This partly breaks the rules I set myself for this category in that I’ve already featured Tull.
But it’s that time of year isn’t it?
It’s also by way of responding to Big Rab’s comment on my festive posting last year – Tull’s 1970s seasonal opus Ring Out Solstice Bells.
Jethro Tull: Christmas Song. Original version: a single in 1968.
“Hey. Santa. Pass us that bottle, will ya?”
I like the adaptation of the Aqualung cover, with the tramp being dressed as Father Christmas, on the still for the video.
While browsing You Tube I came across this variorum version of Christmas Song which features only guitar, mandolin and Ian Anderson’s voice. No strings and no request to Santa at the end.*
Merry Christmas one and all.
*22/12/17 Edited to add:- Sadly that version seems to be no longer available.
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.
