What was the >real reason< why Glenn Cornick got fired from Jethro Tull after all?

Unless it's another Bach piece which I can't identify, it could be an improvisation. Tull weren't above improvising in the early days.

 

I recently got around to listening to both of the Wild Turkey albums. I'm kicking myself for taking so long to getting around to hearing them, as they are both really good albums & a listen is well I recommended.

With rotation of members in bands I do not rate one against the other. I see see it as simply change. Sometimes change is a positive sometimes not.
Different players bring different values, textures & styles to the music & that is something that I really like.

 

And it's interesting to see that Ian has in fact now turned into his father.

 

I think we all end up turning into our fathers (or mothers). When i look into the mirror I see my dad looking back. Scary.

 

My paternal grandmother, who has dementia, keeps repeating, "I just noticed how much I look like my father" every time we see her. But when I went to church with her, her preacher, who knew my mother's side of the family growing up, said I sure looked like them.

 

Yeah, but Ian wrote a lot of songs about his relationship with his father and his family, especially on their early albums.

 

I listened and it just sounded like Ian's jazz/blues licks.

 

Absolutely! Hence Aynsley Dunbar gets the boot from Journey after the get big with Infinity, and a zillion other tales like that. Heh, like Geoff Tate getting fired from Queensryche, or Dennis DeYoung fired from "my own band that I started" (Styx)

 

Never underestimate the resultant effects on relationships from drugs & alcohol nor the oldest story in the book.....women.

 

The flute stuff is cool, but the bass solo on this is great.

 

Interesting that in the End of 1969 Brit Poll (at which point Tull had only released the "This Was" and "Stand Up" albums and a couple of singles) that Ian's mum has in one of her scrapbooks, Tull was ranked as the 2nd Best British Band, behind the Beatles and ahead of the Rolling Stones.

No surprise to me, however, as I still rank 'em ahead of the Stones, as far as my listening interest is concerned.

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I've been a Tull fan since 1968 and they've been my favorite ever since. Sometime around 2007, I saw them in Seattle. An acquaintance of mine, a woman, went separately with her girl friend; first timers. It was the time they were giving out little CDs of Aqualung that they had put together in studio to the audience. Ian had told them to give them to the audience before the show. When he came on stage and learned someone, the stage manager perhaps, has said they were to be given out after the show, he was outraged and threw a hissy fit, demanding to speak to someone. A young guy, stage hand, came out and took his abuse. When he left Ian made a lame joke about the angry young man thing, absolving himself of concerns, took credit for foreseeing global warming before anyone else as demonstrated by Skating Away and then played it. My acquaintance didn't think much of his temperamental display. The concert was great, as always - well, until the last one I saw in 2015 or so - that sucked badly - Homo Erraticus. He got polite applause. Anyway, after the show, I left but the girls hung out and hooked up with the Perry, Noyce and Giddings. The girl told me the next day that the band members complained about how strict Ian and Shona were, saying they called them mom and dad behind their backs. I wrote an email to Glenn Cornick asking were it true. He said, vehemently "Every word true! " He was clearly still angry and also said he wasn't sure how he felt about Ian these days. That was about it but I recall in their filmed reunion, maybe after 20 years, a reporter in the pub asked him why he left the band and he said "You'll have to ask Ian about that". My impression has always been that he was shocked, hurt, then angry and never got over it. Ian is a loner and a my way or the highway guy. I love him anyway. He has left a lot of band member with hurt feelings or bruised egos by dismissing them. His intention is not to hurt. it's to be free to be himself as an artist. Glenn was the closest thing to upstaging Ian, which is never going to happen. Nor would he want him partying on the road with drugs and girls, if only because it could be a minor distraction to Ian sitting in the hotels rooms writing songs and needing rest between gigs. Ian never did drugs and is true blue to his wife. It was especially painful for Glenn because they lived together and started the successful run to the top together. I'm sure it broke his heart. The most pathetic part of this episode was when Glenn's son came around to interview Ian about his dad, asking what was he like. I'm sure he would have liked to have said "Why did you kick him out of the band - it broke his heart - cost him millions and he never forgave you." But the kid played it cool, or cowardly, and just said what was dad like. Ian knows damn well how Gleen felt, dodged the entire episode - he looked pained - and said "Your dad was always just so Happy," as if trying to impart some positive message and slant on it all. I thought then, he looks like he knows the pain he caused and feels for this kid a bit. It happens. Martin Barre feels the same way to a lesser degree. Ian's just being himself and his behavior models that to everyone. Be true to yourself - some people won't like it - but not being true to yourself will feel worse than that. He's thick as a brick.

 

I always wondered if Glenn had make a play for Ian's wife. Even if he did in in jest or while drunk, that would have been a line to never cross in Ian's (and most men's) eyes.

 

Bingo!

 

This had occurred to me, too. If so, then, yes, that would be a sackable offence, in most peoples’ eyes.

But this is isn’t even a rumour: it’s just something that’s occurred to fans who want to penetrate the mystery of the Cornick firing.

Both Ian and Glenn were married men at the time of Glenn’s firing - though what ‘marriage’ might have meant to men in their very early twenties who were touring the world as part of a ‘happening’ rock act is a moot point. I can believe that Ian didn’t dally much (if at all) with groupies as he was apparently desperate to marry his Blackpool g/f and devastated when she chucked him during 1969.

Re: the interview Ian granted to Glenn’s son. I’m pretty sure this interview will only have been granted on the condition that young Cornick didn’t challenge Ian or try to get the beef on why his Dad was fired. That is very much the way Ian operates, and has operated for a long time. Any old friend who wants to meet him after a performance is likely to be told ‘No previous history’ before the audience is granted. That’s the way he rolls.

 

That’s pretty appalling - to single out a person and humiliate them in front of an audience. If he wanted to have it out with him, backstage and after the performance was the place and time to do that.

Ian has been upfront about his status as an employer and the fact that being in Tull is ‘a job and not a holiday’. Fair enough: but his employees are all responsible adults and none of the current band could be classified as ‘young’. No wonder he pisses people off. As Don Airey once commented, ‘No-one’s happy in that band.’

 

By the time of "A Passion Play", everybody in the band could be seen as upstaging Ian to a degree...

Even during his first Tull tour, in 1970, John Evan was quite flamboyant and animated too.

 

By that time Anderson was sort of ringmaster of a circus.

 

His 1977-78 lineup was extremely good - never again did Tull sell the live atmosphere

 

I don’t think Glenn did anything wrong to require being fired. Always was on time a real professional musician it’s just Ian wanted his good friend Jeffery in the band and Glenn became expendable for that reason. I remember Tony Iommi saying Ian never socialized with other band members it was strictly business.

 

Adequate? Trying to keep up? I think not. And he had incredible stage presence IMO. They all did. Not to take anything away from GC...

 

Incidentally, I do realize the video and audio aren't the same song. But the song demonstrates Jeffrey's playing skills and the visuals show what a monster he was on stage. All of them really. Again, no disrespect to Glenn Cornick who was fantastic in his own right.

 

There were a few things about Glen Cornick that "annoyed" Ian, such as being out all night when on tour and meeting the rest of the band at the airport, instead of the hotel.