I discovered Jethro Tull in the back of Moron's Trans Am.
Having left the President's meet and greet the first weekend of college, me and four other dudes piled into John Morosani's blue Trans Am and took off up Route 125 to return to our dorm.
But instead of making a left at Hepburn Road, Moron suddenly put the pedal to the metal, and took off into uncharted territory, following Route 125 down the hill, towards NEW YORK!
I'm not sure if HE'D been on this stretch of highway, I don't know if he was PREPARED for the descending s-curves. We were going 115 miles an hour and suddenly, to cope with the sudden twists in the road, Moron was throwing the car left and right. But this was a ride unlike one I'd ever had in my mother's Country Squire. The car was SLIDING through the turns.
I truly thought it was the end. The very first weekend of college. Before I'd even attended a single CLASS! I was going to DIE!
And it was its own private abyss. Because, as I sat on the rear hump, with a vivid view out the windshield, riding high, sans seatbelt, the other four passengers were LAUGHING! But it wasn't NERVOUS laughter, it was the kind of laughter the Hell's Angels make before they KICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!
And on the stereo, playing on an 8-track, was Jethro Tull's "To Cry You A Song".
A true aficionado will tell you Tull was done after the FIRST ALBUM! They betrayed their blues roots after that. Oh, I knew who Tull WAS, but I'd never heard "This Was". This was BEFORE file-trading. When you had to BUY all your music. And we could only afford A LITTLE! So, unless you happened to hear an offbeat record at somebody's house, you were completely out of the LOOP!
I was aware that "Stand Up" did. But I'd just decided to lay my money down for CTA. A good value, being two discs for $3.44. But I did notice that Jimmy Lesser brought the second Tull album to home room. People did that. Kind of like a prehistoric ringtone. People wanted to show you what they were INTO!
As for "Benefit"... I think we'd already graduated at that point. It had come out during the summer. I was more interested in "John Barleycorn".
But now, with my life on the line, and you know how those moments are, you feel fully ALIVE, there was this AMAZING RIFF coming out of the speakers.
I bought "Benefit".
In the Tull canon, "Benefit" is seen as secondary. A play to the masses. A bit of a sell-out. All the experimentation had been stripped out, and been replaced with straight ahead rock and roll.
At least that's how the cognoscenti perceived it back then. Today, it looks like the HEIGHT of experimentation. I mean where was the HIT SINGLE?
But maybe I understand where the naysayers were coming from. You see the tracks on "Benefit" were much HOOKIER than what had preceded them. I know, I know, quite a funny era within which obviousness, playing it straight down the middle, creating INFECTIOUS MUSIC, is seen as a detriment. But in late night dorm sessions, self-anointed experts would declare "Nothing To Say" was too CONVENTIONAL! Too reliant on the HOOK! Even worse was "Teacher".
God, listen to "Teacher" today. If they played this on Active Rock radio, it would go to NUMBER ONE! And god, that change in the middle, when the song suddenly starts to race OFF, and then the HEAVY RIFF comes back, shit, they just don't MAKE THEM LIKE THIS ANYMORE! And, when THAT part is done, you go to the headbanging, yup, the nodding in UNISON part. This was DOPE music. For the dope of 1970. The kind where you could smoke the better part of a lid with your buddy and still be able to navigate life.
But what endeared me to "Benefit" were the songs that ended each side. They were unexpected. After all this newfound HEAVINESS, this newfound OBVIOUSNESS, there was this intimate SENSITIVITY! God, THIS is the sound that made me believe music was more important than anything I could learn in school. In school I had overeducated professors, expounding upon works of dead people in boring monotones, with drones paying attention like the source code for life was being revealed. MEANWHILE, a hundred yards away, in my dorm room, I could play you the work of FULLY ALIVE artists, who were exhibiting insight and beauty COMPLETELY absent from what transpired in class, which not only equaled the work of the dead poets we were studying, but was even MORE resonant, because it was truly made without constraint. I could lie on my bed alone, and feel that there was somebody in this world who understood me.
And that's why I write this stuff today. Because they wrote that stuff then.
Unadulterated beauty, unfathomable excellence. You don't want to taint greatness, don't want to fuck with the exquisiteness of art. And THAT'S why I don't believe in cross-promotions, in advertising, in SELLING OUT! Because you can't sell out life. Life is startlingly real. And you only get one shot. And the music used to evidence this.
"For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me" ended side one. Maybe if you came over and we sat on the couch, and I turned out all the lights, and pushed up the volume on my vinyl record, you might get it.
But really, that's not how you listened. You listened ALONE! That's why these albums meant so much to me. They were my parents, my family, they would never betray me, I could COUNT on them!
But the one that truly got under my skin was "Benefit"'s closing cut, "Sossity: You're A Woman".
If you scour the P2P services, you can find a take on "Thick As A Brick" by Francis Dunnery.
Mr. Dunnery might be quirky. He might have quirked his way out of a mainstream career. But, he COULD have played by the rules. Hell, if you saw him on tour with Robert Plant, you know that. Because, first and foremost, Francis Dunnery can PLAY!
And we think of excellence like the acoustic groove of "Thick As A Brick" as unplayable. We think of it as a STUDIO CREATION! You can ATTEMPT to play it, but you can't nail it. Just like Alanis Morissette's band can't nail "Hand In Pocket" live. But at this gig god knows where, just sitting there with a guitar, Francis Dunnery plays (and sings!) this song as if not only it were his own, but SANS MISTAKES! Even Jimmy Page makes mistakes. The only person who doesn't make mistakes is Jeff Beck. But, Francis just fucking NAILS IT! And it's such a TURN-ON! We just don't believe anybody can REPLICATE THIS STUFF!
And earlier today, my iTunes slipped into Francis' take.
I was going to write about Jack FM. But suddenly it all seemed irrelevant. To hear the MTV hits of the 80s. The EXPECTED! Over and over again.
I guess I need to be touched.
And I was touched by Francis' version of "Thick As A Brick".
So I went to the source. I put "Jethro Tull" in the search box, and started listening to Ian Anderson's works.
But what I've got on my iTunes isn't the studio tracks. But LIVE stuff. And suddenly, this version of "Sossity: You're A Woman" came up. And I was transfixed.
I went to the rack and pulled my copy of "Benefit".
But the original was just too electric. It was trumped by the intimacy of this LIVE TAKE!
So I started combing my Tull CDs. To see if maybe, just maybe, this existed in approved release form.
Turns out I was listening to a take from a 1970 Carnegie Hall concert. Which I had as part of Tull's second boxed set.
Dropping the needle on this stuff (firing up the laser?) is positively creepy. In a way no movie can achieve, you're suddenly brought back DECADES, to exactly who you used to be.
This is not a produced version. There are no effects. Just acoustic instruments. And Ian's voice, soaring throughout the auditorium.
And I'm completely grooving. Thinking THIS is the sound I was looking for. And then, the song took a left turn.
At this late date, I know "Stand Up" is better than "Benefit". It IS experimental in a way that "Benefit" is not. The summer after my first year in college, I drove to Cape Cod with a cassette. And played it over and over again in the Norelco sitting on the bench seat of my mom's car.
I'm convinced "Look Into The Sun" is my favorite track on "Stand Up". It's so intimate, it CREEPS YOU OUT! Like you're hearing something you SHOULDN'T!
But this wasn't "Look Into The Sun". It was SLIGHTLY more upbeat. In the way waking up to a bright sun after an almost all night argument with your loved one is. God, what came before was horrible. But you MUST go on. There's just this certain OPTIMISM in "Reasons For Waiting".
Then again, what passed for optimism in 1969 is different from today. Life was unclear. We were still in Vietnam. Protests had just reached a fevered pitch. We had a Republican administration, but everybody under the age of twenty five seemed to be a Democrat. We felt alienated, and marginalized, and although we were fighting back, we weren't sure it made any difference.
"Reasons For Waiting" sounds like that feeling.
Recently, seemingly everybody I've ever known has tracked me down. I didn't anticipate this. But my sudden ubiquity on the Web is delivering this package to my inbox.
I was someone to leave old days behind. I speak to none of my childhood buddies. Only one friend from college. I thought life was an endless series of forward adventures.
But it turns out that is untrue. Turns out, we're all interconnected. Now the Net just lets us know it. Those thoughts of distant events, bygone people, turns out your compatriots are thinking of the same things, and are dying to let you know, dying to CONNECT!
It's completely freaky. It's my history, I don't want to deny it, it's me, but I haven't been PREPARED for it. Prepared for the fact that as I lay alienated on my bed at Middlebury, feeling that no one understood me, almost everybody else felt the same way. Now that we're old enough to realize the trappings are irrelevant, now that our hair has fallen out, our faces are creased, we're suddenly honest.
Seems everybody wants to put the pieces together. Life is just so scary. To collect all the elements, to try and put them into a coherent picture, that makes you feel like you can cope. That you're not in it alone.
But I was always in it alone. Just me and the music. I didn't really have room for anybody else. I'm not sure how to let them in.
And feeling confused, I need soothing music that doesn't DENY my state of mind, but acknowledges it, gives me a mental back rub.
"What a reason for waiting And dreaming of dreams"
Can I tell you I've been waiting for this? I've been waiting for the moment when just by being myself, suddenly my life works.
And it couldn't have come sooner, I wasn't prepared for it, I wouldn't have been able to cope. Still, it's weirder than any funhouse mirror. But more exciting than any thrill ride. That's life. When done right, there's no need for artificial stimulants, actually, you don't want anything to interfere with the experience.
"So here's hoping you've faith in impossible schemes That are born in the sigh of the wind blowing by While the dimming light brings the end to a night of loving"
I'm not about to reveal my hopes and dreams. They're too personal. I don't want you to laugh at me, I don't want them trampled upon.
But I think you understand. I hope this sold-out culture has not led you to believe that honesty is not the best policy, that you can't truly be who you want to be, that life can't work out.
Because it can.
As long as you stay to the path.
Oh, you've got to take chances. But you've got to respect your inner tuning fork.
A tuning fork that those classic rock bands seemed to possess innately.
After singing "Reasons For Waiting", Ian goes back into "Sossity".
There's a story in "Sossity". But what resonates most are these lines:
"Give me the straight-laced promise And not the pathetic lie"
That's all I ask of you.
Don't tell me what your company is doing is right because you work there.
Don't act like you're all together when you're not. We're all at loose ends. Once you reveal this, you have a chance of truly experiencing life, of connecting.
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