Cup Of Wonder
The Annotated Jethro Tull Lyrics Page

Annotations, information, comments, references

An introduction to "Benefit"

The year 1970 was a very important one for Jethro Tull. The band had really arrived after their three US tours in 1969, supporting Led Zeppelin a.o. Now they had their first headlining tour in the US, but the heavy schedules, third-class hotels, transport and food were taking their toll, as Martin Barre said that year: "We haven't stopped working this past year. It's like a conveyor belt thing, making records, going through America, it's endless". Ian himself said: "I enjoyed the concerts but everything else I really hated, because it seemed such a terrible way of life. Every tour was 'the last one'. My only recreation was writing the songs, which at least injected some meaning into a hotel room".

And that is exactly were most of the material for the new album was written: 'Benefit', released in 1970, for which the keyboard-services of old friend John Evans were called upon and who would join the band lateron. Even more than 'Stand Up' the album moved away from the blues ( which would not be 'revisited' until 'Catfish Rising' in 1991). Like on 'Stand Up' the album contains ten songs and acoustic and rock songs alternate, but there is an important new feature that would make its way to every future album from then on: the combination of rock and acoustic parts within the songs. We can almost see Ian experiment with this idea in songs like 'Son' and 'Alive And Well And Living In'. According to Craig Thomas in his liner notes in the 25th Anniversary box set Tull began to use thos electric/acoustic dichotomy in their music to represent "... the clash between individual and society, rural and urban, between happiness (however qualified) and disillusion..."

As for the lyrics: we see a further development. They are more poetic, there is more imagery. Apart from the beautiful balad like love song 'Sossity', they do reflect the disillusions with hard life on the road and a sense of dislocation, as if Ian grew up in a generation he felt he didn't belong to. This last aspect emerged from Ian's dismay for having to play for people under the influence of drugs and alcohol: "It's a little disturbing playing to people who are, to quote, turned on. It's difficult to know how to play to them. It's disturbing to know that they must to some extent imagine that I personally, and the other fellows in the band, are just the same as them, you know?" (Hit Parader interview, 1969). Like Frank Zappa he hated to perform for a crowd of loaded hippies. Ian remained a strong spokesman against drugs and alcohol for the duration of his career. We find his first critical remarks on that matter in 'Christmas Song'. He stated he avoids intoxication because he feels it interferes with his creative process and that he needs to remain clear-headed to accomplish the kind of self-analysis that he considers at the cornerstone of his writing. Judson Caswell suggests that this attitude acted to distance him from his audiences and from his contemporaries: "unable to express these sentiments overtly without ostracizing much of his audience, his opions towards drugs were 'bottled up' and arose as bitterness and anger in his music toward the general culture of the times. (This bitterness is very explicit on 'Aqualung', as we will see - JV). He also speaks disdainfully and condescendingly of the pace and greed of America in interviews at this time".

Among Tull-fans , 'Benefit' is generally considered as a good but not remarkable album. I think that is unjust. Regarding the context and period it was conceived and released and taking in account the band's further development, it is a very important album. With 'Benefit' the band was both musically and lyrically speaking on the threshold of consolidating their own style which is so evident on what I therefore tend to consider as the first real Tull-album: 'Aqualung'.

'Inside'/'Alive And Well And Living In', the single taken from the 'Benefit' album in 1970. The picture shows us new band member John Evans and Ian's first wife Jennie, who wrote the lyrics of the title track of "Aqualung".

Annotations

For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me

• The above mentioned feeling of alienation and dislocation is reflected in the refrain:
  "I'm with you LEM though it's a shame that it had to be you.
  The mother ship is just a blip from your trip made for two.
  I'm with you boys, so please employ just a little extra care.
  It's on my mind I'm left behind when I should have been there.
  Walking with you."
  Michael Collins was one of the three astronauts who made the first flight to the moon in July 1969. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the surface of the moon, Michael Collins stayed in the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Jeffrey was Jeffrey Hammond, who is earlier mentioned in "A Song For Jeffrey"and "Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square" and who in 1971 became Tull's new bass player. In the paper "Songs From The Wood" it is suggested that perhaps Ian felt that as Jethro Tull became more popular and John Evans joined the band on keyboards, Jeffrey and the simpler 'good old days' when they were just starting out in the music business were left behind.
  * Jan Voorbij

To Cry You A Song

• The only remaining mystery for me in "To Cry You a Song" are the verselines "Closing my dream inside its paper-bag, Thought I saw angels but I could have been wrong". I suppose the "dream" could be anything at all, and the "paper bag" could even be metaphorical. In the Rolling Stone interview of July 1971, Ian Anderson claimed he avoided all drugs except tobacco and coffee. If true, then the scenario leading up to the reunion with the lover really is just him being on a plane back to England as he anticipates "getting down", and "how many cigarettes did I bring along" refers to tobacco. Of course, the words "flying high", "cigarettes", and "dream inside [a] paper bag" may have been chosen so as to mis-imply marijuana, since he had to suffer customs "Search in my case, can't find what they're looking for, waving me through.....".
  * Dale Chock

• "How many cigarettes did I bring along" might mean: 1. Do I have enough cigarettes for the flight/road home ( a daily concern for smokers ....) or, 2. How many taxfree cigarettes did I buy? Will the customs-officers make me pay? And the "paper bag"? Does it contain things he bought at the airport? And if so, what makes him "dream"? Glossy magazines full of beautiful women ('Angels') ?
  * Jan Voorbij

Play In Time

• The song shows Ian's struggle for finding his own way of musical expression in the lines
  "Blues were my favorite colour,
  'til I looked around and found another song
  that I felt like singing".
  In an interview he stated: I quickly became dissatisfied with what we were doing. I found it hard to go on stage and convincingly be a polite shade of black. What really got me was that I was singing something that was essentially stolen. And it wasn't just stealing music, it was stealing somebody's emotions and point of view, almost pretending to have an awareness of what it means to be black."
  * Ian Anderson: "Trouser Press Magazine - Autodiscography, October 1982.