The Gallery

Hi, I’m the Minstrel. It’s a good gig--not nearly as good as being The Minstrel, but I do get a Gallery to play in. This is a Jethro Tull archive; think of it as your Tull lending library, serving the discriminating Tull freak since January, 1998. This is a place for you to check out (and perhaps deposit?) various materials that would otherwise be unavailable without somebody paying ridiculous prices to collectable-mag dealers.

So long as nobody objects (and to the best of my knowledge, nobody does, so long as it’s) for your own personal research and non-commercial enjoyment, I’ll make available various reviews and interviews that aren’t on the other Tull sites I’ve seen (even here and there at Geocities).

I concentrate on 70s clippings, since there aren’t enough of them around. I got a lot of these from microfilm and such at the library, but you may not be so blessed. It’s my favorite era for the band--and given Ian’s stormy relationship with the press in those days, many of these pieces are good fun whether you like Tull or not.

One person I would love to hear from is Brian Meyers, who wrote the book on Tull (more or less) in 1979, entitled To Be The Play. Weird, wild stuff--Meyers examines the development of Jethro Tull, album by album, in the context of English Romantic poetry from Milton down to Blake and posits that Anderson and Tull have quite consciously usurped all of the above. You might think the guy’s a crank, but he backs up most of what he asserts, in Tull and/or in English Lit. (I’d love to hear Anderson’s reaction--he can’t be unaware; for years and years it was the only Tull book ever written.)

This book is more entertaining than an encyclopedia of “Paul Is Dead” clues.

Hardcore Tull fans have tended to find To Be The Play awfully pretentious or a total enigma. They don’t know what to make of it. Me, I’d love to make a website of it, one of these days. (Surely Brian would’ve, had there been a web back in ’79.) Whether he’s “correct” in his assumptions is beside the point: it’s one of my favorite books.

I add articles every so often, as I might get mail or run across something new. I’m not as obsessive about Tull as you might think, I just have a lot of clips and they deserve a home. Feedback is always nice, though. Enjoy. As of late 2000 there are 40-odd articles posted, nowhere but somewhere to be found.

--the Minstrel--
Nightcaps poured since 1/31/98


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