . whereupon the text was supplemented with specific references to this event.
Fylindale Flyer starts with a keyboard solo and develops into a rock song with a catchy chorus in the choir. In a video for this piece, the musicians wear white overalls with an "A" emblem. The play describes employees of the British RAF Fylingdales early warning station who assume an attack by the Soviet Union.
The piece Working John, Working Joe refers to well-off and exploited workers at the beginning of the Thatcher era . After an acoustic beginning, a catchy, folky rock song unfolds, partly with choral singing.
Black Sunday is about the disadvantages of Sunday when traveling. Anderson wrote it just before a tour started. After a longer synthesizer intro and the use of electric guitar and drums, the piece becomes a rock song with the use of the flute and a driving rhythm.
Protect and Survive is a fast, rocking song with electric guitar and flute. The vocals are backed by a synthesizer. The British government published a booklet of the same name that contained rules of conduct in the event of a nuclear attack. Anderson describes the situation after an attack and makes fun of the pointless advice.
The song Batteries Not Included begins with a synthesizer solo. He gets fast and rocky with the use of electric guitar and flute, but is still dominated by the synthesizer. A boy wakes up on Christmas morning and wants to play with his present, but the batteries are missing. An hour later, his parents look after him - the son doesn't move because he is also "without batteries".
Uniform begins with a solo of the electric violin, which continues to dominate the piece. The chorus is repeated often, the melody is not very catchy. It describes the people who dress uniformly depending on the group they belong to.
The track 4 WD (Low Ratio) is quite slow, according to the title (something like "four-wheel drive, low gear"). The chorus is presented in choir singing. The text describes the use of a four-wheel drive car. "Low Ratio" is probably meant in two ways, on the one hand in the sense of "low translation" (English. Ratio), on the other hand in the sense of "poor understanding" (Latin ratio), which is in line with off-road vehicles with their high fuel consumption would be with the other texts of Anderson, which thematize an underdeveloped ecological consciousness, like especially on the directly preceding album Stormwatch .
Pine Marten's Jig is ostensibly a jig , but at the same time it is characterized by numerous rocky details typical of Tull, including the accentuated use of the flute, the playing of the mandolin and the electric violin as well as two electric guitar solos.
And Further On is an elegiac piece that is dominated by keyboards, but becomes more rock in the course. There is a gloomy outlook on the future and asked several times whether the person addressed will still be there.
Cover
On the front you can see the band in a control tower of an airfield as an air traffic controller . The five musicians wear white overalls with the "A" emblem, which can also be seen as a light phenomenon and thus forms the album title. Red and purple tones dominate. Anderson sits in the center, the other band members sit or stand on the right edge of the picture and look at the emblem in the clouds. The band's name is in white in serifenfreier majuscule top right.
On the back is another photo of the musicians, taken in the dark at the airfield, dressed in the same white overalls. Anderson is again in the center, Martin Barre maneuvering a truck in the background. The other musicians stand next to or diagonally behind Anderson. Most musicians look past the viewer at an imaginary event. The song titles and most of the credits are in the upper third of the screen.
effect
The album peaked at number 25 in the UK and number 30 in the US.
Ultimate Classic Rock saw the album as "a brave - and healthy - deviation from an unmistakable style that threatened to become a rigid scheme" and attested Ian Anderson "a contemporary approach, which Tull transported into the glossy world of the eighties without embarrassment ".
Alan Tepper from Eclipsed finds the flute passages more impressive than the synthesizer insertions, although the latter was actually the new thing. He also thinks that "the compositions sometimes weaken a bit". His editorial colleague Sascha Seller wrote exactly two years later: “Anderson [discovered] electronic sounds for himself, but did not yet know how to use them properly. Actually a weak album, it would not accommodate the best Jethro Tull song of all time with Black Sunday . "
Track list
page 1
- Crossfire (3:55)
- Fylingdale Flyer (4:35)
- Working John, Working Joe (5:04)
- Black Sunday (6:35)
Page 2
- Protect and Survive (3:36)
- Batteries Not Included (3:52)
- Uniform (3:34)
- 4th WD (Low Ratio) (3:42)
- The Pine Marten's Jig (3:28) (instrumental)
- And Further On (4:21)
Web links
- Reviews of A on the baby blue pages
- A at Allmusic (English)
- Detailed information about the individual versions of the sound carriers at musik-sammler.de
- Lyrics at cupofwonder.com (archive version)
- Information about the lyrics at cupofwonder.com (English; archive version)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jethro Tull start again. Ian Anderson broke up the group a year ago. But now they are back on tour ... In: Bravo . No. 10 , February 26, 1981, p. 76 f .
- ↑ a b c d e background information ( Memento from September 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at cupofwonder.com (English)
- ↑ Songtexte ( Memento from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- ↑ A in the UK charts , accessed on March 16, 2014
- ↑ A at Allmusic , accessed on March 15, 2014.
- ↑ Review at ultimateclassrock.com (English); accessed on January 27, 2016
- ^ Alan Tepper: Jethro Tull. 3 albums . In: Eclipsed . No. 62 , May 2004, News from the Past, p. 55 .
- ↑ Sascha Seller: Jethro Tull. Rock music from Hameln . In: Eclipsed . No. 78 , January 2006, shopping list, p. 67 .