A

In late1980 I read in a Rock magazine that the band called "U.K." had split recently, and that their former keyboard player, Eddie Jobson, was a new member of Jethro Tull. As I liked the band "U.K.", I had curiosity to listen to this Jethro Tull album called "A", which I bought some days later after John Lennon died, in December 1980. As someone mentioned in a previous review, Ian Anderson started this album as a solo project. Before this album was recorded, Jethro Tull lost/fired three of their members:John Evan, David Palmer and Barrimore Barlow. I don`t know the exact details, but it seems that the record label didn`t like Anderson`s solo album to be a solo album, so this "A" album became a Jethro Tull album (I don`t know if it was before or after it was recorded), with Martin Barre, and new members Mark Craney and Dave Pegg, and Eddie Jobson as "special guest". It is interesting to hear Jobson`s keyboards and electric violin in this album, particularly the keyboards in "Fylingdale Flyer", "Black Sunday" and in "And Furhter On" (my favourite songs in this album). In "The Pine Marten`s Jig" Jobson mainly plays the violin, in this "English Folk" song. Eddie Jobson is also credited in the back cover with "additional music material" under the "Songs: Ian Anderson" credit, but in the label only Anderson`s name appears as composer (as maybe he wanted all the royalties as composer for himself, as usual!).This is a good album which is interesting for me mainly for the contributions made by Jobson and the rest of the members of the band, which are very good. It seems that this album was out of print for several years and it was re-issued on CD one or two years ago. Like Ray Davies of The Kinks, Ian Anderson has more success releasing albums under the name of a band (Jethro Tull) than releasing albums under his own name. I don`t know why this happens, but maybe Jethro Tull fans prefer Anderson with the contributions of good musicians like Martin Barre who has been in the band since 1969 and also has released several solo albums which maybe are not very known.