Jethro Tull
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50 free Jethro Tull trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jethro Tull never fitted a category. Fronted by Ian Anderson, a singer who put the flute at the front of a rock band, the group moved from late-1960s blues through progressive epics, pastoral folk rock and synthesisers, and sold tens of millions of albums along the way. Few acts have been so successful while being so hard to describe. This quiz covers the whole story: how the band got its name, the making of Aqualung and Thick as a Brick, the hit singles, the elaborate sleeves and stage shows, the awards controversy that fans retell to this day, and the long list of musicians who came and went. There are questions on Anderson's life away from the stage too, and one on the track Quizz Kid for anyone who came looking for it. It is written for casual listeners who know Locomotive Breath from the radio as well as fans who own every remix. The early questions are the ones a pub team would get; the later ones reward people who read the small print on the sleeve.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jethro Tull took their name from an 18th-century English farmer who invented which machine?
Seed drill
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.
Q 02Which band was the hot favourite when Jethro Tull won the first Grammy for hard rock in 1989, a notorious upset?
Metallica
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.
Q 03Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is famous for playing the flute on stage in which unusual pose?
On one leg
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.
Q 04Which future heavy metal guitarist mimed with Jethro Tull on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in 1968?
Tony Iommi
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.
Q 05Which famous American festival did Ian Anderson turn down for Jethro Tull to avoid being tied to the hippie movement?
Woodstock
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.
Q 06Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was among the rock investors who helped fund a 1975 film by which comedy troupe?
Monty Python
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.
Q 07Which star of The Walking Dead became the son-in-law of Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson in 2006?
Andrew Lincoln
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.
Q 08In 2011 Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull played a flute duet with Cady Coleman while she was stationed where?
International Space Station
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.
Q 09Away from Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson spent two decades running farms in Britain and Chile that raised which fish?
Salmon
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.
Q 10Who spotted in the 1990s that Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson had been fingering his flute wrongly for decades?
His daughter
His daughter noticed the mistakes after she began taking flute lessons. Anderson then relearned his whole back catalogue with the correct fingering.
Q 11The original sleeve of Jethro Tull's 1972 album Thick as a Brick unfolded into a spoof of what?
A local newspaper
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.
Q 12Jethro Tull credited the words of Thick as a Brick to which fictional eight-year-old poetry prodigy?
Gerald Bostock
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.
Q 13Jethro Tull's 1969 flute instrumental Bourée is a jazzy reworking of a lute piece by which composer?
Q 21Critics called Jethro Tull's Aqualung a concept album because so much of it attacks which institution?
Organised religion
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.
Q 22Which 1974 Jethro Tull album, home of the hit Bungle in the Jungle, began life as music for an unmade film?
War Child
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.
Q 23Which blues band did guitarist Mick Abrahams form after quitting Jethro Tull at the end of 1968?
Blodwyn Pig
Johann Sebastian Bach
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.
Q 14Despite a name borrowed from diving gear, the title character of Jethro Tull's 1971 song Aqualung is what?
A homeless man
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.
Q 15Ian Anderson wrote Jethro Tull's 1971 song Locomotive Breath as a warning about which runaway global problem?
Overpopulation
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.
Q 16Jethro Tull's 1969 hit single Living in the Past is famous for being written in which unusual time signature?
5/4
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.
Q 17Which guitarist joined Jethro Tull in December 1968 and played the celebrated solo on the song Aqualung?
Martin Barre
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.
Q 18In which English seaside resort did Ian Anderson and two school friends start the group that became Jethro Tull?
Blackpool
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.
Q 19Which chart-topping singer and drummer sat in with Jethro Tull at the first Prince's Trust rock concert in 1982?
Phil Collins
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.
Q 20At which enormous British festival in August 1970 did Jethro Tull share the bill with Jimi Hendrix and The Who?
Isle of Wight
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.
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.
Q 24Bassist Dave Pegg spent fifteen years in Jethro Tull alongside his work with which English folk rock band?
Fairport Convention
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.
Q 25Jethro Tull's synth-heavy 1980 release A got its one-letter title because the tapes were marked for what?
A planned solo record
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.
Q 26Which 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
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.
Q 27Which record label was founded by Jethro Tull's managers, with the band as one of its first big successes?
Chrysalis
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.
Q 28Jethro Tull's long American tour of 1969 was spent opening for Vanilla Fudge and which British hard rock band?
Led Zeppelin
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.
Q 29Iain McCaig, cover artist of Jethro Tull's The Broadsword and the Beast, later designed which Star Wars villain?
Darth Maul
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.
Q 30Jethro 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
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.