This is no history lesson, though - fans can expect a rocking performance of the legendary band’s songs, with topical detail coming secondarily. The idea of a narrative performance, with songs slightly amended and rearranged to address pressing modern themes, came to Anderson over the course of a two-hour car journey through the rolling hills of Northern Italy. “It was an interesting surprise to find that Jethro Tull’s life just embodied lots of little elements that suggested to me an immediate relationship with songs I had written over the years, most of which were of the very well-known in the Jethro Tull repertoire,” Anderson said in a recent interview with The Santa Barbara Independent. It wasn’t until recently, in 2014, that Anderson felt inspired to read up on Tull and his professional achievements. On Wednesday, October 19, Ian Anderson, leader of the late ’60s band that took the name of that English agriculturalist and quickly became one of the most respected progressive rock acts of all time, will come to the Arlington Theatre with band in tow to present Jethro Tull: The Rock Opera, a spectacular greatest-hits set that reimagines the band’s catalog through the character of the historical Tull with a narrative performance involving contemporary themes of climate change, overpopulation, and new technologies.Īnderson said he doesn’t necessarily find the man Jethro Tull to be especially compelling and indeed hardly knew who Tull was when the band’s agent decided upon the name in 1968. Hundreds of years ago, a man named Jethro Tull was born in Berkshire, England, growing up to reform agriculture with the invention of the seed drill and the horse-drawn hoe.

ON OVERPOPULATION'S TOLL: Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson addresses topics like overpopulation and climate change in his new narrative rock set.

Jethro tull rock opera review