Once again I’m indebted to my man Robert Rodriguez (and once again: if you are a music fan and especially if you are a Beatles fan, you need to get to know his work, STAT). Via his daily Facebook posts (get in on the action and like it here) I learned that it was on this day in 1976 that one of the more controversial albums by Jethro Tull, Too Old To Rock ‘n’ Roll, Too Young To Die!, was released.
Controversial mostly because it was supposed to be a rock musical (for the stage and/or screen), which would have upped the ante from the album-length concept albums from ’72 and ’73 (the beloved Thick As A Brick and the not-so beloved A Passion Play). Like yet another concept album gone awry (or reigned in, depending on your perspective), 1974’s War Child, this one became a semi-straightforward album with proper songs. It occupies a place in the Tull cataolog that ranges from overlooked to misunderstood. Of course some of the more hardcore fans find much to recommend, and the hardest core would argue it has some of Tull’s best material. Personally, I find it a bit of all these things: it’s definitely overlooked and underappreciated, and it has a couple of throwaway tunes (“Crazed Institution” and “Taxi Grab”, while not stinkers, are far below the quality Ian Anderson usually insisted upon). And, finally, it does indeed contain some of their best work. Even a listener who has never heard this particular album should be blown away by the acoustic tour-de-force that is “Salamander”, while album-closer “The Chequered Flag (Dead or Alive)” is just about as good as prog-rock got in the mid-’70s.
Coincidentally, if conveniently, it was only earlier this week that I addressed the song that gives this album its name if not its sensibility (a full review of Anderson’s latest work is here). For some folks, this is one of the handful of Tull songs they hear (and hate) on FM radio; for others it is something else (good, bad or ugly, and personally, I think it’s a bit of all these things):
However unwittingly, Ian Anderson wrote his artistic epitaph all the way back in 1976. “Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young To Die!”, the hit from the album of the same name, used music as a metaphor (or vice versa) where he, understandably, wondered if—or when—a musician might be reasonably expected to retire. The answer, of course, has always been straightforward: when the musician feels like it. Whether written off by critics, ignored by trend makers or still selling out arenas, only the artist can decide when it’s finally time to walk away.
It was more than a little prescient for Anderson to skewer himself, the industry and his audience by at once admitting it was ridiculous for an “aging” rock star to keep both feet in the spotlight, while celebrating it with appropriate defiance. What else is a rock star supposed to do? Of course, this message does not remotely apply only to rock music. As the hippies and baby boomers see –or at least sense– the shadow of that chequered flag, they can pick up what he was putting down. It wasn’t a joke then and it’s definitely not a laughing matter now.
Speaking of prescience, how about the satirical meat hooks Anderson puts into the quiz-show craze of the time. Consider how quaint that seems given our current state of reality TV where knowledge and talent often take a back seat to willful and very public humiliation.
For anyone who never thought prog rockers had a sense of humor…well, it’s understandable. But whoever you are you did not listen to enough, and you certainly did not listen to Jethro Tull. Appreciate the tongue-in-cheek “celebration” of the counterculture, or the finger in the eye of snobbish society. Or both, and more…
Bottom line: not only is this album far from a failure, it is an album that was (doubly ironically, considering its title) a bit ahead of its time and as a result it’s aged quite nicely. The musicianship is, as ever, top notch and Anderson is hitting on every conceivable cylinder, lyrically. (A few sample grabs: “Old queers with young faces/Who remember your name”; “I’m self-raising and I flower in her company”; “I’ve a tenner in my skin-tight jeans/You can touch it if your hands are clean”; and, finally, the opening salvo that holds as true today as it did in the bell-bottom era: “The old Rocker wore his hair too long/wore his trouser cuffs too tight/Unfashionable to the end, drank his ale too light”).
But for the full monty, we must go back to that last song, where Anderson uses several minutes to cover several albums (or novels) worth of themes and issues: birth, death, despair and death. You know, the usual rock and roll cliches.
In sum, isn’t it grand to be playing to the stand, dead or alive? Fucking-A right it is.
