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Jethro Tull Full Concert Tanglewood Concert - 1970 Superb!!!! 1 Introduction 2 Nothing Is Easy 3 My God 4 With You There To Help Me / By Kind Permission Of 5 Dharma For One 6 We Used To Know 7 Guitar Solo 8 For A Thousand Mothers Ian Anderson: vocals, acoustic guitar, flute; Martin Barre: electric guitar; John Evan: piano, organ; Glenn Cornick: bass; Clive Bunker: drums During the summer of 1970, Bill Graham presented an extraordinary series of concerts at Tanglewood, the renowned classical music venue located in the scenic Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. At the time, presenting rock music in a classical venue was a surprising and precarious step to take. To many, hearing The Fillmore and Tanglewood in the same sentence equated to “when worlds collide.“ Much like his approach at the Fillmores, Graham's “The Fillmore at Tanglewood“ series presented diverse handpicked triple bills, but with the added advantage of a beautiful open-air venue and plenty of informal lawn seating. With the Fillmore East crew providing technical support, these concerts would be hailed as a technical and artistic triumph and would entertain the largest Tanglewood audiences to date. In a year plentiful with memorable concerts, these Tanglewood performances truly stand out. The July 7th presentation at Tanglewood, featuring the Who as headliners (also available here in the Convert Vault) was certainly one of the most highly anticipated of the three concerts presented during the 1970 series. Also on the bill that night were San Francisco's It's A Beautiful Day and an up and coming English group Jethro Tull, then in the midst of their first tour of America as headliners. 1970 was a pivotal year for Jethro Tull, when their relentless roadwork and perseverance began paying off. The group's third album, Benefit was their most ambitious and original work to date. In terms of the band's profile in America, 1970 was the year Jethro Tull had truly arrived. The previous album, Stand Up introduced guitarist Martin Barre to the fold and found the band stretching well beyond the parameters of the blues-based debut. Both albums conveyed Anderson's growing confidence as a songwriter and with Barre on board, the group's originality and style had come into sharper focus. By the time of the Tanglewood concert, Anderson was becoming a prolific songwriter with increasing range and depth. The 1970 American tour would find the group expanding to a quintet, with Anderson's longtime cohort John Evan joining the group on keyboards, further expanding the sonic palette. With Evan on board, the group's sound became more compelling. Classical elements now entered the already heady brew of blues, jazz, traditional English folk, and hard rock that defined the band's sound. Extended soloing, often featuring an extraordinary amount of spontaneous improvisation, became a major ingredient on stage. This tour would primarily focus on choice material from the group's first three albums. The one notable exception was the introduction of a new song, more scathing than anything Anderson had written before, titled “My God.“ Destined for the center position on Aqualung,“ the most popular album of Tull's career, this new number wouldn't see a release until the following year, and then in considerably shorter form. Written by Alan Bershaw
