50 Fun Facts About Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull took their name from an 18th-century English farmer who invented which machine?

Seed drill pioneer Tull sowed crops in neat rows from 1701, and a history-loving booking agent borrowed his name for the band. Ian Anderson assumed the agent had made it up.

Which band was the hot favourite when Jethro Tull won the first Grammy for hard rock in 1989, a notorious upset?

Metallica were so widely expected to win that Jethro Tull stayed at home on their label's advice. The audience booed when the result was read out.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is famous for playing the flute on stage in which unusual pose?

On one leg was how he first played harmonica, holding on to the microphone for balance. A journalist wrongly wrote that he played the flute that way, so he decided to live up to it.

Which future heavy metal guitarist mimed with Jethro Tull on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in 1968?

Tony Iommi lasted only a couple of weeks before going home to Birmingham and the group that became Black Sabbath. The TV special is the only footage of him as a member.

Which famous American festival did Ian Anderson turn down for Jethro Tull to avoid being tied to the hippie movement?

Woodstock went ahead without the band because Anderson feared being typecast for good. That same year Jethro Tull did say yes to the Newport Jazz Festival.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was among the rock investors who helped fund a 1975 film by which comedy troupe?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail was paid for partly with rock money, including cash from Pink Floyd and three record labels. Anderson's Thick as a Brick had already borrowed the troupe's humour.

Which star of The Walking Dead became the son-in-law of Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson in 2006?

Andrew Lincoln married Gael Anderson in June 2006, four years before he was cast as zombie-fighting lead Rick Grimes. British viewers then knew him from the sitcom Teachers.

In 2011 Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull played a flute duet with Cady Coleman while she was stationed where?

International Space Station astronaut Coleman played her part in orbit to mark 50 years since Yuri Gagarin's flight. One of the flutes she took up there belonged to Anderson.

Away from Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson spent two decades running farms in Britain and Chile that raised which fish?

Salmon turned the singer into a serious businessman: his farm on the Isle of Skye kept him busy while the band took a three-year break in the 1980s.

Who spotted in the 1990s that Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson had been fingering his flute wrongly for decades?

His daughter noticed the mistakes after she began taking flute lessons. Anderson then relearned his whole back catalogue with the correct fingering.

The original sleeve of Jethro Tull's 1972 album Thick as a Brick unfolded into a spoof of what?

A local newspaper of 12 pages, full of mock articles, competitions and adverts, wrapped the record. The label called it too costly, but Ian Anderson replied that if a real paper could be printed, so could a parody.

Jethro Tull credited the words of Thick as a Brick to which fictional eight-year-old poetry prodigy?

Gerald Bostock was a hoax subtle enough that some fans believed the boy poet was real. Ian Anderson wrote every word himself and followed the character into adulthood on a 2012 sequel.

Jethro Tull's 1969 flute instrumental Bourée is a jazzy reworking of a lute piece by which composer?

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the Bourrée in E minor more than 250 years before the band borrowed it. Jethro Tull took only the first eight bars and then swung off into jazz.

Despite a name borrowed from diving gear, the title character of Jethro Tull's 1971 song Aqualung is what?

A homeless man in a photograph taken by Ian Anderson's then wife sparked the song. When the band remade the whole album live in 2004, the proceeds went to charities for rough sleepers.

Ian Anderson wrote Jethro Tull's 1971 song Locomotive Breath as a warning about which runaway global problem?

Overpopulation is the unstoppable train of the title. Ian Anderson struggled to explain the song to the band, so he laid down the hi-hat and bass drum himself and the parts were overdubbed one by one.

Jethro Tull's 1969 hit single Living in the Past is famous for being written in which unusual time signature?

5/4 time came from Dave Brubeck's jazz hit Take Five, which Ian Anderson named as his inspiration. The lopsided beat carried the single to number three in Britain all the same.

Which guitarist joined Jethro Tull in December 1968 and played the celebrated solo on the song Aqualung?

Martin Barre nearly fluffed the take when Jimmy Page walked into the control room and waved at him. He stayed with the band until it dissolved in 2011.

In which English seaside resort did Ian Anderson and two school friends start the group that became Jethro Tull?

Blackpool Grammar School is where Anderson met John Evan and Jeffrey Hammond. A plaque marks the church in the town where they played their first gig in 1964.

Which chart-topping singer and drummer sat in with Jethro Tull at the first Prince's Trust rock concert in 1982?

Phil Collins filled in for one night during a spell when the band had no settled drummer. Barriemore Barlow had left in 1980 and a run of temporary players followed.

At which enormous British festival in August 1970 did Jethro Tull share the bill with Jimi Hendrix and The Who?

Isle of Wight footage of the set was later released as Nothing Is Easy, which also shows the band's manager clashing with the promoters. It was among the largest crowds the group ever faced.

Critics called Jethro Tull's Aqualung a concept album because so much of it attacks which institution?

Organised religion is the target of side two, which Ian Anderson subtitled My God. He disliked the concept-album label so much that he wrote Thick as a Brick as a send-up of the form.

Which 1974 Jethro Tull album, home of the hit Bungle in the Jungle, began life as music for an unmade film?

War Child was planned as a double album to accompany a film, but no major studio would finance the movie. It was cut down to ten songs and reached number two in America.

Which blues band did guitarist Mick Abrahams form after quitting Jethro Tull at the end of 1968?

Blodwyn Pig let Abrahams play the blues-rock he preferred to the folk and jazz Ian Anderson wanted to add. Its first two albums both reached the UK top ten.

Bassist Dave Pegg spent fifteen years in Jethro Tull alongside his work with which English folk rock band?

Fairport Convention counts Pegg as its longest-serving member. He left Jethro Tull in 1995, unhappy with the world-music direction Ian Anderson was taking.

Jethro Tull's synth-heavy 1980 release A got its one-letter title because the tapes were marked for what?

A planned solo record by Ian Anderson became a band release only after pressure from the label, its tapes marked A for Anderson. He later regretted letting it out under the Jethro Tull name.

Which British heavy metal band recorded Jethro Tull's Cross-Eyed Mary as a B-side in 1983 and saw it win US radio play?

Iron Maiden tucked the cover behind their single The Trooper, yet American radio preferred the B-side. Bassist Steve Harris has long named Jethro Tull as an influence.

Which record label was founded by Jethro Tull's managers, with the band as one of its first big successes?

Chrysalis blends the names of managers Chris Wright and Terry Ellis and is also the word for a butterfly's pupal stage. Early success with Jethro Tull won the label a distribution deal with Island.

Jethro Tull's long American tour of 1969 was spent opening for Vanilla Fudge and which British hard rock band?

Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull were both newcomers to America that year. Before the trip, Tull had played a few Scandinavian dates supporting Jimi Hendrix.

Iain McCaig, cover artist of Jethro Tull's The Broadsword and the Beast, later designed which Star Wars villain?

Darth Maul and Padmé Amidala were both McCaig designs for The Phantom Menace. Such a fan that he cancelled a trip to Paris, where he planned to propose, he took the sleeve job instead.

Jethro Tull's Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll, home of the song Quizz Kid, tells its story on the sleeve through what?

A comic strip follows Ray Lomas, a faded rocker who wins money on a quiz show and wakes years later to find his style back in fashion. Ian Anderson denied that Lomas was a self-portrait.

Which 1987 Jethro Tull comeback album, often compared to Dire Straits, featured Farm on the Freeway and Steel Monkey?

Crest of a Knave followed a three-year break forced by Ian Anderson's throat trouble, which left him singing in a lower register. It became the band's only Grammy winner.

Bassist Jeffrey Hammond quit Jethro Tull in 1975 and never played again, returning to which first love?

Painting drew him back so firmly that he burned his black-and-white striped stage suit on the way out. He had studied art before Ian Anderson recruited him and bought him a bass.

Which blind American jazzman, whose Serenade to a Cuckoo is on Jethro Tull's debut, shaped Ian Anderson's flute style?

Roland Kirk sang and hummed into the flute as he played, a technique Anderson learned and made his signature. The two met when both performed at the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival.

Before Jethro Tull took off, Ian Anderson paid his rent in Luton by doing which job at the Ritz Cinema?

Cleaner was his morning job, toilets included, and he said it took him half the day. He took home an old chipped urinal from the cinema storeroom when he left.

Jethro Tull's 1968 debut single Sunshine Day was credited to the band with which wrong second word in its name?

Toe appears on the genuine first pressing, which is credited to Jethro Toe. Copies with the name spelled correctly are counterfeits made in New York.

To which country did Jethro Tull relocate in July 1971 to escape increasingly strict British tax laws?

Switzerland made the band tax exiles, a move that put a strain on Ian Anderson's first marriage. He later kept a home in Montreux for a time.

The spoken interlude on Jethro Tull's A Passion Play tells of which animal who lost his spectacles?

Hare and friends never do find the glasses in the absurd fable, which Jeffrey Hammond narrated in an exaggerated Lancashire accent. It has been likened to Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

Which poet's verses addressed to a mouse inspired One Brown Mouse on Jethro Tull's 1978 album Heavy Horses?

Robert Burns gave the album one literary spark and John le Carré another: the song Moths drew on his novel The Naive and Sentimental Lover.

On Jethro Tull's 1982 tour for The Broadsword and the Beast, the stage was built to look like what?

A Viking longship carried the band, who performed in medieval costume. The tour was one of the group's last big indulgences in stage theatre.

Jethro Tull's 2023 album RökFlöte builds its songs around the gods of which mythology?

Norse paganism's principal gods supply the characters, and Ian Anderson took the first half of the title from Ragnarök, noting that rök can mean destiny or course.

Which famous hard rock drummer called Jethro Tull's Barriemore Barlow the greatest rock drummer England ever produced?

John Bonham admired Barlow so much that, after his own death in 1980, his bandmates considered Barlow as a possible replacement. They chose to break up instead.

Before joining Jethro Tull on keyboards in 1976, Dee Palmer had served the band since its early days in which role?

Orchestral arranger Palmer had scored horns and strings for the band from its 1968 debut onwards. In 1980 she and John Evan both learned by letter that they were out.

Which London club gave Jethro Tull a weekly residency early on, which is why that week's band name stuck?

The Marquee booked the group while they happened to be billed as Jethro Tull, one of many aliases used to win repeat gigs. Club manager John Gee later had a B-side named after him.

Which 1977 Jethro Tull album, steeped in English folklore, opened a trilogy of folk rock records?

Songs from the Wood drew on a book of British folklore and legends that Ian Anderson had been given the year before. Its song Ring Out, Solstice Bells had already been a modest hit as an EP the winter before.

Jethro Tull's last studio album before a 19-year gap, released in 2003, was devoted to music for which holiday?

Christmas carols sit beside remakes of the band's own winter songs on the record, including a new version of the 1976 hit Ring Out, Solstice Bells.

Which former Roxy Music violinist and keyboard player guested on Jethro Tull's 1980 release A and its tour?

Eddie Jobson had opened for the band with his group UK on the previous tour. Billed as a special guest, he left once the A tour was over.

One side of Jethro Tull's Living in the Past was recorded live in November 1970 at which New York venue?

Carnegie Hall hosted the show as a benefit for Phoenix House, a drug rehabilitation charity. Only two numbers made the 1972 compilation, and most of the rest stayed unreleased until a 1993 box set.

Which 2022 release was Jethro Tull's first studio album in 19 years and their first UK top ten entry since 1972?

The Zealot Gene began each song from a passage of the Bible, though it is not a concept album. It entered the UK chart at number nine after nearly five years in the making.

Ian Anderson, the voice and flute of Jethro Tull, was born in which country?

Scotland was home until he was twelve, when the family left Edinburgh for England. His father ran a boiler fluid company in Dunfermline.

Jethro Tull recorded Minstrel in the Gallery in 1975 with a purpose-built mobile studio in which tiny tax haven?

Monaco hosted the sessions in a Monte Carlo hotel, making it the first Tull album recorded outside Britain. The hired orchestra struggled with rock music, so a British string quartet was used instead.