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DISC & MUSIC ECHO
11 October 1969
TULL CHANGE FANS BUT THEY ARE STILL ENTERTAINING
At Jethro Tull's previous London concert in May, I thought them so entertaining that it would be the 'kiss of death' for a heavy group in underground circles.
Last Wednesday they returned to the Albert Hall with single and album successes behind them.
Dead? No. Heavy? Slightly. Entertaining? Most certainly. But Tull's original fans seem very much in the minority, and replaced by a new and shorter haired audience.
Ian Anderson gave us a lot of chat, took the mickey out of himself, was a bit nasty with the audience ... and there was not enough music. But what music we did get is still some of the most entertaining and different around today.
For 'Little Fat Man' [sic] drummer Clive Bunker had a mini-drum kit, Ian Anderson played mandolin, guitarist Martin Barre played a tin whistle, while bassist Glenn Cornick appeared in Edmund Ross-type South American gear and played marracas. All entertaining fun, but then the band seemed to lose interest in entertaining and the show ended with prolonged drum and guitar solos, chaos onstage, and an encore.
And they still won't play hit singles onstage.
earlier we had Savoy Brown. No longer, they claim, a blues band, but very blues-based. They strode into a very tight blues number without vocalist Chris Youldon and Kim Simmonds taking the honours with a fine guitar solo.
At the end of this number Youldon strode on, wearing fur coat, holding a lighted cigarette in his hand which he waved about very effectively while he sang 'Life's One-Act Play'. A fine, slow, heart-rending blues number. he strode about stage like an actor out of a Russian tragedy putting the number over very well with his 'lived in' type of voice.
Then the act collapsed into something like a children's matinee at the London Palladium. The only man to treat the audience like a seated mass of intelligent humanity was Terry Reid. He has a fine voice, a tight group, and is immediately likeable.
The group is one minute like a late-night jazz combo, the next a wild rock group. This mixture, or the failure to go in one direction, could account for Reid's lack of national acclaim.
GAVIN PETRIE
Thanks to Mike Wain for this article