If ever Ian Anderson were to doubt the enduring popularity of Jethro Tull’s 1982 album The Broadsword And The Beast, he gets regular reminders of it when he meets long-time fans of the band. Perhaps not actually written all over their faces, but close enough.
“I’ve been asked to sign many an album-sized tattoo of the album cover on somebody’s back,” he says, “which is embarrassing, but I’ve seen very good likenesses of the album cover in glorious colour on the flesh of human beings. It’s beyond me why people do that sort of thing, but perhaps that’s a reflection of the affinity some fans feel to it.”
They can immerse themselves even more fully in it this autumn as the 40th anniversary edition (slightly delayed thanks to that pesky pandemic) is released, offering an 81-track expanded version of the album replete with Steven Wilson remixes, live renditions, and a handful of previously unreleased tracks.
Its original release came at a pivotal time in the band’s history, ending their first ever two-year interval between albums following 1980’s , a record initially planned as an Ian Anderson solo release and featuring a new line-up of contributors (amid personnel-related upheaval often referred to as the band’s “big split” after a headline to that effect). With having incorporated electronic instrumentation and framed in an overhauled band image reimagining Tull in white boiler suits, as if preparing for a nuclear attack or engagement with extra-terrestrials, it seemed this much-loved cornerstone of the British prog scene was shifting its shape more comprehensively than many fans were prepared for. All this at a time when critics were busy attempting to ram the whole genre into the dustbin of a rewritten rock history in the wake of punk, and some leading progressive acts were responding with artistic rethinks in a sometimes misguided
