Founder member of Jethro Tull, Mick Abrahams, died on 19/12/25. He only played on Tull’s first LP This Was before leaving the band due to wanting to pursue more in the line of the blues than flautist, singer and main songwriter Ian Anderson.
This, from that LP, is a song he co-wrote with Anderson.
Jethro Tull: Beggar’s Farm
Abrahams went on to form the unforgettably named Blodwyn Pig. Their first single was Dear Jill.
Blodwyn Pig: Dear Jill
Michael Timothy (Mick) Abrahams: 7/4/1943 – 19/12/2025. So it goes.
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.
Ray Thomas, who died this week was a multi-instrumentalist not very well-served by most of the time on stage with The Moody Blues merely flourishing a tambourine or otherwise not seeming to do very much. That perception would be to undervalue him greatly.
It was his contribution as a flautist where he really counted, a contribution that only added to the already distinctive sound of the band. As a flautist in a rock band he was for a while unique. (Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull came along later as did Peter Gabriel with Genesis.) That flute embellished mightily the power of Nights in White Satin, the song which became emblematic of the revamped Moody Blues.
A founder member of the band in its first (bluesy) incarnation – Go Now etc – his solid bass voice enhanced the vocal harmonies which were so much a part of the re-incarnated band’s sound.
For some odd reason there seemed to be a regular order of song-writers in those early albums by the “new” Moodies with Thomas always having song three* on side one as one of his spots.
Among his songs were Another Morning*, Twilight Time, Dr Livingstone, I Presume?*, Dear Diary*, Lazy Day, Floating*, Eternity Road, with his collaborations with Justin Hayward, Visions of Paradise and Are You Sitting Comfortably? being especially memorable.
It was song five, side one on In Search of the Lost Chord, though, that was his apotheosis. That song was Legend of a Mind with a lyric about Timothy Leary and supposed mind expansion, “Timothy’ Leary’s dead, No, no, no, no, he’s outside looking in.” Apparently Leary once told Thomas the song made him more famous than anything he had ever done for himself.
But who needed drugs when music itself could be this transportive?
Here’s a promotional film for Legend of a Mind made around the time of its first release. Thomas’s flute solo here is sublime.
The Moody Blues: Legend of a Mind
Ray Thomas: 29/12/1941 – 4/1/2018. So it goes. Thanks for the trips round the bay.
Not vintage Tull I’m afraid. But it’s that time of year so here’s Ian Anderson’s reworking of several Christmas tunes in the Tull style. From The Jethro Tull Christmas Album released in 2003.
The only slight blemishes in its perfection are the lack of any assonance (rather than rhyme) in song/fill at the end of the first refrain – though song/dawn and song/all in the second and third are fine in that regard – and that in the last line of the first verse fret doesn’t rhyme with fear and cheer.
When you’re falling awake and you take stock of the new day,
And you hear your voice croak as you choke on what you need to say,
Well, don’t you fret, don’t you fear, I will give you good cheer.
Life’s a long song. Life’s a long song. Life’s a long song. If you wait then your plate I will fill.
As the verses unfold and your soul suffers the long day,
And the twelve o’clock gloom spins the room, you struggle on your way.
Well, don’t you sigh, don’t you cry, lick the dust from your eye.
Life’s a long song. Life’s a long song. Life’s a long song. We will meet in the sweet light of dawn.
As the Baker Street train spills your pain all over your new dress,
And the symphony sounds underground put you under duress,
Well don’t you squeal as the heel grinds you under the wheels.
Life’s a long song. Life’s a long song. Life’s a long song. But the tune ends too soon for us all.
I neglected Tull last Christmas. Must have been busy.
Time to make up for it.
Tull’s main man, Ian Anderson, vocalist, flautist, guitarist, pianist, song-writer, was inspired to write this song as his daughter has a birthday close to Christmas (as do I.) It seemed appropriate, then.
