JETHRO TULL: BURSTING OUT (Classic Live Albums)

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BURSTING OUT Jethro Tull

Released on September 22nd 1978 on Chrysalis Records.

Recorded on tour in Europe; May-June 1978.

Produced by Ian Anderson and mixed at Maison Rouge Studios, London.

by Mark Cunningham

IAN ANDERSON TALKS EXCLUSIVELY TO LOAD-IN ABOUT TULL’S ‘70s on-theroad masterpiece...

F

rom their inception at the beginning of 1968,

20 albums, but in spite of the worldwide acclaim they

Jethro Tull were hailed as one of the world’s

enjoyed on the touring circuit, a fully live document was

greatest live attractions. Originally a jazz-infused

curiously absent from Tull’s discography for many years.

blues outfit, by the time they began work on Thick As A

It would not be until 1978 that, following a European

Brick – intended to be “the mother of all concept albums”

tour to promote their 11th studio album, Heavy Horses,

– in late 1971, Tull had blossomed into a progressive rock

this void was filled with Bursting Out – a double set that

act with folk overtones. Fronted by charismatic singer-

remains a towering monument in the band’s catalogue.

songwriter, flautist and acoustic guitarist Ian Anderson, the band continued through the ’70s with a string of top

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For those unimpressed with the trashy musicianship synonymous with the now-mainstream punk phenomenon,

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101 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

Tull ‘78, L-R: John Glascock, Barriemore Barlow, Ian Anderson, David Palmer, John Evan and Martin Barre.

it mattered not that these ‘dinosaurs’ were out of sync

In mid-January, Anderson, who turns 70 this August,

with the times. In the middle of their ‘country squire’

was preparing for an appearance at the Giants Of Rock

phase, Tull were arguably at the height of their musical

festival and further dates in Eastern Europe. He did,

powers with a line-up – Anderson, Martin Barre (guitar),

however, agree to revisit Bursting Out with me over the

John Glascock (bass), David Palmer and John Evan

course of an hour-long interview, during which he also

(keyboards), and drummer Barrie ‘Barriemore’ Barlow –

discussed the commercial downturn of the live album

that many consider to be their finest.

format in today’s market.

Given that live albums were all the rage in the

light. I was generally unhappy with some other examples of

‘70s, why did it take until 1978 for you to release

live recordings from TV shows so any thoughts of putting out

one?

an album went by the wayside. Years later, our manager

Actually, we did record a concert at Carnegie Hall in New

Terry Ellis suggested doing a real live album. It was

York, back in 1970, part of which formed one side of the

something I didn’t feel that great about but I agreed to give

Living In The Past compilation. In many ways it was very

it a go and record a number of shows here and there to

rough and ready, and didn’t represent the band in its best

see if we could choose some performances that were OK.

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102 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

You couldn’t do an awful lot to the drums in terms of re-balancing – apart from EQ, you were pretty much stuck with a stereo mix – and you certainly couldn’t fix any mistakes because, although Jethro Tull had never been a particularly loud band on stage, there was enough mic leakage between channels to ensure that this was always going to be an ‘honest’ album.

Having drums leak down the vocal mic wasn’t something we could In the mid-’70s, you opened your own studio in

remedy. Today, I work with the drums set up at stage left

London, Maison Rouge, although it was initially

specifically to minimise the amount of unwanted spill into

a mobile facility – was that how you recorded the

my microphone. I also have a Shure miniature cardioid mic

album?

on my flute which points toward stage right for the same

Not in this case, no. After Terry hit us with his idea, I bought

reason, and these considerations help our front of house

myself a TEAC eight-track 1/2” tape recorder that could

engineer achieve a less ‘polluted’ mix for the audience.

travel in a flight case, get routed from the front of house

For some bands, none of this matters too much but I prefer

mixer [via engineer Chris Amson – see side feature] and be

something that sounds a little tidier.

set up to record whichever shows we felt were appropriate.

The next time we decided to record a live album

I know a lot of Bursting Out came from a show at the

was in 1992 [A Little Light Music] and, in fact, we went

Festhalle in Berne but there were a couple of other gigs

through the same process except that we took a much more

recorded, including one in Germany.

compact digital eight-track recorder around Europe and the Middle East.

An eight-track recording in 1978… that’s a

At the end of that 1978 tour, I went into my rehearsal

surprise.

studio at home to listen back to what seemed like an

Well, yes and no. Taking the mobile with us would

endless amount of reels of tape and gradually whittled

have been an expensive luxury but this was completely

everything down to what is now cast in stone, so that I

affordable and flexible. As long as the levels were about

could create the final mixes with [engineer] Robin Black at

right, little else mattered because you could sort it all out in

Maison Rouge.

the studio afterwards. Of course, we were limited to eight

I do believe there’s a chance that some of the album

tracks but it was completely achievable with some good

was mixed elsewhere because, ironically, the studio had

planning and microphone routing, just as it was only a

become so popular that we weren’t always able to record

few years beforehand when eight-track was state-of-the-art.

there when we wanted to.

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103 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

“AT THE TIME, BURSTING OUT FELT LIKE JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE...”

GOLDEN PERIOD

two recent albums – Songs From The Wood and Heavy

Bursting Out was recorded in the middle of what

Horses – that had been very well received and successfully

many consider to be a golden period for Jethro

merged the progressive and folk-rock stylings that gave

Tull. You were one of the tightest bands in the

Jethro Tull its identity in the mid-’70s.

world at that point.

Musically, there were a few tensions and out of that

Firstly, I have to say that Bursting Out is quite far away from

some alliances were getting a little frazzled by a year or

the special place occupied by something like Frampton

so later. We’d had too many long tours; everybody was

Comes Alive, which was very much a unique moment in

getting rather exhausted and jaded by then. With a band

Peter’s career. Live albums, the way I see them, are only

of six individuals, as it was then, there were always going

truly great when the circumstances around their recording

to be some members who had unshakeable approaches to

are special, for instance, when the performance is markedly

relationships.

different to how you would record it in a studio, or perhaps it’s about the venue, the time or some extraordinary music

For many years, I wrongly assumed that part of

content that elevates it to a status of importance, rather than

the Bursting Out album had been recorded at the

just a being a live memento of your latest songs.

Montreux Jazz Festival, because of the presence

The state of our performance was very good, I recall, and the album reflected that quite well but, at the time,

of ‘funky’ Claude Nobs (inset below) at the start.

How did he come to introduce you?

Bursting Out felt like just another day at the office. Perhaps the boredom of going through all the tapes affected my judgement.

I’m sure that if I found one or more songs from a single concert that sounded ‘OK’, I would gratefully take a razor blade from that section, lift it on to the master reel, and not look any further.

This was all happening towards the end of a period where we had a certain grouping of people who contributed to a fairly happy atmosphere. We benefitted from having a broad range of material including

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104 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

CHRIS AMSON: TULL’S MAN AT FRONT OF HOUSE “In 1976, Ian Anderson asked me to research some other options with a view to updating our equipment, so I flew over to the USA and visited Heil Sound, Clair Brothers and Showco to look at what they were doing. We ended up putting a system together that was quite similar to Clair Brothers’ system, based on JBL components.

“The mixing console being used at the time I joined [by Amson’s FOH engineer predecessor Alan Mackenzie] had apparently been purchased from The Beach Boys. It was a 24-channel mixer At the age of 20, Chris Amson joined Jethro Tull’s

with rotary knobs for the main faders… and no

crew as a technician in March 1972 during the

sub groups. After I became the house engineer, I

week of the legendary Thick As A Brick album

designed the layout of a new mixing console that

release. Within two years, he was mixing the

was custom manufactured by Cadac in London.

band’s front of house sound and maintained this role until 1981, using downtime to tour with other acts including ELP, UFO, Ian Gillan and UK. He talked to Load-In about the development of Tull’s touring PA in the ’70s.

“When I started with Tull, our own sound system featured up to six Tycobrahe direct radiating, three-way speaker cabinets per side of the stage and were powered by Crown DC 300 amps, with a crossover at the mixer,” said Amson (pictured above in 1976). “Each cabinet had a pair of JBL 12” bass speakers, two JBL 075 bullet tweeters and a mid range horn throat. >>>

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106 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

Claude may just have been there at the

I gathered around a TV set with a

Berne Festhalle [on May 28th ‘78] as a

few cheeky bottles of cider to watch

guest and we asked him to announce the

an ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ special:

band, but another possibility is that it was a

‘Jethro Tull at Madison Square

friendly acknowledgement of the donation

Garden’ – 50 minutes of glorious

we had made to Montreux from a previous

music beamed live to us and millions

concert’s proceeds. The town had been

of others through the modern

very good to us in the past and we helped

miracle of satellite broadcasting.

towards the funding of a new library. Either

Back in the day when news

way, the late, great Claude stepped up in his

travelled at a snail’s pace, I was

inimitable fashion and we liked the idea of

immediately shocked to note the

preserving his introduction on the album.

absence of bassist John Glascock whose place was filled by Tony

END OF A CHAPTER

Williams, who had once auditioned

A couple of weeks after Bursting Out

for Tull before joining Stealers

hit the shops, a group of friends and

Wheel.

>>>

Ian liked Cadac mixers as he had become very

getting concerned about my hearing due to all

familiar with them through recording a few Tull

the loud arena concerts. I ended up returning in

albums at Morgan Studios.

“Our crew at the time of Bursting Out included Dave Morris, our main tech who kept the

1987 to work with the band on two more tours, by which time they had retired their own JBL system and were using rental companies.”

electronics running, and Pavel Kubes who assisted me at front of house.

“Tull continued to use its own sound system throughout the entire nine-year stretch when I was on the crew.

I carried on until 1981 when I left because I was

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• • • • •

In the years either side of his brief return to the Tull camp, Amson went on to work as a FOH engineer for King Crimson, Missing Persons, Frank Zappa, Herbie Hancock and Devo among others.

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107 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

Right: John Glascock, who passed away in 1979, aged 28.

Below: Glascock, Anderson and Barre on stage.

Unknown to us, a rapid deterioration in Glascock’s health left him unable to complete the American leg of the tour.

John had been with us for two years and as a musician was in very good shape, as was the rest of the band.

He was also a positive influence. John was quite the party animal and I don’t recall any of us having any real concerns about his health when we started the tour. While appearing to be very robust, John suffered an infection in a heart valve that ultimately led to his demise at a very young age [28] the following year. It was terribly sad.

Although not helped by his lifestyle, it turned out that an unfortunate congenital heart defect got the better of him and, for Tull, it meant the end of a chapter in many ways.

You released Bursting Out at a time when sales of live albums were at their peak. It’s rather depressing when one considers how unlikely it is to achieve that degree of success in the current market.

Indeed, it’s a very different world to the one in which Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull were among the only bands making money from touring as well as selling tons of records. We paid a lot of tax, too, of course! One of the last occasions I can remember when a live album sold in huge amounts – not forgetting associated DVD sales, of course – was when the Eagles had their grand reunion and put out Hell Freezes Over [in 1994, selling nine million copies in America alone]. That was a very big deal at the time but neither the Eagles nor anyone else would come anywhere near that degree of commercial success today, thanks to YouTube and digital piracy.

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“WHILE APPEARING TO BE ROBUST, JOHN GLASCOCK SUFFERED AN INFECTION IN A HEART VALVE THAT ULTIMATELY LED TO HIS DEMISE AT A VERY YOUNG AGE. IT WAS TERRIBLY SAD.” load-ininternational.com | facebook | twitter

108 CLASSIC LIVE ALBUMS

Right: Anderson on his Thick As A Brick 2 tour in 2012, with (L-R) John O’Hara, David Goodier and Florian Opahle. Sound by Clair.

If Donald Trump was assassinated and it was released on DVD, then it might be an event that could cap the Eagles. Anything less than that, forget it!

Around 2002, we released a live DVD called

Living With The Past which I ultimately paid for and released through the only logical outlet,

There are, of course, some

Eagle Vision. That sold about 100,000 copies

advancements that have ended up

worldwide, half of them in America. Everyone

being a complete pain. Nine times

thought that was a pretty good result but I knew

out of 10, your concert will appear

that sales in general were beginning to drop

on YouTube, courtesy of a sea of

really fast, and releasing it a few years later

smartphones that are raised in the air

would have yielded very different figures.

like a Hitler salute to the idea of playing

Poor old Claude Nobs missed the boat with

their small part in the legacy of rock music.

his enormous archive of video material culled from

Much as you might dissuade people

more than 40 years of the Montreux Jazz Festival,

from doing that, they’ll do it anyway,

because by the time he signed a licensing deal

even when I’m playing in a cathedral,

with Eagle, live recordings in any form had

for fuck’s sake. But, you know, that’s

become a very poor form of currency.

today’s live album for you.

Obviously, the whole business of touring

Thanks to James Anderson.

has changed enormously since 1978

Photography by Brian Cooke, Ruan O’Lochlainn,

but for you, personally, how have the

Ian Dickson, Chris Amson, Mark Weiss, WME, Phil Bourne, Mark Cunningham & JethroTull.com

numerous advancements affected you as a performer?

I suppose in-ear monitoring was one of my most significant discoveries, probably around 15 or more years ago, when I began to use Shure’s products. That really made a difference to onstage comfort and clarity, and that’s been the case ever since.

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