Jethro Tull Golden Period

This Was to Stormwatch at Casa Buchanan, Couple of clunkers in there (Benefit - too many leaden, repetitious riffs - and Too Old To Rock And Roll - just not terribly dynamic or varied musically).

 

this was to broadsword and the beast

 

This Was through Stormwatch. Not all are equal, but you can see the clear evolution of style with most of the classic albums from this period. I enjoy several albums after that, but I'd say that's the golden period... my guess is most responses in this thread would fall somewhere in between these two...perhaps a shorter period for some compared to others depending on preference, but those are the bookends where most would fall. You're not going to find someone who says A through Dot Com or something like that, LOL

 

Aqualung through Songs From The Wood.

For the first three albums Jethro Tull was growing musically--expanding their vocabulary and improving on their musicianship. While This Was, Stand Up and Benefit are all solid releases it was with Aqualung that all of the pieces fell together in glorious fashion.

From there, the band would continue pushing their boundaries forward with each succeeding album sounding different from the prior. And yet they all sounded like Tull. Songs From The Wood represents (for me) the last time Tull would have something new to say AND say it in the form of high quality songs from first track to last. For the most part, the albums that followed all had their strong points, but the band had pretty much said all it had to say.

 

This is probably a fair comment, even though I like much that came after SFTW. I think that's where I.A. found a 'holding pattern' which sustained him for the next couple of releases, before he really decided to move on.

I still maintain that the reception of Passion Play caused Ian to lose confidence and rein back his ambitions - hence, the retreat to shorter songs with the occasional epic. I think Tull were ready to move into post-rock territory after PP but the critics stopped that.

 

This Was
up to
Aqualung
And the singles, etc. found on Living in the Past..
(Get the reissues of these first four albums by Wilson)

 

That's my list, precisely although, while the music isn't as great, I'd bookend Too Old To Rock and Roll in there. It still "feels" like part of the progression which began with Benefit while a distinct left turn was made with Songs From The Wood.

 

I'll go "This Was" through to "Stormwatch" while omitting "A Passion Play" for it's intended "wrench in the works" type of off road antics.

 

Their catalog is large and very hard to pinpoint a golden era with so many great LPs with some pretty good experimental albums sprinkled in I enjoy JTs discography all the way through.

 

I'd say This Was all the way to the Tull Christmas Album.

 

For me, the classic period is between Stand Up and Songs From the Wood. Songs... articulated the British folk music and humour that underlays Tull's style - no underlying Blues roots.

Note the absence of A Passion Play and Too Old.... Passion never gelled for me (even after I recently got the outtakes disk on Nightcap). Too Old... is not a bad album, but to me seemed as if it was fulfillling a contract obligation, and didn't have a lot of Tull characteristics about it.

I let go of my Tull obsession after Songs. Recently got Heavy Horses, thought I should give it a go given that it is the second part of the trilogy starting with Songs. It's certainly good Tull, but not on my list because it's where my Tull journey ended.

No matter what individual albums are/aren't in the submitted lists, the classic Tull period certainly produced a string of extraordinary and unique albums.

1. Stand up
2. Benefit
3. Aqualung
4. Living In The Past (compilation of odds and ends, but still very strong)
5. Thick As A Brick
6. War Child
7. Minstrel In The Gallery
8. Songs from the Wood

​

 

Stand Up thru Thick

 

“Sunshine Day” thru to the last track on Stormwatch. And every single, b-side and outtake in between.

These Steven Wilson remix + extras/book size reissues must be the greatest archival series in the modern age...

 

For me the "Golden Era" is really the "Golden Decade" 1968 - 1978. I think Storm Watch is the end of the era. If 11 concecutive years of excellent releases isn't Hall of Fame worthy, what is?

 

Stand Up to Heavy Horses

Stormwatch never quite connected as well as the others with me. Hoping Wilson changes that.

 

I really enjoy their debut album, but it seems like a different band from the classic model we all know and love. My own golden period for Tull runs from Stand Up through War Child (though not quite as great as the albums that preceded it, I still find a lot to enjoy here, particularly in its expanded form). I recognize that they still made some quality work after this, particularly on releases like Minstrel in the Gallery and Songs from the Wood, but I don't relate to those albums as much myself.

 

Stand Up to Heavy Horses

 

I love Jethro Tull's first decade ('68 ~ '78) and have most of it, but I think the "Golden Period", for me anyway, would have to be Stand Up through Living In The Past. That's the core to my mind.

 

Yeah, at the time "Crest of A Knave" felt like a return to (an earlier) form with songs like "Farm On the Freeway," with its prog-ish mid-section, and "Mountain Men." A higher % of older songs started returning to the repertoire with that tour, too, probably the most since '79-ish. The "A" & "Under Wraps" setlists were fairly miserly with the back catalog. Even if they did play "Serenade To a Cuckoo" on the latter and "Skating Away" on both...I never saw either again.

 

This Was to Thick As A Brick...

 

There’s 20-30 minutes of very strong music per year between 68 and 82. About 50% of this is non album material. Hours of goodies to listen too. No other band has this amount of quality tunes. No band

 

For me, no way their golden period wouldn't include Songs from the Wood/Heavy Horses/Live--Bursting Out. Those are my three favorite Tull albums period.

 

Easy question for me.

Everything between Stand Up and Heavy Horses is their golden period in my opinion, maybe even Stormwatch too, which I find to be a great album. I really enjoy their debut album, This Was, too, though it is too different from their other stuff the be included in their "Golden Period".

 

I will say from This Was thru Stormwatch. Stormwatch completes a "trilogy" if that counts for anything?
This Was has a lot of the Tull roots. And there are some tracks that later became live "jam" tracks.