Interview with Jethro Tull - Jethro Tull.mp3

[00:00.000] 作曲 : Non Music Work
[00:00.000]I think when we started recording thick, thick as a brick,
[00:03.797]we didn't know how the end result would be a concept album or,
[00:09.461]you know, whatever you're calling a concept. I think it was just started life as another Tull album
[00:15.876]and and we learnt the music in the way that we learnt music for Aqualung benefit other albums,
[00:22.232]but it developed along the way, mainly because we were splicing all the bits of music together to make it continuous.
[00:30.889]We never, , I don't think we were ever aware of what direction it was going to end up going in.
[00:36.743]It's just something we did on a day, day to day basis as we recorded it.
[00:41.874]We rehearsed for about a month in Bermondsey,
[00:45.678]wasn't it in Bermondsey?
[00:47.934]And so, so some sections of the album I think mainly the first, I would guess first. Half of the album,
[00:56.597]maybe as much as that was actually rehearsed at Bermondsey.
[01:00.978]And do we ever record it and then go back to Bermondsey,
[01:03.463]or do we just do it continuously from there onwards?
[01:05.792]I just remember being in a basement, a very dank and dirty place, rehearsing.
[01:09.736]It was disgusting.
[01:11.108]I don't remember how it evolved.
[01:13.493]In two sessions. Yeah, of course the memory is a bit vague,
[01:17.277]but yeah, it was a dreadful rehearsal room. It was sort of miles from anywhere.
[01:21.849]I remember I had to take Barry there. I think we took it in turns, but I remember driving more than Barry did,
[01:28.949]and we were always on that dreadful South Circular and we always got there.
[01:35.296]It's sort of office hours. So it was the worst traffic, the worst journey.
[01:39.566]A big lorry driver swearing at you. And I was in my little MG and,
[01:44.652]so by the time he got there, an hour and a half after leaving Putney,
[01:48.300]you're in a foul mood. He then went down to this disgusting, smelly, dark, dirty basement.
[01:55.448]Uh, even I remember sort of coffee cups. Everything was filthy.
[01:59.563]It was just dreadful place and sort of shut ourselves away all day,
[02:05.185]uh, learning music. So really, something good had to come out of it because it was just a dreadful place.
[02:12.367]It probably came about primarily because the thing that we'd done the year before,
[02:16.868]which was the Aqualung album, um, had generally been perceived as a concept album,
[02:23.006]whereas to me it was just a bunch of songs, as I've always said.
[02:25.973]And so the first thing about Thick as a Brick was, let's come up with something which is,
[02:32.547]the mother of all concept albums, um,
[02:36.578]and really is a mind boggling in terms of what was then relatively complex music and also lyrically was complex,
[02:47.100]confusing, and above all, a bit of a spoof. It was quite deliberately,
[02:54.814]but in a nice way, tongue in cheek and meant to send up.
[02:58.789]Ourselves, the music critics and the audience, perhaps, but not necessarily in that order.
[03:05.548]But it was meant in a nice way.
[03:06.747]This was this was the period of time of Monty Python's Flying Circus and a very British kind of humour,
[03:13.197]which, um, was not terribly well understood by the Japanese or the Americans.
[03:17.701]When we finally went out to perform thick as a brick in concert.
[03:20.368]But hey sat politely if, uh, if a little confused through the whole thing and came back next time for more.
[03:27.782]So it can't have gone too far amiss. But indeed, it was a concept album,
[03:31.404]and it was a concept album in the sense of beginning with the preposterous idea
[03:36.283]that it was written lyrically anyway by a 12 year old boy called Gerald Bostock.
[03:41.403]If memory serves. And, even now people will say,
[03:46.001]well, Gerald Bostock must be now he must be getting on, for he must be into his 30s now.
[03:51.402]And a lot of people still, believe it or not, think it was a real character.
[03:54.699]I thought we steered a very good line between making it sound,
[03:58.476]um, vaguely plausible as a, as a concept and being so, you know,
[04:05.194]quite, um, quite silly to the extent that most people would get it
[04:10.650]and not be offended if they weren't quite sure.
[04:13.792]And somebody said, oh, come on, and just putting you on here.
[04:16.526]I was thinking about it the other day,
[04:18.105]and my biggest memory of learning it was going down to the cafe for lunch
[04:23.250]it was a， do you remember Rosie's Cafe? It was.
[04:28.307]And it was down the road in this place near Bermondsey.
[04:31.906]And it was dreadful food. It was sort of pie, chips, mushy peas, pie and custard,
[04:38.501]but it was served by this gross, huge woman who had a moustache
[04:42.805]and a beard and whose hygiene was definitely questionable.
[04:48.154]And her apron was spattered with blood and dirt and various other things.
[04:54.002]And and it was. Always incredibly hot in there. Everybody smoked.
[04:58.973]All the windows were steamed up. I can always picture being in that cafe.
[05:03.906]There's a lot of rehearsals, but not a musical recollection at all.
[05:07.489]Maybe rather foolishly, we had a finite period of time to record all of this.
[05:11.366]I mean, to write, rehearse and record all of it.
[05:14.049]And foolishly, I think we booked a rehearsal studio and the recording studio a couple of weeks later,
[05:19.138]so everything just had to go to a timetable, and it would it would begin usually with me waking up in the morning,
[05:25.359]in north London, having about maybe 2 or 3 hours to feverishly attempt to write some music,
[05:34.921]by late morning, where I would jump in a cab or on the tube or whatever,
[05:39.074]and rush down to the the Rolling Stones rehearsal studio in Bermondsey.
[05:43.510]I think it was where, um, I then pretended that, you know, I'd been this was music I'd written weeks before and,
[05:52.068]and we ran through it with, with the band and, you know,
[05:55.071]they would put their ideas into it and their thoughts into it,
[05:57.985]and we would develop that alongside the music we had rehearsed the day before and the day before that.
[06:02.985]So it built up sequentially day by day. It started at the beginning, and every day we added another bit of music,
[06:10.327]and sometimes it would maybe reprise one of the earlier ideas in some way.
[06:13.902]So we'd go back and kind of rework an earlier thought
[06:18.079]and . Basically by the end of, I think about two weeks,
[06:24.811]we we had the whole thing rehearsed beginning to end,
[06:28.920]in the way that we were actually going to record it, all the arrangements in place.
[06:33.347]And off we went to the to the studio. And it was done ,
[06:36.485]From memory，I think perhaps in about, you know, 8 to 10 days of recording,
[06:41.234]which was really quite quick. But we did have it all rehearsed as a band,
[06:45.182]so we all knew our parts. Theoretically.
[06:47.917]I think that went very well. It was um, I mean, some of them were first takes,
[06:53.049]quite a few of them,
[06:54.581]Some sections to the beginning. I remember backing tracks going very well.
[06:59.490]I think we tried to make it spontaneous that.
[07:03.159]Sort of like a working day wasn't. We would arrive at sort of 11, 12:00
[07:07.918]and then tune up and then that was it. There was no sort of messing about.
[07:11.947]We were worked pretty hard. But as Jeffrey said, I think we got stuff on to tape fairly quickly.
[07:19.304]And I think many days we didn't necessarily know what we were going to do next.
[07:25.830]We might have done a section of music and then. Either. Ian would think about it overnight,，
[07:31.640]what was going to happen next, or we would just work on an idea,
[07:35.451]and then that would be the next bit of music, and we recorded it the next day and did a master.
[07:41.530]It was all it was very live inasmuch that everything was put down,
[07:46.351]obviously other than flute and vocals. so it was very much a spontaneous recording.
[07:54.468]One night we worked so late trying to get something on tape,
[07:58.219]and it was about 6:00 in the morning. And, and Ian said,
[08:01.680]right, let's all get outside. We're going to go for a run.
[08:06.266]And we just thought, what?
[08:08.286]And because we were just so tired and we went outside Morgan Studios
[08:12.740]and it sort of dawn just about getting light
[08:15.935]and we sort of trotted about ten yards up the road and realised that's as far as we could run anyway.
[08:21.052]came back in the studio and carried on.
[08:24.498]It was decided pretty early on because we had,in Chrysalis Records back then.
[08:31.103]I'm not sure whether he was an A&R man. He was relatively new to the scene.
[08:34.296]He had been a journalist for sounds, a musical newspaper in the UK at the time.
[08:40.181]Royston Aldridge, who later went on to be the managing director of Chrysalis Records
[08:44.407]until relatively recently, and Roy having a background in the journalistic trade,
[08:51.369]was given the job, whether he liked it or not, of putting together all of the the ideas
[08:57.682]and the photographs for the newspaper into something that would resemble a really parochial little,
[09:03.971]you know, small town newspaper such as the one I think he'd done his training on as a as a boy journalist.
[09:11.389]So, Roy had to put it all together and edit it and check everything.
[09:15.814]And and the ideas predominantly were mine.
[09:21.034]Jeffrey Hammonds and John Evans, who had,
[09:26.519]John， I'm pretty sure, wrote, you know, a couple of pieces for it,
[09:29.143]but the rest of it was pretty much me and Jeffrey,
[09:32.426]I think equally really with Roy tying it all together and,
[09:38.026]putting everything into the column inches, that would make sense.
[09:42.742]I just remember doing a lot of, recording into a dictaphone
[09:48.383]or what it was then just a small tape recorder,
[09:50.948]and then tapes got sent off to various secretaries of tape.
[09:53.659]But most of it was giggling, I think,
[09:56.076]and laughing at rather some of the more immature sections of it.
[10:00.402]But it, it was I think everybody helped with that, didn't they?
[10:04.951]I mean Jeffrey being understating.
[10:10.606]No, Because I've been looking through and it's difficult to remember what one did.
[10:16.014]Actually, I remember the photographs actually posing for, well, you know, going along, finding places ,
[10:20.961]to pose for various photographs. And that was enjoyable.
[10:27.011]I think we all had that sort of schoolboy sense of humour.
[10:28.732]it was the album were all sort of pranksters and,
[10:32.354]we were in a very sort of silly state of adult development and the humour of of those times went into the making of the cover,
[10:43.456]but I really it was Ian and Jeffrey did the bulk of it,
[10:47.829]and I think there was a few little token gesture things from, I think, John others.
[10:51.793]I think John wrote quite a lengthy story.
[10:53.096]That's right.He did. Yeah. About the——Aeroplanes.
[10:55.959]That's right.
[10:56.928]Oh no, it's called do not see me, rabbit.
[10:58.146]Yes, of course it's called. Yeah.
[11:00.858]As I recall, it took longer to write and complete the album cover artwork than it did to make the record.
[11:10.257]Um, I only remember that we went out to do thick as a brick in live performance.
[11:14.301]It began with following some rehearsals. It began with a,
[11:19.203]as I recall, a pretty disastrous concert in one of those.
[11:24.213]it was a town, I think we ever played it again.
[11:26.075]Somewhere on the English and Welsh borders, I believe.
[11:29.494]And it was it was a nightmare. I mean, we sort of just about managed to scrape through it.
[11:35.130]And, uh, it was a very nerve wracking moment
[11:37.816]because we then were going on to a major tour in the UK,
[11:42.471]US and even to Japan and Australia doing that stuff.
[11:48.229]And so it was a big, big commitment. It was a pretty scary opening night.
[11:53.129]Well, I have a very vague memory and I might be wrong and Jeffrey might remember,
[11:58.066]but I thought the first gig that we tried it out was Morven Wintergarden.
[12:04.237]I think you are right.
[12:05.483]Yeah, that's right, because we were.
[12:06.714]Petrified about performing the thing live.
[12:10.651]It was quite hard to play and a lot to remember.
[12:14.551]There's lots of sort of odd bars and seven fours and six eights and I mean,
[12:20.170]it's like a vast amount of stuff. And to play it off in one go was a terrifying thought.
[12:27.178]So we tried exhilarating as well. it's quite exciting.
[12:30.484]Oh yeah. Well, sheer terror, sheer adrenaline. Yeah. It's amazing what fear can do.
[12:37.634]But yeah, we tried it and we played the whole thing in one go.
[12:41.601]All I remember is me and Barry disappearing into a tent.
[12:46.236]I don't remember that at all.
[12:47.555]Yeah, there was a tent on stage and me and Barry disappeared into it.
[12:51.107]And there'd be sort of, you know, poking about inside the tent that the audience could obviously see.
[12:56.453]This is whilst somebody else is going on.
[12:58.605]Well, I think things didn't last necessarily for very long.
[13:01.684]I mean, that might have just happened for a couple of nights.
[13:03.915]And then it was a rapidly changing process went on over the course of,
[13:07.632]I mean, more than one tour, I think, you know, I mean, it sort of, but.
[13:11.139]There are also set pieces
[13:12.351]because there were things that stuck and were very good and kept.
[13:16.971]The gorilla came out with a camera and took photographs of the audience.
[13:20.383]Telephone ringing, the telephone.
[13:22.022]Ringing. And Mike Nelson, uh, then phone right in the middle of the music.
[13:27.204]The telephone would ring, obviously on tape over the PA.
[13:30.354]Ian would stop the music in the most ridiculous place,
[13:33.665]and it would be a phone call for Mike Nelson.
[13:37.299]Oh, really? I don't remember that.
[13:39.059]Even though it happened every night.
[13:40.410]No audience. And then sort of
[13:42.423]a couple of minutes later, this roadie who hated doing it because it had to wear this wetsuit,
[13:47.607]an aqualung and face mask. So of course it'd be sort of 90 degrees in the gig anyway,
[13:52.894]and he'd be sort of pouring buckets of sweat in this suit.
[13:56.304]And unfortunately, he'd been volunteered to be Mike Nelson,
[13:58.941]and he would just wander on the stage,
[14:00.840]flippers and all and take the phone call.
[14:04.120]It was just it was just silly.
[14:05.796]Perhaps it was at that point, the beginning of
[14:10.251], people getting away from going on stage and playing an hour of music in jeans and t shirts,
[14:18.159]which had had tended to have been the way things were.
[14:23.228]suddenly there was something that was a little more theatrical and organised and.
[14:27.610]By the standards of a U2 concert or a Michael Jackson concert or a Madonna concert,
[14:33.127]it would be incredibly tame theatrically.
[14:35.745]But by the standards of back then, it must have it must have been,
[14:39.389]you know, quite an unusual thing,
[14:41.759]and quite a lot of effort would appear to have gone into a lot of detail,
[14:45.460]would have communicated itself to the audience if they were in the right mood.
[14:50.604]And again, it was perhaps. The mood of the times,
[14:55.746]the beginnings of Monty Python's success in the USA, for example.
[15:00.694]The Americans were just beginning to cotton onto this rather surreal
[15:05.598]and absurd and quite often challenging humour.
[15:10.795]And we're very open, very, very open to these sort of new ideas.
[15:16.416]Alice Cooper at the time, you know, was chopping his head off in a guillotine on stage every night,
[15:22.326]whereas my approach was a little more gentle with rather elegant tights and a netty codpiece.
[15:28.377]John used to wear a rabbit suit, and he used to read the news out wearing this rabbit suit
[15:35.213]and all these things that happened.
[15:36.857]You had to go and change very quickly behind the Amps while something else was going on.
[15:41.158]Maybe some of the-
[15:42.083]It was all quite amateurish, even though...
[15:43.614]Oh, yeah. He probably came across as a reasonably professional man.
[15:47.553]Behind the scenes, it wasn't.
[15:50.367]And John, because it was a very long set,
[15:52.837]we probably played three or four hours.
[15:54.799]And John liked to have a little can of beer now and again.
[16:00.220]And he had to take a pee break during the show.
[16:03.513]And he used to pee in an empty beer can at the back of the stage.
[16:07.402]They're careful not to let the audience see.
[16:09.880]And one night, because it was very dark backstage,
[16:12.605]somebody had kicked the beer can over. Unfortunately,
[16:16.660]it had gone into the rabbit suit's head.
[16:20.175]And there's this terrible cry of anguish from behind the amps as John put his rabbit head on.
[16:26.095]He got a little bit wet.