What makes a Jethro Tull concert in 2011 is how Ian Anderson connects with the audience and tells the story of the songs and the band.
Jethro Tull at The Palais, Melbourne. Photo by Ros O'Gorman
The Jethro Tull show at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda was as much a history lesson of the band as it was about the music.
Over the course of the evening, Anderson told of his first time in Australia when a journalist asked “are you queer”. The recalled the glory days of the “Prog Rock’ bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and early Genesis and how Tull’s own concept album was as much a piss-take “sending up the prog rock bands we were so far up their own arses”.
In fact, E.L.P. got two mentions. Later, before ‘Dharma For One’, Anderson asked us to recall the days of the drum solo “where both the other band members and the audience we bored alike”. “No-one does drum solos anymore,” he said. “But maybe someone should tell Carl Palmer that because a lot of friend’s don’t” citing Keith Moon, John Bonham and Jimi Hendrix.
His 1972 song “Life’s A Long Song” was dedicated to his favourite pastime “waking up in the morning”.
Here is the setlist for Jethro Till live at The Palais, St Kilda, April 28, 2011:
Living In The Past (from Living In The Past, 1972)
Nothing Is Easy (from Stand Up, 1969)
Life’s A Long Song (from Living In The Past, 1972)
Up To Me (from Aqualung, 1971)
Nursie (from Living In The Past, 1972)
Beggars Farm (from This Was, 1968)
A New Day Yesterday (from Stand Up, 1969)
Thick As A Brick (from Thick As A Brick, 1972)
Farm On A Freeway (from Crest of a Knave, 1987)
Bouree (from Stand Up, 1969)
A Change Of Horses (unreleased, written with Anoushka Shankar)
Dharma For One (from This Was, 1968)
My God (from Aqualung, 1971)
Budapest (from Crest of a Knave, 1987)
Aqualung (from Aqualung, 1971)
Locomotive Breath (from Aqualung, 1971)
