One of the more understated tracks on Jethro Tull’s 1971 LP Aqualung was this acoustic ditty, Wond’ring Aloud.
Jethro Tull: Wond’ring Aloud
On the compilation album Living in the Past, was a reworking/extension, Wond’ring Again, which may be Ian Anderson’s masterpiece. A meditation on humanity’s propensity to mess things – especially the planet – up. From forty years ago!
It’s also a perfect example of Anderson’s lyricism, moving from the poetic to the mundane within a sentence.
I just read today of the death of Glenn Cornick, first bassist for Jethro Tull. This was at the time when the band had a very bluesy sound.
At first I thought of marking his passing with Driving Song, the B-side of the Living in the Past single, but its last line isn’t very appropriate in this context.
Instead I’ve chosen Tull’s first – albeit minor – hit.
Love Story was the first time I’d heard Tull – it wasn’t till a few years later and the Living in the Past compilation LP that I realised there had been two singles before this; their first was credited erroneously as by Jethro Toe!
Jethro Tull: Love Story
Glenn Douglas Barnard Cornick: 23/4/1947 – 28/8/2014. So it goes.
The follow up to Living in the Past. As I recall this was a hit at the back end of 1969 and on into 1970. The group’s second single to reach the top ten.
Edited to add:- Original video no lomger available. Apparently this one is from a lost Top of the Pops, unfortunately marred by the overlays the video poster has put on the screen.
Another single I bought in Bexhill-on-Sea; this one a couple of years after The Happenings.
It was the first big hit for Jethro Tull, coolly if somewhat archaically named after the improver of the seed drill, fronted by a trampish looking guy who sported a codpiece and played the flute while standing on one leg.
Rock and roll?
Apparently the band quickly came to hate this song and didn’t play it on stage for what amounted to decades.
