Heavy Horses

My UK album has the textured cover, lyric to the left, marked on the spine Manufactured in the UK . The record is the UK blue label A1 / B2.
The 'text below' cover may be the first design - but its not the distinct marker of a UK pressing. Clearly there were two UK cover variants. (Three, including that weird off-white one)

 

Thanks. I thought the cover art/verse would be the same (lyric to the left) as my Canadian copy & it is. My Canadian vinyl that was bought when the album was originally released has PART II on side one of the dead wax.


More on the white border:
http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=533870&AdType=afw9

 

If you peruse ebay as a source, the 'lyric to the left' version seems to be more prevalent.

 

I think the lyrics to the left looks faaaar better.
Maybe because I grew up with this.

 

thanks guys, 'text below' IMO looks better designed, even the text is gold color, better than the left white color... and so yes maybe the below gold text is the early print.
white cover it looks ugly, maybe is very rare, I bet many collectors searching for, I pass...
also yes I see more text left copies than below, maybe the disc inside is the same thing for all cover variants blue label A1 / B2.

really nice! poster by the way:

 

I recently bought the cheap 5CD box of later era Jethro Tull for $10. It allowed me to listen to these five albums repeatedly and to see if my evaluation of them in the '70s and early '80s had changed. I found that it had not...not so much, anyway.

Songs from the Wood is still a great album, and is still the last really excellent Jethro Tull album.
Heavy Horses has a few very good songs, and it sounds good overall, but it's patchy.
Stormwatch has fewer good songs that Heavy Horses.
"A" is short on really great songs, but the new band and sound is really good. I wish this band had continued further.
Broadsword is about half really really good songs (a return to form in songwriting) and half that evaporate.

 

Blue label, at least in the US. This album was issued after Chrysalis left Warner distribution (and went to blue labels) and before they signed on with CBS for distribution.

 

Wonderful sounding album with great playing, production and arrangements.

My big problem is Ian's vocals. He sounds constipated on every song. Why did he employ this vocal style? Wish he wasn't singing so poorly on this fine album.

 

He sounds a bit like Cat Stevens at times! "Rover" is a good example.

 

This is my favorite Tull album. I think I bought this on vinyl when I was about 12 years old (sometime around 1995) with a bunch of other Tull albums and I was just getting more into them beyond Aqualung. I have been moving those albums around for many years now -- and, after having upgraded my audio setup, I can finally get close to reaping the full benefits of this masterful album's excellent sound.

I could listen to this album everyday!

 

I hope and suspect this will be the cover of the bookstyle remaster coming hopefully 2017. Love the album. I`ll put in the top 5 of Tull albums.

 

The original CD has the "missing strings" on Rover. I didn't notice at first, and nearly dumped the original at used CD store. Supposedly some tapes were missing when they remastered HH and the strings were AWOL. I hope that by the time Steve Wilson gets to it that they turn up.

I was miffed that they never performed Rover live, it was my favorite track. Journeyman was the first Tull song that ever bored me. I still skip it. They should have put Beltane in its place (with a judicious editing of the ending that goes on too long).
Some people think Beltane was from the SFTW sessions, but the husky/smoky voice clearly matches the other HH tracks.

 

Absolutely love the two "folk-rock" albums, and Broadford Bazaar is my one of my favourite Tull tracks ever. What an amazing lyric :

Dirty white caravans down narrow roads sailing.
Vivas, Cortinas, weaving in their wake.
With hot, red-faced drivers, horns' flattened fifths wailing,
Putting trust in blind corners as they overtake.

And it's "All come willing now,
Spend a shilling now,
Stack up the back of your new motor-car.''
There's home-dyed woollens, and wee plastic Cuillins
The day of the Broadford Bazaar.

Out of the north, no oil-rigs are drifting.
And jobs for the many are down to the few.
Blue-bottle choppers, they visit no longer.
Like flies to the jampots, they were just passing through.

And it's "All come willing now,
Spend a shilling now,
Stack up the back of your new motor-car''
Where once stood oil-rigs so phallic
There's only swear-words in Gaelic
To say at the Broadford bazaar.

All kinds of people come down for the opening.
Crofters and cottars, white settlers galore.
And up on the hill, there's an old sheep that's dying,
But it had two new lambs born just a fortnight before.

And it's "All come willing now,
Spend a shilling now,
Stack up the back of your new motor-car.''
We'll take pounds, francs and dollars from the well-heeled,
And stamps from the Green Shield
The day of the Broadford Bazaar.

Fantastic stuff, and amazing we had to wait until Nightcap to hear it.

Philip

 

Now the next myths are being made...

Who said, that there are "tapes missing" ?
I think it was just laziness...


Maybe they are "in the shed" where the Stand up tapes where....

 

This is a better version of SFTW.
Love it. Big fan of Living in these hard times too. I like it more than Weathercock and Journeymen. Broadford bazaar is a good one too. Will Blues instrumental be added to the remix? This was a heavy horses outtake according to the 20th anniversary box set. I'm sure it will plus a couple of other gems we didn't know about

 

Wouldn't surprise me if Steeleye Span was an influence.

They opened for Tull either on the "Thick as a Brick" tour (greatest concert I've ever seen ) or the "A Passion Play" tour.

BTW, the Eagles opened on one of these tours.


Steeleye Span was very good and dynamic live, too.

I recall they did some percussion by dancing on some sort of wooden platform. It was amplified so it sounded loud and cool.

.

 

No myth. When the remaster came out, the lack of strings in Rover were noticed and in an interview Ian mentioned that some backing tracks were not to be found. Maybe they didn't look hard enough, but that was the story given.

 

Steeleye Span opened a bunch of UK shows for Tull in 1971 and again in July of 1973. The Eagles opened for Tull
on a number of shows in 1972 during the US Tour.

As far as the percussion dancing (flamenco) band, that was future Tull member John Glascock's band Carmen which
opened for Tull in early 1975 (Jan-Feb-Mar).

BTW - I agree that the Thick As A Brick show was the "greatest tour on earth" as I saw 15 shows on that tour........

 

I remember a tour a while back, Ian telling a story on stage about the Eagles supporting them.

He claimed that the Eagles pinched some Tull chords for Hotel California (I think - I don't know any Eagles). I can't remember which Tull tune it was he was talking about now - anyone know?

 

The song "We Used To Know" from Stand Up and the verse from "Hotel California" use the same chord sequence in different keys.

It's a fairly common sequence though so I don't think Ian can claim ownership of it.

 

Tull was connected with Steeleye in some way for nearly all of the '70s-- First with their opening the APP your, then with Ian Anderson producing Steeleye's "Now We Are Six," then Maddy Prior singing on "Too Old..." and finally Ian producing/all of Tull playing on Maddy's solo debut "Woman in the Wings." What's interesting is that Steeleye was moving toward rock at the same time Tull was going toward folk.

Of course Tull would go on to have an even stronger connection with Fairport Convention.

 

Man, I haven't played HH in ages! I'll fix that tonight (if I remember).

 

Not sure I understand Why the master would need string overdubs. This was not a remix, only a remaster right?

 

When I first got HH, it was part of a Pair Records twofer, along with Stormwatch. Even though I ditched that for original pressings years ago, I still almost view them as a double album. I've also got HH on R2R, but, sadly, they'd pretty much stopped doing 7.5 rock recordings by that point. Personally, I prefer HH to Minstrel, but Songs From the Wood is still my tops of the folkie Tull albums.

Also, around this time Ian was produced a Maddy Prior solo album and members of Tull guest.

 

The last Classic Tull album imho .