Released - September 1975
Genre - Hard Rock
Producer - Ian Anderson
Selected Personnel - Ian Anderson (Vocals/Flute/Guitar); Martin Barre (Guitar); John Evan (Piano/Organ); Jeffrey Hammond (Bass); Barriemore Barlow (Drums/Percussion); David Palmer (Orchestral Arrangements)
It's been a while since I wrote about Jethro Tull here, largely because Ian Anderson & co. chose to spend the years 1973 and 1974 slowly erasing any credibility or mainstream success they'd amassed over the course of their early albums. It's a shame, as much of their very best music was still ahead of them, and the two albums they released in those two years aren't necessarily bad (there would be far worse to come in the 80s), they just fail spectacularly to follow through on the breakthrough success of Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. In 1972, they had released the latter, an album that succeeded not only as one of the finest prog rock concept albums of all time, but also as a superbly tongue-in-cheek piss-take of the whole genre. In 1973 they made the odd decision to try and replicate the album with A Passion Play, another album consisting of one forty-five minute song split into two halves. While it has its moments, it's nowhere near as good as Thick As A Brick, and its intentions have always been unclear to me - aside from the obviously tongue-in-cheek spoken word section "The Owl Who Had Lost His Spectacles," it's never quite clear if it's another joke or an attempt to do seriously what they had done flippantly before. For me, it doesn't really succeed on either front. Then in 1974 came War Child, an album that is by no means the worst album Tull ever released, but, unlike even the worst of their 80s records, commits the cardinal sin of being totally forgettable. By the time 1975 rolled around, Tull hadn't yet totally lost their ability to sell out huge venues or have hit albums, but their critical lustre had begun to wane.
A shame, as Minstrel In The Gallery as perhaps one of their three very best albums alongside Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. Perhaps feeling that he'd exhausted the kitsch and knowing tone of his prog rock persona, Ian Anderson took the wise decision to simplify things, and Minstrel is closest in sound and style to Aqualung, back when the band was labelled "prog" for their accidental moments of bombast and excess but before they started self-consciously trying to write within that mould. As such, it feels a lot more genuine, committed and honest than A Passion Play or War Child ever did. As the title implies, the style is frequently quite close to Medieval balladry and has a sort of timeless, earthy Englishness to it. The hushed spoken word introduction to the album ("My lord and lady...") sets the Baroque tone, into which Anderson's mandolin and flute and trilling vocals, backed by David Palmer's lush orchestrations, fit seamlessly. Most of the songs are strongly grounded in that rich, folkloric atmosphere, and then the rest of the band, led by the metallic heft of Martin Barre's lead guitar work, storms through it all with a more hard-rock approach then Tull had ever mustered before. Barre's work is exemplary here (and he gets one of his few co-writer credits on the title track), with lengthy passages serving purely to showcase his knack at a knotty solo or crunching riff.
As ever, it's rare that anybody other than Anderson or Barre gets much of a chance to shine here and, while John Evan, Barriemore Barlow and Jeffrey Hammond provide great support here (Evan's piano intro on "Black Satin Dancer" is lovely), mostly it feels like another collection of Anderson's songs with Barre having a riot soloing all over them. The dynamic between folklore and hard rock is best exemplified on the opening title track, which establishes itself with nothing more than Anderson's mandolin flourishes and troubadour-like vocals before Barre crashes onto the scene with one of his finest solos, eventually settling down into a brutal, punishing riff as the main melody returns, certainly one of Barre's very finest moments on record. "Cold Wind To Valhalla" does a similar trick, starting in hushed folk mode and expanding into a swaggering hard rock number. "Black Satin Dancer" mixes things up a bit more, playing with dynamics between its quiet, slow passages and angry, frenzied instrumental freak-outs led by Barre's guitar solos once again. Anderson also shows off some of his most acrobatic and lunatic flute work on "Black Satin Dancer."
"Requiem" is one of Tull's most beautiful ballads, consisting of little more than Anderson's voice and acoustic guitar and a gentle string accompaniment. Minstrel In The Gallery was recorded in the wake of Anderson's divorce from his first wife Jennie Franks, and the imagistic poetry of "Requiem" serves as one of the few Tull songs with a real emotional heft and poignancy to it. My other favourite track is, of course, the lengthy epic that serves as the (almost) climax of the album, "Baker St. Muse." While the songs on Minstrel are fairly complicated, many of them stick closer to traditional rock song structures than anything on the likes of Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play, so the 16-minute "Baker St. Muse" is their concession to their prog fans longing for lengthy suites and overblown excess. For me, the piece is one enormously lengthy slow-burn, building in intensity and feeling until the gentle, acoustic riff of the "There was a little boy stood on a burning log" section, which explodes into a marvellous hard rock finale with Anderson's exultant cry of "One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery."
There's not a single weak track on Minstrel In The Gallery, making it easily one of their most consistent albums - even the brief, light closing number of "Grace" is perfectly lovely despite being a sort of perfunctory afterthought. Its best moments rank as some of Tull's very finest, and it shows them rediscovering their muse after a couple of years of basically trying to live up to a joke that had gotten out of hand. It's simpler, more heartfelt and harder hitting than anything they'd done since 1971, even than the masterful Thick As A Brick. It sold fairly well, and was generally regarded as something of a return to form by critics, but didn't ignite the charts quite well enough to slow their gradual decline. Their next move would be another more conventional rock album, Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young To Die!, that again made the mistake of being a little too conservative and unmemorable, before they made a slight change of direction with an acclaimed "folk rock trilogy" that finished off the decade, a series of albums that foregrounded the softer elements of English folk music that had always lingered in the background in all of their music.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Ian Anderson except where noted.
1. Minstrel In The Gallery (Ian Anderson & Martin Barre)
2. Cold Wind To Valhalla
3. Black Satin Dancer
4. Requiem
5. One White Duck/010 = Nothing At All
6. Baker St. Muse
7. Grace
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