Jethro Tull: Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young To Die! - 1976

 

As punk was the brash music style on everyone's mind in 1976, Jethro Tull, perversely, put out an album of songs intended to form a musical. Oh dear. It was a completely incongruous release and has remained largely ignored. 

At the time it was panned as being completely culturally irrelevant, correctly so. That doesn't mean it should be dismissed out of hand, however. Listened to in isolation, ignoring cultural aspects, it is not actually too bad. Put aside also the album's muddied, incoherent "concept" (about an ageing rock star) and take it for what it is - twelve shortish, concise and snappy rock songs. Just because it wasn't punk didn't mean that it automatically had to be shit - that was one of the unfortunate critical by-products of the zeitgeist of 1976-78. 

After a brief melodious vocal prelude, Quizz Kid bursts into action with some classic Tull electric riff/flute. It is a fine, powerful but also subtle rock song, but with a retrospective air of 1973 about it. It is in true Tull style, though. The lyrics are about someone appearing on a TV quiz show. I'm not quite sure how that fitted into the album's concept.

The acoustic/electric Crazed Institution has a beautiful, melodic bass line, some killer electric guitar interjections and a suitably crazed-sounding vocal from Ian Anderson. Once again, it is a quality rock song. 

Salamander starts with some intricate, tuneful Spanish-sounding guitar before it progresses into an intriguing mix of folk, country rock, blues and Tull. Taxi Grab is another hunky, riff-powered Black Sabbath-ish number with some bluesy harmonica bits in there too. It doesn't need saying that it is a quality track, but I'll say it all the same.

The wonderfully-titled From A Dead Beat To An Old Greaser is a quiet, self-pitying acoustic ballad that contains a fair amount of nostalgic sadness. It harks back to Aqualung in some ways and has a lovely saxophone break in the middle. Bad-Eyed And Loveless is a short, folky blues acoustic reverie while Big Dipper returns us to classic, flute-driven Tull on a chugging slow-paced rocker.

Too Old To Rock n Roll: Too Young To Die reprises the melody from the prelude on a full song. It is an uplifting but sad gentle anthem of a song that I love. The atmosphere is continued on the winsome and tuneful Pied Piper. 

The album concludes with the moving and valedictory The Chequered Flag (Dead Or Alive). As with most concept albums, not all the songs fit the mould but those that do on here do it well. As a story of an old out-of-time rocker, it was quite appropriate that should be released in the year that punk exploded. Ian Anderson, the old rocker, was indeed too young to die. "Isn't it grand to be playing to the stands - dead or alive" goes the refrain. Quite. 

Of course, this album just sounded out of place in 1976-1977 but it in 2021, it sounds fine and was a quite different Jethro Tull album - not blues, not lengthy prog, not folk. The cover was awful, however, wasn't it?