Simplepast Presentperfect
Well-known Member
This the explanation that IA anderson offered multiple times, that it was intended as a solo album. According to David Palmer half of the band (Evans, Barlow & Palmer) even received a letter explaining that Chrysalis decided to market it as a Jethro Tull album. All of this is stated in the book "The ballad of Jethro Tull".The album's name! It's rumoured that this record was going to be Ian Anderson's solo, but in the end Martin and him from the original Tull participated and decided to use the band's name instead. "A" was supposedly to refer to Anderson.
Not their best album, but there are some worse
Here is IA take on it: "... We finished the album and it was going to be called A - for Anderson. We played it to the record company and predictably they said, "This should be a Jethro Tull album." I said, "But this is a solo record." They then said, "We don't know if we could market it as a solo record." That tricked me into thinking that they must like it, when in fact probably they didn't, and thought a solo Ian Anderson album would be a total stiff but a Jethro Tull album might cover the costs of marketing. I paid for it all, but they had to commit top marketing and promotion. I agreed to have it released as a Jethro Tull album, which was bad judgement on my part..."
As for the musical qualities of the album, I am looking forward to IA comments to each track in the release. I would be surprised if he rates this album highly: the songs quickly disappeared from the setlists right after Broadsword, only Black Sunday survived for a while, typically within a medley. Working John, working Joe was re-recorded for A, the 1977 track (included in the Country Set) sounds to me quite good but I dislike the A version. This is what IA has to say about WJWJ: "...it was a bit of an odd one out and didn't fit in the nature of the [Songs from the Wood] album...".
I have all these set box releases and Stormwatch was for me already a stretch, but I was positively suprised by many unearthed bonus tracks which for me totally justified the purchase. Not sure about this one...