Jethro Tull - Inside - 1970
Songs: With You There to Help Me, Nothing to Say, Alive and Well and Living In, Son, For Michael Collins Jeffrey and Me, To Cry You a Song, A Time for Everything, Inside, Play in Time, Sossity You´re a Woman.
Type of Music: (Hard) Rock with bits and pieces of Folk and Psychedelic Rock.
Comments:
What a different record when compared to Stand Up. The atmosphere is dark and sometimes somewhat depressing but at the same time very coherent. Part of this surely stems from the fact that John Evan joined the Tull on keyboards. This gave Martin Barre more confidence and Artistic Freedom and he used it to our Benefit.
Ian Anderson clearly did not like the Commercial Pressure put on the band after the success of Stand Up and reacted by delivering Benefit, a non-conformist Hard Rock Album. Yes, you heard me quite right. It´s mainly Hard Rock and quite good as well. The Tull is vastly underrated as a Hard Rock Band as most of the attention tends to go to Ian and his Flute. Not that Ian minds that by the way. He must be one of the Biggest Egos in Musical History.
His flute of course does make the difference between the Tull and your common Hard Rock Band. A good example is the very strong Album opener With You There to Help Me, a duel between Ian´s Flute and Martin´s Guitar that ends in a draw after a very exciting match.
Benefit suffers a bit from the lack of recognisable Riffs. As a result the songs tend to leave your brains just as quick as they enter. But they also grow on you with time and that’s the main reason that this Album gets regular spins in my CD Player. Other great songs include Play in Time and the single Inside, the only somewhat lighter composition on the album with Ian´s Flute seemingly floating through the song. Great bass from Glenn Cornick as well.
Inside is mostly forgotten, released as it was between the giants Stand Up and Aqualung. And although it´s gloomy and dark and maybe sometimes a bit pretentious, it contains some great music and certainly deserves more attention than it usually gets. People who enjoy Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath will not be disappointed by this Album.
At the end of the Sixties and begin Seventies , JT also released many good singles. Two of them, Witch´s Promise and Teacher are included in the Remastered version released in 2001, together with Singing All Day and Just Trying to Be.
The two singles are extremely catchy Prog-Rock songs and those two songs alone already justify buying the Remastered Version of Benefit.
Rating: ******** (8 out of 10)
Black = Good Songs
Green = Great Songs
Red = Could Be Better
Who should buy this Record: This is not the place to start your Tull collection. However if you prefer Tull´s Hard Rock side above the Prog-Rock and/or Folk side, Inside is for you.
Bonus Tracks: Singing All Day, Witch´s Promise, Just Trying To Be, Teacher.
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