Jethro Tull

From time to time – maybe every five years – Ian Anderson releases a new album. Sometimes as Jethro Tull, sometimes as a solo album.
But this frenetic writing and recording activity allowed no time off, no time to re-energise or enjoy family life. So the pace of studio work was slowed, and touring the world's stages proved to be both an antidote to boredom and an opportunity to reach new audiences in countries previously untravelled.
The new album – whenever it was finally completed and ready for release – became something of a rarity, but it continued to produce varied and non-conformist music. Never one to cling to a formula, Ian Anderson found new horizons and new themes for musical excursions that sometimes disappointed the expectations of fans who had grown older and perhaps more conservative in their musical tastes.
And then the world as we knew it collapsed. In January 2020, news of the spreading coronavirus pandemic filled the news channels. »It came so suddenly«, recalls Anderson. So began the endless series of postponements and cancellations. The end of a whole year's work in planning and negotiating contracts for the many shows that were scheduled for 2020.
A perfect time to finish the unfinished album? Anderson says: »The despair and anger at having our professional lives taken from us meant, for me at least, that releasing a new album was hardly worth it until we could get back together in the studio and finish the last songs in the traditional way.«
So a couple of other projects came into play as replacements. The Jethro Tull biography The Ballad Of Jethro Tull« and then the collected lyric book »Silent Singing« took up much of Anderson's time over the following months, until he realised that the virus was going to stick around for quite a while and decided to record the final songs alone and finish the project for a 2021 release. Some band members were able to contribute remotely by sending in their individually recorded music parts, which were then integrated into the final mix.
So «The Zealot Gene«, as it has now been titled, had to wait like a maturing whisky for another period of concert cancellations and disappointments, until now.
Probably the longest in the making album – certainly for Tull – rests quietly in the pantheon of the Tull catalogue awaiting its fate. A flop? A triumphant return to the heady days of the 70s? It could be somewhere in between, ponders Anderson.