In 2013 guitar maestro Joe Satriani told Prog about his passion for Jethro Tull, which has remained despite a “very strange” dramatic experience when he played alongside Ian Anderson’s band at a festival.
“I have great memories of listening to early Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Keith Emerson’s compositional brilliance is unbelievable – and King Crimson too. Their stuff came from another world.
On my last tour I’d play those records backstage almost every night; I drove the guys crazy! To me and my friends they all belonged together somehow, and they were to be celebrated.
Jethro Tull was one of the first concerts I ever saw as a young kid. It was at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, a theatre-in-the-round where the stage would rotate slowly.
You’ve got to imagine how exotic someone like Ian Anderson was to a kid growing up in New York back in the early 70s! When people pulled into town it was an event, and Tull had quite the act going.
Stand Up was a truly brilliant record; it fused elements of jazz and rock
Every single person in the band played like no-one else. They were touring their third album, Benefit (1970), and they were the essence of early progressive rock: they used odd time signatures; there was instrument switching. And unusual instruments too – flute and mandolin, and the sound of the bass guitar was different.
Ian was brilliant in how he’d write and arrange those songs and get those guys to play, and Martin Barre really brought the rock to the band. Of course they progressed to Thick As A Brick, but for me Stand Up was a truly brilliant record. It fused elements of jazz and rock, and it was engineered by the wonderful Andy Johns.
A New Day Yesterday has that really cool rotating guitar sound, which Andy told me he got by swinging a microphone in the air while Martin was playing. Reasons For Waiting is a particularly beautiful, powerful song – the metre of it, the strings, the subtle arrangement.
Years later, I wound up on the bill with them at a very strange rock festival in Malaysia, where I got escorted offstage by police with automatic weapons. Long story! Back at the hotel we had dinner together, and it was very special for me.
Ian is a hero of mine – he’s such a brilliant musician. I still listen to those records to this day.”
