The Jethro Tull frontman is on the road revisiting one of the band’s finest moments. His British dates saw a new, compact line array supporting the concept. Kevin Hilton reports
IAN ANDERSON, leader of Jethro Tull, occasional solo artist, Laird and fish-farmer, is well known for his eccentric sense of humour and his exacting standards, both musically and technically. Both of these are apparent in his latest venture, the Thick as a Brick 2 (TAAB2) album and an accompanying tour, with the British leg featuring a new compact line array system supplied by rental firm Clair Global. The new recording is a sequel to Tull’s 1972 LP Thick as a Brick,
NewClair system stands up for Ian Anderson
The UK tour took in theatres, concert halls and civic buildings
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which Anderson conceived as a response to critics who labelled its predecessor, Aqualung (1971), a concept album. The singer- songwriter and flautist denied the record had any conceptual basis and so conceived the follow-up as “the mother of all concept albums” and a send-up of bombastic and pretentious progressive rock bands of the time. Credited to “Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson”, TAAB2 is sub-titled Whatever Happened To Gerald Bostock?, a reference to the – fictitious – eight-year- old boy