Punctual and with all the capacity sold out, Jethro Tull burst into the Pedralbes Festival yesterday, where the unconditional fans of Ian Anderson’s legendary band mixed with some curious about the longevity of progressive rock. The hot weekend ended well. Jethro Tull, whose cancellation in the fateful 2020 of his concert at Porta Ferrada left a few orphans, presented this Sunday his first studio album in almost twenty years, that The Zealot Gene edited by InsideOutMusic/Sony Music, the label for which they just signed up
But there was nothing to fear. In The Prog Years Tour the themes of the new album would be scarce. The audience could keep chanting, nodding their heads and throwing spontaneous “wow!” with the songs that Anderson composed half a century ago. Although his arguments have not changed: God, faith – which he himself says he does not have – and the rites of Christianity passed by his acid irony. Issues that he today transfers to hatred, prejudice and extreme beliefs that feed populism.
The Scottish vocalist and flutist –who, in addition to being a multi-instrumentalist, is a Doctor of Letters– was accompanied by Joe Parrish on guitar, John O’Hara on keyboards, David Goodier on bass and the energetic Scott Hammond on drums, whom he awarded with a long alone despite the fact that “that is no longer common”, joked the singer.
Anderson started out short with the jazzy For a Thousand Mothers, from the album Stand Up (1969), followed by Love Story, more folky and a year older. The seventies party rhythm of Living in the Past raised the spirits of the respectable in this trip to the past… until the concert changed the third with the enigmatic and pseudo-electronic Clasp, from 82, which Anderson himself announced had been remastered , like so many others from his prolific songbook.
It didn’t take long for his well-known jazz arrangement of Bach’s Bouree to arrive, and also of Pavane, where Anderson displayed his lungs and coloratura on the flute. But it was in another of his classics, the very exciting Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die! (a title that perhaps half a century later begins to be true), where the public started to chant. At almost 75 and with a publicly declared Epoc a couple of years ago, Ian Anderson isn’t always the vocalist he used to be.
When The Zealot Gene arrived, the new album’s title track, in which he warns about Trump and Putin, he stopped to talk about it. To then sing the lyrics… “The populist with dark appeal, the indulgence of hate / Delivered on a plate by xenophobic alarmists to tame the pangs of hunger and satisfy lust / Slave to ideology, moderation bites the dust “.
That is, the zealot gene, that of the religious zeal of those radical Israelites led by Judas of Galilee, which today is still in force in populism and the determining opinions that try to impose themselves.
The powerful and magnificently sound concert closed by returning to the glorious past: Songs From the Wood and the mythical and indisputable Aqualung, from the album with which Franco’s censorship was fattened in the 70s. However, the band offered it with a long and eclectic intro and in a renewed version in which the famous six guitar notes with which it starts, followed by a drum roll, were rather sporadic.
Already in the encores, Locomotive Breath and the later Dam Busters sounded from this same vinyl, which at the end of the seventies was a counterpoint to the prevailing punk in Great Britain. It was barely an hour and a half of concert. The band left the stage with the audience on their feet and Ian Anderson running from one end of the stage to the other.
“Bye Bye! Bye bye!” He said goodbye. In the Jardins de Pedralbes most of the people in the stalls could not resign themselves to not continuing with the party. For three minutes they kept clapping, whistling and calling for more encores… which never came. Mr. Anderson had already given everything and more of himself.
