Living in the Past

The Zoo Crew has got the needle down on a real oddball of a hit, and the Zoo Freaks on the other end of the dial at THE ZOO ought to lean in for this one. “Living in the Past” is Jethro Tull in a three-minute suit, flute out front, drums ticking in a five-beat pattern that will not let you tap a regular foot. Ian Anderson has told the story more than once. The band was on an early American run in February 1969, staying at a Holiday Inn on the Boston side of the Charles River, with a stretch of shows coming up at the Boston Tea Party. Manager Terry Ellis caught him in the lobby and asked for something catchy they could put out back home, just to keep the pot boiling while the boys were away. Anderson, who had no taste for sitting down and manufacturing a pop single, told Ellis to give him an hour and he would come back with a hit. He went upstairs, picked up an acoustic guitar, and set out to write the least commercial thing he could think of.

The joke was on him. He borrowed the lopsided pulse from Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” stuck the song in 5/4, and hung a title on it that was about as unfashionable as a title could be in 1969. Ellis, hearing the name, wondered out loud whether they might call it “Living in the Future” instead. Anderson kept the original. He has said the words were a sideways look at the late-sixties fashion for revolution, free love, and living only for the moment. Lines about walking out while others shout of war’s disaster, and about a revolution whose fighters do not know what they are fighting, were his way of stepping back from the trend. He has also admitted, with a grin, that he does not rate those lyrics among his best. They still fit the tune. The track was cut with Martin Barre on electric guitar, Glenn Cornick on bass, and Clive Bunker on drums and percussion, Anderson on flute and voice, and strings arranged by Lou Toby. Liner notes on the later album place the recording at Vantone Studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Against every bet Anderson had placed, the single climbed to number three in Britain.

The American company was slower to trust it. Folks in the office worried the time signature was too tricky for radio. When Chrysalis finally pushed the song out in the States, it landed in the Top 20 and became one of Tull’s best-known records over here. The 1972 double album of the same name gathered the single with other early sides, stray studio pieces, and a Carnegie Hall charity set for Phoenix House, and the song sat in the middle of that package like the calling card it had turned out to be. Anderson later told Kerrang! he used to loathe the thing and hide in a corner when it was a fresh hit. The players around him wanted it in the set, and he grew used to the old nuisance. There is a fine picture from the British television show Top of the Pops: Cliff Richard, a hero of Anderson’s teenage years, out on the floor trying to dance along, only to find the left foot landing where the right foot ought to be. Anderson has called that the most wonderful moment of the whole affair. You cannot dance to five unless you have got two and a half legs.

The man with the flute did not come out of a conservatory. Ian Anderson was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and the family moved to Blackpool in 1960. At grammar school he fell in with John Evans, later John Evan, and Jeffrey Hammond, and the three of them started knocking around the northern clubs. Anderson had a Spanish guitar and taught himself. Hammond brought a stack of blues records. Evans, a capable pianist, first took up drums because that was what the beat groups needed, then moved to organ after hearing Georgie Fame and the Animals. By the middle of the decade they were a six-piece blue-eyed soul outfit billed as the John Evan Band, and later the John Evan Smash, working the circuit and cutting a few sides in London. Work was thin. In late 1967 the circle tightened and shifted south, and a new group took shape in Luton and the London orbit with guitarist Mick Abrahams, bassist Glenn Cornick, and drummer Clive Bunker.

The name came the way a lot of good band names come, which is to say by accident. A booking agent, tired of the rotating aliases they were using to get repeat gigs at the same clubs, pulled “Jethro Tull” off a history book. The original Jethro Tull was an eighteenth-century English farmer and writer who fussed over seed drills and horse-hoeing. The band kept the name because the gig went well. Anderson’s flute arrived by a similar piece of luck and necessity. Short of money, he sold a Fender Stratocaster, spotted a gold-colored flute in a shop window with the sun on it, and traded down. He left with cash, a microphone, and an instrument he did not yet know how to finger properly. He has said he only learned the orthodox fingerings years later. That half-taught flute, played standing on one leg, became the signature.

The first record, This Was, came out in 1968 and was still a blues album with jazz and a little classical color around the edges. The British press briefly called them the new Cream. A strong showing at the Sunbury Jazz and Blues Festival helped, and by the end of that year Melody Maker had them second among bands of the year, behind the Beatles and ahead of the Rolling Stones. Abrahams left after the debut, wanting to stay closer to the blues, and Martin Barre took the guitar chair after a short, strange spell in which Tony Iommi sat in. Stand Up followed, and the band Anderson had started in Blackpool school halls was already somewhere else. “Living in the Past” belongs to that hinge, written on the road while Stand Up was barely out, by a singer who thought he was dodging a hit and wrote one anyway.

The Zoo Crew still pull this one when the room wants something with a crooked grin. It is a pop song that refuses to sit in four, a hippie-era record that side-eyes the hippie era, and a band calling card cut by a Scot from Blackpool who swapped a Strat for a flute and never quite looked back. If you want the long trail, the official home is Jethro Tull, where the old television clips of this very song still sit in the archive. The band keeps a running conversation on Facebook, posts the road pictures on Instagram, and checks in on X. Fans gather in the long-running Jethro Tull group and the public Jethro Tull Fans circle, trade set lists and tour lore at the Ministry of Information, and keep the deep digs going on the Jethro Tull Forum. Put the needle back on the five-count. The flute will find you.