Published on May 19, 1998
What better way to celebrate ten years together as a band than
to release your first live album? To fans of Jethro Tull in 1978,
this might have seemed like a great gift the band would give the
fans.
Bursting Out, unfortunately, is not the best portrait of
Jethro Tull as a live act, though it might have been a
frighteningly accurate one at the time.
Let’s get the problems out of the way first. Number one: the
tour they chose to base their live album from. At the time, they
were touring behind
Heavy Horses, an album it would be a stretch to call one of
their best. One would have thought that Ian Anderson would have
selected a different album to represent a live Tull show – after
all, they had re-established themselves in the market one album
previous with
Songs From The Wood.
Second problem: the overall sound is occasionally murky. Maybe
part of the problem is that I ‘m reviewing this from my vinyl copy
from deep within the Pierce Archives (I swear, we’ve meant to
re-sign the lease…), and the CD could have a better sound. (The
fact that there are actually censor’s bleeps on this album trouble
me… when was the last time you heard of such a thing on a
commercial recording?) Third problem, which I don’t think anyone
knew at the time: Bassist John Glascock was seriously ill with a
heart ailment. (He would die during the recording of
Stormwatch after surgery.) And although his playing seems
solid enough, I won’t make comparisons to people like Glenn Cornick
or Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond under the circumstances.
Final problem, and the biggest to me: Why are some of the songs
shortened? Shortening “Thick As A Brick” I can understand, but “A
New Day Yesterday”? Cutting a verse from “Cross-Eyed Mary”?
Sacrilege! Of course, I recognize I’m being a hypocrite here, as
Tull has been doing this for some time – and if the time I saw them
on tour in 1992 is any indication, they’re not about to stop now.
Still, I would have liked to hear the full versions of some of my
favorite songs.
Oh, the classics are well-represented and performed on
Bursting Out. “Songs From The Wood” shines as it always
does, as do many of the selections from
Aqualung. And the different instrumentation on “Skating Away
On The Thin Ice Of A New Day” sounds completely natural – I
wouldn’t have thought these were not the normal instruments that
people like Barriemore Barlow played every night.
In fact, the newer songs (in 1978 parlance) are not well
represented here. “No Lullaby” is a flat way to open the show,
while “Too Old To Rock ‘N’ Roll, Too Young To Die” suffers from
Anderson’s cutting it short – this is a song that is meant to be
played in its entirety. Even “One Brown Mouse,” a surprisingly
gentle song off
Heavy Horses, suffers in the translation to the stage.
However, a few surprises do lurk within. “Hunting Girl,” quite
possibly the kinkiest Anderson ever got lyric-wise, does stand out
among the new songs. And “Jack In The Green” is not a bad rendition
of the folk-flavored number from
Songs From The Wood.
The true star of this album proves to be one of Jethro Tull’s
underappreciated talents: Martin Barre. His guitar work on
Bursting Out is stellar, especially on concert-only pieces
like “Quatrain” and “The Dambusters March”.
I will admit that I liked
Bursting Out nowadays a lot more than I did when I first
bought the album back around 1987. In one sense, you can almost
hear Anderson’s voice beginning to get rougher in tone, much like
how he sounds in modern-day Tull incarnations. I realize he wasn’t
the scraggly kid of olden days like
This Was or
Benefit, but it’s still kind of sad to hear the passage of
time.
Bursting Out is not a terrible album, and is still a prize
for Tull fans to pounce on, as it remains their only
mostly-electric live album. (They recorded
A Little Light Music, an acoustic live album, back in 1994.)
But many fans might listen with a sense of what could have been.
It’s not always pleasurable to see how much time changes things
after 10 years.