An introduction to
"Stand Up"
In December 1968 after the
release of This Was and a visit to the BBC-studios, where
Jethro Tull recorded a rendition of T-Bone Walker's
'Stormy Monday Blues', Mick Abrahams left the band. At
this point Ian Anderson felt free to begin his
songwriting in earnest, free of the blues tradition. 'A
Christmas Song', 'Love Story' and 'Living In The Past'
were the first examples of his song writing capabilities
that show the emerging of his own style, using 'new'
instruments like the mandolin. The popularity of the band
increased, they had their first hits in the English Top
40 and continued touring extensively. One of their first
gigs abroad was in Stockholm, early 1969. In this period
Ian wrote the songs for what would become the new album
'Stand Up', released in the summer of that year and by
many fans considered to be the first real Tull-album.
'Stand Up' contains ten
songs, all written in a different style, a feature that
is present on most Tull-albums. But there are more: the
use of unconvential instruments such as the balalaika,
mandolin, hammond organ, strings and - of course - Ian's
characteristic flute playing. Another feature is the
sequence of the songs: rock songs alternate with acoustic
pieces. (We will see on later albums how this alternation
is applied within the songs as well).
The flute has become the
main instrument on this album, playing both a solo and a
supporting role as well. Martin Barre - the new lead
guitarist - adds with his versatility an extra quality to
the album. When we look at the lyrics, they still are
quite plain, like on 'This Was' most of them being love
songs, but the poetic element and the imagination of
feelings in most of them are striking.
Though the band on this
album moves away from the 'straitjacket' of the blues
idiom, it still has a very bluesy atmosphere in songs
like 'A New Day Yesterday', 'Back To The Family',
'Nothing Is Easy' and 'For A Thousand Mothers'. 'Stand
Up' and the next album 'Benefit' show the transition from
Jethro Tull as a blues band to a band that is about to
set it's own standards when it comes to form of music and
contents/subjects of lyrics.
A photograph taken
by Paul S. Smith during one of the two Jethro Tull gigs
at Filmore East, New York, December 6, 1969.
Annotations
A New Day Yesterday
Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square
The second song on
the album refers, like 'A Song For Jeffrey' to
Jeffrey Hammond, who joined Jethro Tull in late
1970 as bass player. This Jeffrey will turn up
once more on the Benefit-album in the song 'For
Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me'.
Bourée
Ask people
"Do you know Jethro Tull?" and they
will very likely answer: "Yes, they had a
hit with Bourée." This piece of music was
inspired by a lute piece composed by J.S. Bach (
I still do not know which one exactly). 'Bourée'
does not only show Ian's improvisational talents
on flute, but also brings Glenn Cornick's firm
bass playing to the fore. It consists of three
parts: the classic Bach theme, an improvisational
part featuring flute and bass, and a reprise of
the theme now played by two flutes.
What is the origin of the
well-known and very successful Tull-hit
'Bouree'? After some research I came up
with the following.
Ian Anderson's Bouree is indeed an adaptation of
a Johann Sebastian Bach Bourree. The
original version by Bach can be found as the
fifth movement of the Suite in E minor for Lute
(BWV 996). A suite is a popular 17th and
18th century musical form consisting of a series
of dances. Most of the time a suite
consists of four dance-forms: the Allemande
(originated in Germany), the Courante (originated
in France), the Sarabande (originated in Spain)
and the Gigue (jig) (originated in
England). Other dance forms were the
Minuet, the Gavotte, the Polonaise, the Bourree,
and many others.
The Suite in E minor, where Jethro Tull's Bourée
can be found, is the earliest work that Bach
composed for the Lute. It is nick-named
"Aufs Lautenwercke" (From works for the
Lute). It dates from the middle of Bach's Weimar
period (1708-1717). Bach did not compose
many works for the lute and occasionally, in
Bach's own time, those works were performed on
the lute/harpsichord, a hybrid instrument in
whose construction Bach had assisted. Now
something more about the bourree. The correct
spelling is 'Bourrée' with an 'accent aigu' on
the first e.
EXCERPT from 'The New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians. London : MacMillan, 1980. - ISBN
0-333-23111-2.'; Vol. 3; pages 116-117.
Article by Meredith Ellis Little.
"Bourree (Fr.; It. borea; Eng. boree,
borry).
A French folkdance, court dance and instrumental
form, which flourished form the mid-17th century
until the mid-18th. As a folkdance it had
many varieties, and dances called bourree are
still known in various parts of France; in Berry,
Languedoc, Bourbonnais and Cantal the bourree is
a duple-metre dance, while in Limousin and the
Auvergne it is commonly in triple metre.
Many historians, including Rousseau (1768),
believed that the bourree originated in the
Auvergne as the characteristic BRANLE of that
region, but others have suggested that Italian
and Spanish influences played a part in its
development. It is not certain if there is
a specific relationship between the duple French
folkdance and the court bourree.
Specific information on the bourree as a court
dance is available only for the 18th century,
whence at least 24 choreographies entitled
bourree are extant, both for social dancing and
for theatrical use. The bourree was a fast
duple-metre courtship dance, with a mood
described variously as 'gay' (Rousseau 1768) and
'content and self-composed' (Matheson, 1739). The
step pattern common to all bourrees, which also
occurred in other French court dances, was the
'pas de bourree' (Bourree step). It consists of a
'demi-coupe' (half-cut), a 'plie' (bend) followed
by an 'eleve' (rise on to the foot making the
next step), a plain step, and a small gentle
leap. These three steps occurred with the
first three crotchets of a bar, whether in the
duple metre of a bourrée or the triple metre of
a sarabande, where the 'pas de bourrée' was also
used.
If the small leap were replaced by a plain step,
the pattern resulting was called a
'fleuret'. The 'pas de bourree' preceded
the 'fleuret' historically, and is somewhat more
difficult to execute; by the early 18th century,
however the two steps seem to have been used
interchangeably, according to the dancer's
ability. The bourrée as a social dance was
a mixture of 'fleurets', 'pas de bourrées',
leaps, hops, and the 'tems de courante' (gesture
consisting of a bend, rise and slide at places of
repose. The stylized bourree flourished as an
instrumental form from the early 17th
century. Praetorius'
"Terpsichore" (1612) included a few
examples, all with quite simple phrasing and a
homophonic texture. The Kassel Manuscript (ed. J.
Ecorcheville, "Vingt suites
d'orchestre", 1906/R1970) also contains a
number of bourrées, often placed as the second
dance in a suite. As the order of dances in
a suite became more conventionalized in the
familiar allemande-courante-sarabande group, the
bourrée continued to be included fairly often,
coming after the sarabande with other less
serious dances like the minuet and the
gavotte. In that position it was included
in orchestral suites by J.F.C. Fisher, Johann
Krieger, Georg Muffat and Bach."
* Erik Arfeuille
Back To The Family
The song is about
the double feeling in regard to the life the
narrator lives. On the one hand he is fed up with
the stressful life he lives, leaving him no peace
of mind:
"Living
this life has its problems,
so I think that I'll give it a break".
It makes him long for rest in the seclusion of
family life:
"where no one can ring me at all".
On the other hand, once he chooses to do so, he
gets bored with what he finds there, especially
the dullness and recognizes what made him leave
in the first place:
"Master's in the
counting house counting all his money.
Sister's sitting by the mirror she thinks her
hair looks funny".
It makes him wonder why he came back:
"And here I am
thinking to myself just wond'ring what things to
do."
To his own surprise he starts longing back for
the tough life in the city:
"I think I enjoyed
all my problems
Where didn't I get nothing for free."
and decides to go back as
"doing nothing is
bothering me"
and "
There's
more fun away from the family
get some action when I pour into town".
But from the moment he gets there, everything he
ran from starts all over again:
"Phone keeps ringing
all day long, I got no time for thinking.
And every day has the same old way of giving me
to much to do."
Does this song
refer to Jethro Tull's heavily touring in 1969,
when they performed in many US-cities, and the
pressure of writing in the mean time a set of new
songs to record when back home? Clive Bunker
noted that Ian quickly became dissillusioned with
life on the road. He felt the constant pressure
of being the singer, songwriter, frontman and
leader of the band. There are more explicit
references regarding this matter on the Benefit
album, as we will see.
I want to
conclude this page with a personal note - the
only one I intend to make on this site: I relate
to 'Stand Up' in a special way. It was my first
Tull-album (though I knew the band for almost a
year already from listening to illegal radio
stations). I got it from my parents on my 17th
birthday in October 1969. In the few weeks that
followed the album changed my taste for music
dramatically. It moved me away from Beatles and
Rolling Stones, Animals and Byrds, from the soul
music and the middle-of-the-road music of this
era, that I was then interested in so much. I
turned to the blues and American underground
music and everything that we nowadays would call
progressive rock. Beside Tull, my new favorites
became Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac,
Cream, Soft Machine, Colosseum, Pink Floyd, Neil
Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jimmy Hendrix -
to name a few heroes. 'Stand up' also triggered
my interest for jazz, ethnic and classical music.
It was not only that Tull from that moment on
became a musical love for life: I also discovered
music as a form of art, that like poetry and
painting requires efforts from us, readers,
listeners, spectators - containing a language
that give word, image, sound, representation to
personal experiences, feelings, worries, thoughts
or whatever. I got specially interested in
lyrics, assuming like many of us young students
in those days, that every song 'had something
special to say, if one was only willing to look
for it'. This coincided with literature classes I
took for Dutch, English and French, evoking my
love for poetry. I then of course could not
foresee, that this website eventually would
sprout from this interest....... As for my
parents, who started this after all: thanks,
that's what I call education.
* Jan Voorbij
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