Yeah, the first two albums are their own thing; more instruments would have been clutter. It made sense to bring John for part of Benefit and make him a full band member afterward.
Yes, that's Barrie in the light-colored shirt, right next to Ian, resting his hand on the keyboard. (I almost typed "John's organ" but that seemed oddly inappropriate.) There's an even older photo that's just Ian, Barrie, John, and Jeffrey, but I can't find a good-sized copy online. It's on the right-hand side of this image from the This Was 50th anniversary set: Young Jeffrey looks a bit like Terry Jones in those earliest photos. ...Although Ian played some piano on both albums...
i miss the classical edge on the first two albums. A bit of banging piano or hammond. Love Blues for the 18th with harpsichord
It isn't so much that his playing reminds me of Bruford, because it doesn't, quite a different feel to Barlow's drumming. But he's of that school, the Baker/Giles/Bruford/Palmer/Collins (and later Peart) type of very jazz-influenced heavily-syncopated playing where they're almost never playing a straight beat and using a lot of fills and flourishes. You can really listen to almost any song from Barlow-era Tull and hear it. But try No Lullaby, Songs From the Wood, Black Satin Dancer, Cold Wind to Valhalla, Quiz Kid, Mouse Police, most of the Passion Play and Thick as a Brick albums. You can really hear it in full force on the songs from Chateau sessions, like Left Right, No Rehearsal, and the early Critique Oblique. To be fair though I think Craney could have filled the role fine even though he was a bit more straightforward than Barlow. But it was on Broadsword that the drumming really got boring, imo.
I always loved Barrie's work on Ring Out Solstice Bells. I used to play drums years ago (not that that should qualify me!), and that song has a very satisfying performance and sound.
I'd love to hear those keyboard notes hocketing around the surround space. If I had a surround system.
Hints? Me? Outtake fun...during lock down. Yes, Schroeder (of Charlie Brown fame) is back with the guy that jumps around a lot. No quick conclusions now, everything will be fine, ...you're only half way there
Still wrestling with the (hey, first world problems) decision on whether to get the expanded "A" set or not. One of the things holding me back is not so much that the 'new synth' sound was bad (to be honest , now with it being 40 years later, its kind of grown on me a little bit- jobson is a great player and they do get into some interesting sonic areas) but that the songwriting (which for me is usually the most important thing) just doesnt seem all that great on a lot of "A". I thought that 'stormwatch' had a strong point of view, all the 'environmental disaster coming, watch out for the natural world doing its thing' stuff kind of giving a focus to stormwatch, and stormwatch also has a lot of really great melodic stuff (including that expanded 'orion' which i love= i just got the stormwatch expanded edition recently btw). As for A, yeah, 'crossfire' is great, the rest of side a is ..ok,... but most of side b other then that great instrumental pine martins jig just leaves me cold. (Even 'working joe' i have mixed feelings about- is he celebrating the unions and working class? dissing them? both? not quite sure what the 'angle' is, and it feels a little too heavy handed whatever way its going). I think that's where i was disappointed with 'broadsword' too, even apart from the kind of 'stadium rock faceless rock synth' sound, it feels like there wasn't that strong poetic and 'point of view' writing on it the way that the 1970's albums had. It would have been really interesting if on "A" that the writing was more personal, more varied (maybe also with some more acoustic-in-amongst the synth things) etc. I would love to have heard some quieter things from that 'A" band, eddie jobson violin and ian's flute just doing some duet things for sections , for example...