This Was is Jethro Tull before Jethro Tull — a British blues album with a flute in it, made by a band who already knew they were about to change. Released in 1968, it is the only record with guitarist Mick Abrahams, and its title is a joke and a prophecy at once.

The short version

This Was (1968) is the debut album by Jethro Tull, recorded at Sound Techniques in London before the band even had a record contract. The quartet of Ian Anderson, blues guitarist Mick Abrahams, bassist Glenn Cornick and drummer Clive Bunker play blues, jazz and rock, with Anderson’s flute the one element nobody else in Britain had. It reached the UK Top 10, and Abrahams was gone within months.

Two weeks of flute lessons

Ian Anderson had noticed something obvious in 1968: Britain was awash with electric guitar heroes, and a young man wanting to stand out might do better to pick a different instrument. He chose the flute, inspired by the jazz multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and had been playing it for roughly a fortnight when Jethro Tull began. Every night on stage, he said later, was a flute lesson. The first tune he learned was Kirk’s ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo,’ which duly appears here. The album took its name from Anderson’s own sleeve note: this was how they were playing then, he wrote, but things change. Few debuts have announced their own obsolescence so cheerfully.

The sound

Make no mistake: this is a blues band. Mick Abrahams is a serious bluesman, and his guitar dominates — this remains the only Jethro Tull album on which Anderson had a genuine creative equal, and Abrahams writes, plays and even sings. Glenn Cornick’s bass is fluid and inventive, and Clive Bunker drums with a swing and imagination that mark him out at once. Around them, Anderson wails on harmonica and trills on flute, dragging jazz into a form that rarely wanted it. The production is thin and the songs uneven. But something new is stirring: nobody else sounded remotely like this.

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The songs

‘My Sunday Feeling’ opens with a bluesman’s hangover and closes with Glenn Cornick quoting the bass line of the Pink Panther theme. ‘Some Day the Sun Won’t Shine for You’ is a stripped-back twelve-bar, and ‘Beggar’s Farm’ the first song here that points toward the band Tull would become. ‘Move On Alone’ is sung by Mick Abrahams — the only lead vocal on any Jethro Tull studio album not taken by Anderson — and arranged for brass by Dee Palmer, her first appearance on a Tull record. ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo’ is their jazziest recording, ‘Dharma for One’ a showcase for Bunker’s drumming, and ‘Cat’s Squirrel’ a blues staple that Cream had also claimed.

Reception and legacy

The album reached number 10 in Britain and made a modest showing in America, where a relentless tour won the band a cult following. British blues enthusiasts still hold it in high regard, thin production and all. Its significance, though, is what happened next. Mick Abrahams wanted to keep playing the blues; Ian Anderson did not, and by the end of the year the guitarist had left to form Blodwyn Pig. Martin Barre took his place, Anderson took full control, and Stand Up arrived less than a year later sounding like a different band entirely. The title of this record had been right all along.

The verdict

This Was is not the album to start with, and it is not progressive rock at all — it is a British blues record with an unusual instrument in the front line. Judged on those terms it is thoroughly enjoyable, and essential for anyone curious about where Jethro Tull came from. Come for the extraordinary ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo’ and the swing of ‘My Sunday Feeling,’ and hear four young musicians playing the music of the moment, while one of them quietly plots his escape from it.

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