Jethro Tull holds a unique place in rock history. Led by flute-playing, musical minstrel, and Dickensian vagabond Ian Anderson, the quintessential British group has been lumped into various trends, most notably prog, but it is so much more. Their melding of folk, jazz, rock, classical, and pop began with their bluesy debut, This Was, in 1968, and successfully evolved through nearly the end of the 1970s before their sound became heavier and more straightforward.
Arguably, their first 10 studio albums are exceptional, and much of their music still stands up today. Along with Anderson, the key members of Tull who contributed to this rich period are Glenn Cornick, Clive Bunker, Martin Barre, Jeffrey Hammond, John Evan, Barriemore Barlow, John Glascock, and Dee Palmer, in an ever-shifting lineup that found guitarist Barre as Anderson’s most important and consistent collaborator.
The 1972 double-album release Living in the Past came at perhaps the group’s peak and is an odd, yet excellent album in the Tull discography. Their sixth overall album was also their first on Chrysalis in the States. It has recently been reissued in both vinyl and a deluxe CD/Blu-ray box set, billed as Still Living in the Past, further enhancing the album’s stature.
What made the initial double-album release so successful was that rather than being the standard compilation album or just a simple collection of bits and bobs (or odds and sods), it offered a rich variety of music, much of it B-sides, different single mixes, live material, EP tracks, and previously unreleased music from various album configurations or territories. It was a beautiful presentation in an era when the rock album package was truly a thing of beauty.
There were two slightly different versions of the album, one released in the US and the other in the UK, and all the songs from both are included here on the new vinyl reissue and the CD/Blu-ray box. There have been UK and US CD reissues of this album, and in 1997, a Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab 24K gold-plated CD edition was released.
The original 1972 double album followed the group’s fifth album, and in the same year, they released Thick as a Brick. Some of the tracks that hadn’t been previously released that are real stand-outs include “Just Trying to Be,” “Dharma for One,” the title cut, which was a single-only release; the B-side “A Song for Jeffrey,” and the title cut from the EP “Life Is a Long Song.”
The CD/Blu-ray box set contains one CD of original mixes, remixes, edits, and demos from 1968-1971. On CDs two and three, Steven Wilson, the master of prog remixing, does his magic on this reissue with new stereo mixes from as far back as 2011, which were different from the original album releases. The bulk of the other newer mixes are from 2013, 2016, and 2018.
CDs four and five feature the 19-track Live at Carnegie Hall, November 4, 1970 concert. The concert is an excellent performance, considering the venue’s less-than-favorable acoustics for rock music. At one point, there is a sad reminder of the excesses of rock concert drum solos of that period. On the original Living in the Past album, there were only two performances included.
The vinyl albums are half-speed masters. The gatefold package doesn’t duplicate the sumptuous original album jacket with its faux-leather textured hardback cover and 12-page, album-sized color photo booklet. Still, it adds color reproductions of 36 singles and EP art, along with memorabilia, song lyrics, and more. It’s a shame that bespoke packaging wasn’t carried over, and that may be one of the few disappointing aspects of these reissues.
The original albums were mainly mastered at Morgan Studios in London. However, some tracks, including the live material, were mastered at Apple Studios, which was still operational even though The Beatles had long since broken up. This mastering tape box information is reflected on the vinyl sleeves.
The Blu-ray includes Steven Wilson’s remixes of the same tracks as on the double-vinyl reissue, plus the Live at Carnegie Hall 1970 material in High Resolution 24/96 PCM Stereo and DTS HD 5.1 Surround Sound. There is also a flat transfer of the original 1972 Living in the Past album, combining the US and UK tracks in High Resolution 24/96 PCM Stereo. Seven unreleased tracks from CD1 are included in High Resolution Flat Transfers.
Visual material includes promotional films for “The Witch’s Promise” and both the US and UK versions of “Teacher” and “Life Is a Long Song.” The booklet in each set seems identical, except that in the CD/Blu-ray box, there’s additional material on the making of the promotional films, while the vinyl package book is album-sized and the CD/Blu-ray box is book-sized.
Listening to both of these sets all the way through reveals a myriad of riches. Anderson and his merry band of eccentrics and musical wizards created a heady musical stew. The intelligence, wit, sly naughtiness, and willingness to take on (at the time) nearly blasphemous positions in the lyrics of songs, on religion in particular, are quite refreshing, given how far Christian Nationalism has gone to aiding the tearing apart of the United States, although Anderson was writing more about the Protestant church of England.
In fact, for all the group’s early blues influence and later more jazz influences, Ian Anderson is a decidedly English musical artist through and through. Anderson is nobody’s fool, and while organized religion may not be his number one enemy, hypocrisy is at the top of the charts. Few groups so masterfully mixed a variety of influences, stretched the possibilities of a pop album, and made music that, while smart, was never pretentious.
This is yet another reissue from Tull that is beautifully made, particularly in the book-size CD/Blu-ray sets, with their pages and pages of text and graphics, and an endless amount of audio and visual material. There are more than 10 of these releases, and collecting them all allows one to live, even briefly, in a better past and one that will likely never return.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
Still Living In The Past Vinyl Edition
A
Still Living In The Past CD/Blu-ray
A+
