heavy horses tour

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Jethro Tull – Heavy Horses – Classic Music Review

Tull fans who follow this blog have probably wondered what the hell has taken this broad so long to get around to Heavy Horses.  Ignoring the middle piece of the “folk-rock trilogy” that began with Songs from the Wood and ended with Stormwatch (both of which I’ve reviewed) leaves an obvious hole in my Tull narrative. The  Heavy Horses tour also gave us Tull’s first live album ( Bursting Out ), so the album has added significance in Tull lore.

Well, here we are, and I’ll use a famous quote to explain my reluctance to engage with Heavy Horses .

“I yam what I am.”

Truth is, I have a hard time relating to the country farm environment depicted in some of the songs in Heavy Horses . I’m a city girl. I’ve lived in cities for most of my life. I feel more comfortable in an urban milieu. I’ll take a sidewalk over a forest path or a furrow anytime.

I’m glad Mother Nature is there. I just don’t want to hang out with her. You can read the introduction to my review of Woodstock to learn more about the trauma that bitch inflicted on me at a very tender age.

As for farms . . . I’ve only been to a farm once in my life (not counting vineyards). As a consequence of that experience, my brain has identified farms as smelly places that trigger my allergies and has forbidden me from coming within ten miles of a barn or silo. Old MacDonald can bring his wares to the farmer’s market and allow me to shop with my feet firmly planted on brick or concrete.

Many of the characters in Heavy Horses are animals—mostly farm animals or animals that have become acclimatized to farm dynamics. Mice are featured in two songs (in one a victim; in the other a hero of sorts). We also have a murderous cat, a scarcely domesticated hound dog, a gaggle of moths, a team of draft horses and a rooster in the role of meteorologist. I love animals, especially those animals who sit on my lap and give me little kisses and who obey the order to shut up and leave mommy alone when she’s fucking. None of the animals on Heavy Horses meet those qualifications, but overall, I consider the animals a plus.

Biases and idiosyncracies confessed, it’s time for the review!

Sharp-eyed readers may have already noticed that the cover depicted here differs slightly from the original release. Down at the bottom you’ll see the words “The original 1978 album remixed in stereo by Steven Wilson.” While I generally prefer to review the original recording without enhancement or improvement (if available) and try to avoid promoting “deluxe editions” that cost more and often fail to deliver much in the way of “deluxe,” I strongly recommend Steven Wilson’s remix. Wilson has remixed and remastered several Tull albums, but his work on Heavy Horses qualifies as exceptional.

Unfortunately, Wilson couldn’t do much with Ian Anderson’s less-than-stellar vocals, the sound of a voice run ragged by overuse, a condition that would become more serious during the Under Wraps tour in the 1980s. Sometimes the roughness works in the context of a song; in other places I miss the vibrato he commanded in songs like “Wond’ring Aloud” and “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day.” As for the rest of the band, I would label their performances as spirited and tight, with the proviso that you can never have enough Martin Barre on a Tull record.

“And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps” seems a curious opener, but if you look through the playlist, there really isn’t a signature opening song in the bunch. This is one of those songs that only Jethro Tull could have created, with its 3/4 time signature cleverly disguised by splashes of flute, guitar and bass that fall on and off the beat. The clarity of Wilson’s remix allows you to follow any disparate part you choose, and all I can say is I would have loved to have been in the studio when they worked out all the details—the arrangement is a marvelous creation. As for the subject matter, I think Ian Anderson did a fine job depicting the contrary nature of a cat (“Savage bed foot warmer/Of purest feline ancestry”) and (“From warm milk on a lazy day/To dawn patrol of hungry hate”). The contrary nature of the feline is exactly why I steadfastly refuse to own a cat.

They’re too much like me.

The song also reminds us of another unpleasant aspect of nature: it thrives on the cycle of life and death. The cat may be “domesticated,” but its animal instincts remain: “Eats but one in every ten/Leaves the others on the mat.” If you scolded and shook your finger at the cat when he dropped off his prey on your front porch—“Bad cat—no kill mice!”—the cat would give you one of those laser-focused feline stares that says, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Ian Anderson accepts the gruesome truth that natural survival entails killing; I cry whenever I watch one of those nature shows where the lions eat the gazelles. “That’s horrifying,” I might remark . . . while taking another bite out of my cheeseburger.

My hypocrisy regarding nature is showing.

“Acres Wild” is an Ian Anderson love letter to his relatively recent bride, offering her the opportunity to make whoopee in both rural and urban environments. The first verse anticipates the couple’s purchase of the Strathaird Estate on the Isle of Skye (the “Winged Isle”); the second depicts a drearier environment in an unnamed U.K. city, most likely London. While the offer may have been tempting to Shona Anderson, I don’t find “deep brown rivers that slither darkly” a particularly romantic image (“slither darkly” calls up images of snakes crawling all over my naked body), and the song pales in comparison to the delightfully kinky “Hunting Girl” and darkly erotic “Velvet Green” on Songs from the Wood.  That said, the Steven Wilson remix manages to give the song some life, largely by cranking up the volume on John Glascock’s outstanding bass performance.

Steven Wilson’s greatest contribution has to be his work on the instrumental passages in “No Lullaby.” I suggest that readers head over to YouTube, find both the original and Steven Wilson versions of the song, and compare the two renditions of the introductory passage. Martin’s superb lead solo is brighter and cleaner, Glascock’s bass features more punch and Barriemore Barlow’s drums are rescued from the muddiness of the original. Martin’s extended solo in the middle of the piece also makes me very happy. As for the song proper . . . ugh. It’s one thing to suffer from parental paranoia (all good parents tend to cross the line into over-protectiveness), but this is a bit over the top:

Keep your eyes open And prick up your ears Rehearse your loudest cry. There’s folk out there Who would do you harm So I’ll sing you no lullaby. There’s a lock on the window; There’s a chain on the door: A big dog in the hall. But there’s dragons and beasties Out there in the night To snatch you if you fall.

Even if a baby can’t understand the language, they can feel the vibes, so I hope Ian didn’t sing this song to baby James or encourage him to use his rattle to develop his swordsmanship.

“Moths” is a lyrical mess that begins with trite imagery and moves steadily in the direction of unintelligibility. An attempt to liven up the proceedings with a sudden key change falls flat, and Ian’s vocal problems are on full display here, his sandpapery voice rather grating in contrast to the gentle arrangement. I do like the use of truncated measures, and as I’ve said before, I don’t think Tull gets enough credit for their rhythmic excellence.

The milieu shifts to urban with the song “Journeyman,” a word that originally meant “a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has completed an official apprenticeship qualification” but now is generally used to describe a crappy relief pitcher assigned to mop-up duty. Ian absconds the term and assigns it to the drone on his daily commute. Unlike the muddled poetry of “Moths,” Ian combines concrete imagery and wit to offer us a vivid picture of modern meaninglessness:

Sliding through Victorian tunnels Where green moss oozes from the pores. Dull echoes from the wet embankments Battlefield allotments. Fresh open sores. In late-night commuter madness Double-locked black briefcase on the floor, Like a faithful dog with master Sleeping in the draught beside the carriage door. To each Journeyman his own home-coming Cold supper nearing with each station stop. Frosty flakes on empty platforms Fireside slippers waiting. Flip. Flop.

Sadly, our journeyman doesn’t have time to “stop for tea at Gerard’s Cross,” a rail stop considered a bit posher than most. The band is nice and tight here, engaging in several mini stop-time moments to accentuate punch lines.

“Rover” explores the ways and mores of canines in an arrangement that could have fit nicely into the mix on Songs from the Wood . Cats will be cats and dogs will be dogs and there’s hardly anything a dog loves better than to escape the leash and taste a precious moment of blessed freedom:

The long road is a rainbow and the pot of gold lies there. So slip the chain and I’m off again You’ll find me everywhere. ‘Cause I’m a Rover.

Heavy Horses is an album of exceptionally strong introductions, and “Rover” features one of my favorites with its perfectly executed flurry of notes coming at you from all instruments in all directions. Ian and the band deserve lots of credit for turning a minor key song into something joyful and full of life. I also love Ian’s insight into the charmingly manipulative ways of the species—the couplet “I’m simple in my sadness/Resourceful in remorse” is brilliant, painfully true poetic economy.

My favorite song on Heavy Horses  features Ian Anderson taking tea with “one brown mouse sitting in a cage.” Following another fabulous introduction featuring Ian’s stereo acoustic guitars, we hear Ian chatting at his furry companion in what seems to be a daily ritual:

Smile your little smile take some tea with me awhile. Brush away that black cloud from your shoulder. Twitch your whiskers. Feel that you’re really real. Another tea-time another day older.

Meanwhile, in the background, a slow build begins with the introduction of vocal harmony, John Glascock shifting from root note bass to more complex patterns, the appearance of light orchestration and a very gentle touch on Barriemore’s drum kit. After building to a peak, Barlow signals a shift with a transitional fill, cueing Martin to let it rip with distortion-tinged power chords and a nice little run. This delightful bridge contains the essence of the relationship between man and mouse:

Do you wonder if I really care for you, Am I just the company you keep? Which one of us exercises on the old treadmill, Who hides his head, pretending to sleep?

Cursed with our anthropomorphic bias, I don’t know if it’s possible for a human to truly read an animal’s thoughts or accurately empathize with an animal’s feelings. Ian finds an ironic connection in the treadmill, a humble observation that raises valid doubts concerning human superiority. “One Brown Mouse” is one of Tull’s most delightful and most human creations, a song guaranteed to lift that black cloud from your shoulder.

It’s hard for me to evaluate the title track since I have little interest in horses and couldn’t tell a fetlock from a feather. While Ian celebrates the noble breeds who work the land, I find myself wondering whether or not the horses really like doing the shitty work humans have bred them to perform. The most controversial passage ties the horses to our overdependence on the oil that feeds the tractors and, by extension, our overdependence on technology itself:

And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry And the nights are seen to draw colder They’ll beg for your strength, your gentle power Your noble grace and your bearing And you’ll strain once again to the sound of the gulls In the wake of the deep plough, sharing

Putting aside the nostalgic, anthropomorphic projections, I have to say that while I think Ian’s desire for a life that maintains our connection with Mother Nature is admirable (and getting rid of fossil fuels even more so), he ignores the simple fact that returning to the horse and plow would leave billions of people starving on our overpopulated planet. That’s misplaced nostalgia, not a helpful solution.

As for the music, though the band executes their parts with the usual excellence, the transition from verse to chorus feels rather awkward and the shift to the instrumental section featuring Darryl Way’s violin solo equally so. I also think the violin gets buried in the mix, something not corrected by the Wilson remix.

The album ends with a generally uninteresting appeal to an inanimate object, a “Weathercock,” to be specific. I have no problem talking to animals or even plants but conversing with a metal rooster is too much for this gal. What I do like in this song is Ian’s mandolin work, reminding me how much I admire his ability to make any instrument he touches come alive.

Despite my experiential limitations, I still admire the hell out of Ian Anderson for sticking to the folk-rock path during a period when punks, post-punks and new-wave artists were all the rage. Heavy Horses shows all the signs of a very stubborn artist and a band fully committed to the craft. Though I’m generally uncomfortable with nostalgic yearnings, the state of music today has led me to fully embrace nostalgia honoring displays of artistic commitment and excellent musicianship like Heavy Horses .

And that’s not “misplaced nostalgia.” That’s reality.

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[…] Heavy Horses […]

Hey there! I’m on an extended vacation until mid-August. During my absence, the home page will be refreshed twice weekly with some of my favorite reviews from 2013-2023. To keep the spambots away, I’ve disabled the comment feature until I return. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

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The Heavy Horses

The Heavy Horses plays guitar, drinks tea & writes songs about outlaws, love & murder. If you like these things, we'll get along just fine - so tell your friends & have a listen.

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Jethro Tull

• May 28, 1978 Setlist

Jethro Tull Setlist at Festhalle, Bern, Switzerland

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• No Lullaby Play Video
• Sweet Dream Play Video
• Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day Play Video
• Jack-in-the-Green Play Video
• One Brown Mouse Play Video
• A New Day Yesterday Play Video
• Flute Solo Improvisation / God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / Bourée Play Video
• Songs From the Wood Play Video
• Thick as a Brick Play Video
• Hunting Girl Play Video
• Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll, Too Young to Die Play Video
• Conundrum Play Video
• Minstrel in the Gallery Play Video
• Cross-Eyed Mary Play Video
• Quatrain Play Video
• Aqualung Play Video
• Locomotive Breath Play Video
• Dambusters March Play Video

Edits and Comments

4 activities (last edit by Hooter , 9 Jul 2023, 11:23 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Flute Solo Improvisation / God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / Bourée
• Hunting Girl
• Jack-in-the-Green
• Songs From the Wood
• Cross-Eyed Mary
• Locomotive Breath
• One Brown Mouse
• Dambusters March
• Sweet Dream
• Minstrel in the Gallery
• A New Day Yesterday
• Thick as a Brick
• Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll, Too Young to Die
• Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day

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Jethro Tull Gig Timeline

• May 26 1978 Saarlandhalle Saarbrücken, Germany Add time Add time
• May 27 1978 Olympiahalle Munich, Germany Add time Add time
• May 28 1978 Festhalle This Setlist Bern, Switzerland Add time Add time
• May 29 1978 Walter-Köbel-Halle Rüsselsheim, Germany Add time Add time
• May 30 1978 Walter-Köbel-Halle Rüsselsheim, Germany Add time Add time

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Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull

Album Reviews 1978 Albums , Album Reviews by Ric Albano , British Artists , Jethro Tull 1

Buy Heavy Horses

Following several successful forays into progressive rock through the early and mid seventies and accompanying large arena tours, Jethro Tull and their primary composer Ian Anderson decided to scale back and develop more simple folk rock songs. The critically acclaimed 1977 album, Songs from the Wood , reflected on English culture and history and was the first to include new member David Palmer , who brought many classical elements into the fold.

Produced by Anderson, Heavy Horses was recorded in London during a time when he was settling into a domestic life with his new wife and son. Just prior to this album’s recording in 1977, Pink Floyd released their classic album Animals , which explored differing human personality types. Heavy Horses may more exactly fit that literal title as it lyrically sees things from the perspective and environment of several rural creatures.

A tense rhythmic timing drives the acoustic-driven opener “…And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps”, a song which is probably more prog rock than folk, complete with strategic stops and dueling flute and organ solos. The track lyrically describes the movement of a barn cat with creative adjectives, describing the process of the night guard and hunt. “Acres Wild” follows as a mandolin driven, pop-oriented rocker with heavy Celtic influence musically and lyrics which paint a picture of playing long while on a journey.

“No Lullaby” is the first of two extended songs and it starts with a heavy rock guitar intro by Martin Barre , followed by the showcasing of drummer/percussionist Barriemore Barlow as it eases into a slow, methodical rhythm, About two minutes in, this mini-suite takes a radical turn to a more upbeat, tense-filled shuffle before again returning to the methodical verse section and lead flourishes. The bright and pleasant folk tune “Moths” features harpsichord by John Evan along with other ethnic string instrumentation as it expertly alternates keys throughout its short duration. A philosophical creed on living for today, “Moths” displays the scene from different perspectives and with sincere emotion. “Journeyman” starts with a funky bass riff by John Glascock as the rest of the group builds around musically, each finding their own small space within the song.

The album’s original second side starts with “Rover”, a tribute to Anderson’s pet dog which features a more traditional Jethro Tull soundscape. With lyrics telling of story time with a young child, “One Brown Mouse” starts and ends as straight folk/rocker but nicely diverges into a mid-section of folk orchestration. The epic, nine-minute title track plays on differing intensities of the same musical theme, as the song is a literal tribute to the work-horse. It all wraps with “Weathercock”, a theme on the rotational nature of life as album ends at the break of dawn and a simple musical arrangement, built with acoustic, mandolin, organ and other simple elements.

Jethro Tull recorded performances during the European leg of the Heavy Horses tour, and later in 1978 released a live double album called Bursting Out . In March 2018, the group released a five-disc, 40th anniversary version of Heavy Horses , which features several alternate and outtakes, 22 previously unreleased live tracks, and a 96-page booklet with track-by-track annotation by Anderson of the album and its associated recordings.

Part of Classic Rock Review’s celebration of 1978 albums.

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‘Heavy Horses’: How Jethro Tull Found Their Folk-Rock Spurs

Considered the second in their 70s folk-rock trilogy of albums, ‘Heavy Horses’ saw Jethro Tull saddle up for prog-infused pastoral poesy.

Having leapt gracefully into new pastures with their 1977 album, Songs From The Wood , Jethro Tull had successfully cross-bred their prog-rock sensibilities with a folk-rock sound inspired by the myths and fairy tales of medieval England. It was, however, time for another change. After moving to a 15,000-acre estate on the idyllic Isle Of Skye, in Scotland, with his new wife, songwriter Ian Anderson quickly fell in love with the Hebrides and began styling himself as a country squire as he began work on his band’s 11th album, Heavy Horses .

Listen to ‘Heavy Horses’ here .

Withdrawing from the urban trappings of modern life, Anderson began to channel his fondness for the countryside into new songs that had a more down-to-earth feel, expressing his affection for the horses that roamed the land, as well as a wistful reverence for nature. Dedicated to the “indigenous working ponies and horses of Great Britain”, it was clear Heavy Horses would be a completely different beast from what had come before.

“It’s unashamedly about something that was lamenting the passing of an age”

With recording underway at Maison Rouge Studio, in London, in the latter half of 1977, Heavy Horses looked set to keep pace with the same folk-rock gallop of Songs Of The Wood but jettisoned that album’s Elizabethan-era whimsy in favour of a nostalgia of a very different hue. Conscious of how the Industrial Age had spelt the end of a rural way of life, Anderson’s new songs were poetic musings on a bygone era of rustic living. Having proven himself as a keen social commentator on Aqualung and Thick As A Brick , Heavy Horses saw him use animal metaphors to draw analogies with how people live their lives today. “It’s unashamedly about something that was lamenting the passing of an age,” Anderson said of the album.

Heavy Horses ’ sole single was Moths, released in March 1978 and fluttering with anthropomorphic imagery and lovelorn lyrics that recall the Romantic poet John Clare (“We soared on powdered wings/Circling our tomorrows/In the wary month of spring”). Dark yet winsome, it touches on the suicidal impulses of moths – and even lemmings – to explore the doomed desires of star-crossed lovers.

Bolting out of the gate the following month, on 10 April 1978 in the US (and following on 21 April in the UK), Heavy Horses was misunderstood upon first release. The album had the misfortune to surface during a period when the music press was in thrall to punk rock. For Jethro Tull fans, however, it contained worthy contenders for a spot among the best Jethro Tull songs , helped along by some of Ian Anderson’s most creative lyrics to date, imbued as they were with the spirit of pastoral poetry packaged as filly-friendly folk-rock.

“I’m trying to make the more obvious comparison with today’s world”

As deliriously eccentric as ever, the songs on Heavy Horses are dynamic and sprightly, mixing prog flute with mandolin and acoustic guitars. Reining in their penchant for penning longer compositions, Jethro Tull favour shorter bursts of folk-inspired jauntiness, bringing life to Anderson’s gleefully idiosyncratic lyrical concerns. Tapping into a longstanding literary tradition of beast poetry, the album’s eccentric opening track, … And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps, celebrated what Anderson described as “the hunting instincts of cats” while acknowledging the predatory nature of humanity itself.

The menagerie of animal metaphors continue: Rover tackles male infidelity, dryly comparing the relationship of a husband and wife to that of a dog and its master, while One Brown Mouse twitches its whiskers in its cage as the song’s narrator ponders who is most free (“Which one of us exercises on the old treadmill/Who hides his head, pretending to sleep?”). Dabbling in the same intensity as Jethro Tull’s early work, Journeyman is a flouncing rocker reportedly written by Anderson during a train ride from London’s Marylebone Station. Given how industrialisation led to steam trains invading the English countryside, the song appears to be a dystopic critique of the machine age akin to Charles Dickens’ short story The Signal-Man (“Howling into hollow darkness/Dusky diesel shudders in full cry”).

Heavy Horses ’ title track, an eight-minute rustic rocker, seemingly builds on this thought-provoking theme, lamenting how the working horses of the past have been put out to pasture by machinery brought about by the Industrial Revolution (“Now you’re down to the few and there’s no work to do, the tractor’s on its way”). Combining his new-found love of farming with his wry observations of social decline, Anderson reflects upon what we’ve lost as opposed to what we’ve gained. “I’m trying to make the more obvious comparison with today’s world where we talk in terms of horsepower,” he told Classic Rock magazine.

“‘Heavy Horses’ is a logical successor to ‘Songs From The Wood’”

The album is not all finger-wagging and podium-thumping, however. The baroque’n’roll strut of Acres Wild is one of Heavy Horses ’ highlights – a joyful ode to Anderson’s home north of the border. “The chorus invites you to ‘Come with me to The Winged Isle’, which is the Isle Of Skye,” the singer wrote in the liner notes to Heavy Horses ’ 40th-anniversary reissue, “and it was written in the context of the wilds (think wilderness) of that area of Scotland.” Jaunty and upbeat, the violin solo from Darryl Way is undoubtedly one of his finest performances.

Though punk and new wave raged on both sides of the Atlantic, Heavy Horses still reached No.19 on the Billboard 200, selling over 500,000 copies in North America alone. This led Jethro Tull to mount yet another successful US tour, which culminated in them making history in October 1978 by playing the first-ever transatlantic satellite broadcast from Madison Square Garden, in New York City. Despite Heavy Horses ’ yearning for the past, clearly the band were not afraid of embracing technological innovation if it meant spreading their nature-worshipping cause.

Today, Heavy Horses is a cult favourite among fans, and a worthy follow-up to Songs From The Wood . Certainly, Ian Anderson feels both albums grew from the same seeds. “In my mind, Heavy Horses is a logical successor,” he later said. “Not quite part two, but it follows on with that slightly more rural context of its predecessor for a lot of the songs.” Proving why Jethro Tull were such a refreshingly offbeat presence on the prog-rock circuit, Heavy Horses has aged like a reliable stallion in the band’s discography. There’s no better time to bring it out to stretch its legs.

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BURSTING OUT

JETHRO TULL, LIVE ALBUMS, 1978

“Bursting Out”, Jethro Tull’s first live album, was recorded at various locations during the European Heavy Horses tour in May and June 1978.

STREAM THE ALBUM

Though released as a double-disc CD in the United Kingdom and in the rest of Europe, the original CD release in the United States was only one disc, with three tracks (“Quatrain”, “Sweet Dream” and “Conundrum”) omitted to fit the 80 minutes CD length, while the double-disc 1990 CD version in the United Kingdom (and Europe) incorporated the first track for both discs (the Introductions) in the song that follows.

In 2004, the complete album was released worldwide as a two-disc set with the Introductions as separate tracks.

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