Stand Up (Jethro Tull album)

Recording

The band began recording the album on 17th April 1969, starting with "A New Day Yesterday". They recorded "Back to the Family" and "Fat Man" on 21st April, "Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square" on 22nd April, "Nothing Is Easy" and "Bourée (Alternate version)" on 23rd April, "Bourée" along with "Early in the Morning (Unfinished backing track)" on 24th April, "Reasons for Waiting" on 26th April, "For a Thousand Mothers" and "We Used to Know" along with "Play in Time (Backing track)" on 1st May and finally, "Look Into the Sun" on 21st May. All of the songs were recorded at Morgan Studios in north London, but "Bourée" was recorded at Olympic Studios in south London because Morgan Studios was already booked for 24th April. The general routine was that the band would arrive at the studio at 9 am to work on one or two songs which would be finished by 4 or 5 pm. Recording engineer Andy Johns tried some new techniques; for example on "A New Day Yesterday" he achieved a swirling, stereo-shifting guitar effect by swinging an expensive Neumann U67 microphone on its cable in wide circles around the studio. The song "Bourée" proved the most difficult session, with Anderson and the band unsatisfied with any of the takes they recorded. The final version was compiled later from several takes, with more touches added by Anderson.

Album cover

The design of the album cover started with a visit to New Haven, Connecticut during a concert tour in late February 1969. Under the direction of producer Terry Ellis, the band met a woodcarver named James Grashow who followed them for a week in order to properly represent them in wood. The resulting gatefold album cover, in a woodcut style designed by Grashow, originally opened up like a children's pop-up book so that a cut-out of the band's personnel stood up, evoking the album's title. Stand Up won New Musical Express's award for best album artwork in 1969.

Musical style

The album still shows a great blues influence, as in the first track "A New Day Yesterday". The song "Fat Man" shows an interest in unusual instrumentation, as Ian Anderson plays mandolin, one of the first times the instrument had been used by a rock band. The acoustic pieces, like "Reasons for Waiting", already show Anderson under the influence of Roy Harper. The instrumental "Bourée" (one of Jethro Tull's popular concert pieces) is a jazzy re-working of "Bourrée in E minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Ian Anderson has said that the chord progression in "We Used to Know" was picked up subconsciously by the Eagles when they toured together in 1971 or 1972 and used in their song "Hotel California". However Don Felder, who wrote the music for "Hotel California", did not join Eagles until 1974. In a 2016 interview, Anderson stated that the chord progression had likely been used in earlier songs and also called "Hotel California" a "much better song" than "We Used to Know".

Themes

Although not a concept album, Stand Up lyrically is filled with references to Anderson's relationship with his parents (a subject continued on Benefit), especially in "Back to the Family" and "For a Thousand Mothers". Observational poetry could also be found, as in "Fat Man" and "Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square". The difficult life before the band's success were described in "We Used to Know" – remembering the hard life Anderson and bassist Glenn Cornick had at the beginning of the group.

Critical reception

Stand Up received mixed reviews upon its release, but more recent evaluations praised the album as a whole, for the production and musicianship.

The 1969 Rolling Stone review was quite positive, stating that the album "has a fairly low raunch quotient, true to form, but it is quite marvelous" and also that "the album is not really funky; rather, it is a meticulously crafted work (no sterility implied) which deserves careful listening. At a time when many of the established stars are faltering, it is a particular pleasure to hear an important new voice." The contemporary Disc and Music Echo review was less favourable; it considered the expensive cover the "most impressive" part of the album and Jethro Tull a good live band but still incapable of producing a "musically interesting" release. American critic Robert Christgau reiterated his dislike of the band, but judged the album "adequate" in his Village Voice review.

A retrospective AllMusic review was positive, saying that the band had "solidified their sound" with the album, bringing an "English folk music" influence to several of the songs, atop an overall blues rock foundation. Sean Murphy of PopMatters more emphatically wrote that Stand Up was a "meaningful document from what turned out to be a very transitional moment in rock history... a document created in a rapidly closing artistic window, pre-prog but post-British blues and psychedelic rock." He praised the musicianship of the players and remarked the first examples of "the first-rate lyricist Anderson would quickly become." The Record Collector review highlights how "the album captured the band on a vertiginous upswing, jubilant with confidence following the drafting in of guitarist Martin Barre" and contained "a fresh batch of diverse but uniformly strong compositions".

Legacy

A variety of rock artists have cited Stand Up as an all-time favorite album over the years, including Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton, Joe Bonamassa, and Joe Satriani.

During an interview with BraveWords in 2015, Anderson selected Stand Up as his favorite Tull album: "I suppose if you were to really twist my arm, I would probably go back to 1969, with the Stand Up album, because that was my first album of first really original music. It has a special place in my heart."

Releases

The album was reissued in 1973 by Chrysalis Records.

In 1989 a MFSL remaster was released, with catalogue number UDCD 524. The booklet featured the pop-up woodcut band.

Again the album was reissued in 2001 as a digital remaster.

It was reissued on 5 October 2010 as a deluxe edition, including six bonus tracks on disc one, and two additional discs: a disc of live material recorded at Carnegie Hall on 4 November 1970, and a disc with a DTS surround mix. The material was mixed by Peter Mew at the Abbey Road studios.

It was released again in November 2016 in a box set with two CDs and one DVD, named Stand Up - The Elevated Edition. The box contains rare and previously unreleased music (such as an alternate take of "Bourée", BBC tracks, radio spots) including new stereo and 5.1 mixes of the album and bonus tracks by Steven Wilson, and a live presentation, from a concert in Sweden in 1969, also remixed by Wilson. It also includes a 112-page booklet featuring track-by-track annotations by Ian Anderson, an extensive history of the album, rare and unseen photographs and a reproduction of the original pop-up book artwork designed by James Grashow.

Track listings

All songs written by Ian Anderson, unless otherwise indicated. (Original LP album states "All titles written by Ian Anderson").

1969 Original release

Personnel

Charts

The album reached No. 1 on the British charts, also selling well in the United States, where it reached No. 20. In the Norwegian charts (where the band toured along with Jimi Hendrix), the album was the first to chart there, at No. 5.