“Lend me your ear while I call you a fool”
I’ve always been a sucker for a bit of folk and fantasy in my rock so I instantly fell in love with The Witch’s Promise the moment I saw Jethro Tull’s 1970 performance of it on Top Of The Pops (as part of the 1993 BBC series Sounds Of The Seventies). It took me years to find it on an album but luckily I videotaped the show so I could continue to partake of the song’s wonderful vocal melodies and lush layers of acoustic guitars, flute and keyboards. It had the swinging, hippy pop style of the band’s early material but The Witch’s Promise also pointed the way forward to the folkier, singer/songwriter focus and lush orchestrations of Jethro Tull’s future work. It was a watershed track that introduced me to one of my favourite bands and, by extension, the wider world of folk and prog rock. And it still bewitches me to this day.
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
I like some Tull too.
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Time to revisit this!
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As the years go by I am digging them more and more.
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Probably my favourite band.
Why did it take you years to find it on an album?
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I just never saw any albums in the shops with it on it. I bought two compilations and it wasn’t on either. At the time I think it was only on the Living In The Past album and that just seemed to be hard to come by at the time.
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Right; it was a single, back then when singles weren’t on albums in most cases. I bought three Tull albums in the States before moving to Germany in 1983, one of which was Living in the Past. I have two copies of that, because in Germany I picked up the UK version, which is a bit different.
Ian is still going strong, but one can debate whether his current group should be called Jethro Tull, especially since in 1987 he stated that there could never be a Jethro Tull without Martin Barre. Be that as it may, his newer stuff is actually quite good. However, his voice when singing live hasn’t been good for 40 years now, probably mainly to damaging it on the Under Wraps tour.
The last couple of times I saw him, he played no guitar. (Same is true of Bob Dylan.) I’m not sure why. Ian not only wrote great words and music, and was really innovative with the flute as the lead instrument in what was sometimes a hard-rock* band, but was also a phenomenally good singer and acoustic-guitar player, in both cases sounding like no-one else.
He also played keyboards on most of The Broadsword and the Beast; Vettese came in late and played only piano and organ; it’s Ian on the synthesizers. After John Glascock had died, he played bass on Stormwatch. That album has some of the best rock bass lines ever, not just in the Tull catalogue but overall. Check out “Dark Ages”.
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I don’t think it helped that I was late to buying CDs back then. It might have been easier to find if I wasn’t restricted to tape/vinyl. I ended up with M.U. though, which was a great introduction!
Stormwatch is one of my very favourite Tull albums actually. Maybe my favourite full stop. Broadsword is not far behind.
I’m not as interested in Tull after Under Wraps, although I have all the main albums up to Roots And Branches. I saw Tull live only once when they were doing the whole Aqualung album and I didn’t enjoy it much. I then saw Anderson solo (don’t think it was in support of any particular album) and that was pretty good. I don’t seem to remember him playing much, if any guitar, that time. But I might be wrong. I really love his acoustic playing. I’ve learned quite a few of his acoustic-based songs.
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Both of my Living in the Past are on vinyl. Don’t have it on CD as the non-album songs showed up as extras on the remastered CDs.
When CDs came out, I had all albums up until then by Rush and Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd and many by the Beatles (still my four favourite groups). As a result, early CD purchases were by other bands, rather than buying stuff I already had on vinyl. Glad I waited, as I later bought the remastered CDs when they came out. Tull also did the right thing with Nightcap, bringing out a double CD of non-album stuff.
The first lot of remastered CDs (Tull, Floyd, Rush, later the Fab Four) are great. I am not a fan of repackaging stuff every four years. Floyd are particularly bad at this; Rush are good in that there is very little of it, ditto the Beatles. Tull has had expanded versions more recently. I don’t need the Steven Wilson remix or some high-definition audio no-one on the planet can distinguish from CD. It would be nice to have the books though. Even though the costs of a CD is negligible (though the effort going into it might not be), I don’t like buying stuff I already have. What I REALLY hate is re-releasing an album with one extra bonus track, otherwise unavailable. A slap in the face of the fans who supported the band by buying the earlier release.
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Both of my Living in the Past are on vinyl. Don’t have it on CD as the non-album songs showed up as extras on the remastered CDs.
When CDs came out, I had all albums up until then by Rush and Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd and many by the Beatles (still my four favourite groups). As a result, early CD purchases were by other bands, rather than buying stuff I already had on vinyl. Glad I waited, as I later bought the remastered CDs when they came out. Tull also did the right thing with Nightcap, bringing out a double CD of non-album stuff.
The first lot of remastered CDs (Tull, Floyd, Rush, later the Fab Four) are great. I am not a fan of repackaging stuff every four years. Floyd are particularly bad at this; Rush are good in that there is very little of it, ditto the Beatles. Tull has had expanded versions more recently. I don’t need the Steven Wilson remix or some high-definition audio no-one on the planet can distinguish from CD. It would be nice to have the books though. Even though the costs of a CD is negligible (though the effort going into it might not be), I don’t like buying stuff I already have. What I REALLY hate is re-releasing an album with one extra bonus track, otherwise unavailable. A slap in the face of the fans who supported the band by buying the earlier release.
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Yes, totally agree. And the size/prices of new reissues are getting increasingly ridiculous. It’s hard to justify buying them a lot of the time but frustrating to be left out. A recent Mott The Hoople one had only a couple of songs I don’t already have and great-looking book but I can’t spend £100+ just for that.
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