Being For The Benefit Of MistersTull

Benefit was my second Jethro Tull album . It still takes me back to that Delhi summer of '91. I can almost smell the sweet-salt stench wafting in from the Def Col nullah nearby , feel the scorching hot wind toss-salading the air to a roasted haze (and the discomfort of enduring that for a semi-furtive chotta Gold Flake outside my room) , hear the Ring Road traffic trying its damndest to drown out my Phillips record player , see all the very many friend stars my planet orbited around - and , hell yes , almost feel the lightness of a 19 year old Summer Holiday being . In short , it's a happy record for me.

So it helps that the music is so fabulous to get back to now. The Tull sound of 1968 (Stand Up) -1978 (Songs From The Wood) spawned many mastepieces and rings solid and true. But I overdosed on the stuff for a long time . It was a kind of Lost Weekend phase of swamping myself with late 60's / 70's rock that in hindsight probably got in the way of discovering more contemprorary new sounds when i still could. (gets harder with age doesnt it!). Tull are still up there with my favourites but not quite in the same way anymore. Not that there's never a Tull moment now but they've certainly been fewer . I tripped out on Benefit yesterday and that's how this post !

I saw Tull in Dubai around 2003 or 04 , double billed with Indian Classical flute maestro Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia. The individual sets were great but the combined jam session at the end was all over the place. The two flutes were loud and out-of-sync. The other musicians were desperately trying to get half a decibel in edgeways. It was chaos. My abiding memory from the gig - 10 feet away in the front row , for a change - would have to be the priceless look on guitarist Martin Barre's face when the good pandit abruptly cut in with yet another trilling solo just when our Martin had taken advantage of a lull in the flute storm to launch one of his own on the guitar. Look of adoring veneration it was not. I saw Ian Anderson proffer a sympathetic "damned if i saw that coming" shrug to his longtime Tull collaborator. Hilarious !

With the benefit of You Tube , two of my fav tracks from the album : Inside and Teacher