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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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