Song Lyric Sunday: Bursting Out

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This week’s Song Lyric Sunday invitation is to play something from a live album. Read all about it in Jim’s post Performing Showcase. For me there could only be one choice for this: an album I bought on its release in 1978, played to bits, and love to this day. It was like a ‘greatest hits so far’  by the band. Who were they? If you missed the clue in the header picture, they were Jethro Tull, and the album was Bursting Out.

This was a double album with a total of twenty tracks – real value for money for a fan such as I. I’ve looked around for videos of live performances and while there are several from that time none of them are the ones included on the album, so I’m staying with the official audio clips for today. Beginning with this:

And here are the lyrics:

 

In the shuffling madnessOf the locomotive breathRuns the all-time loserHeadlong to his death
Oh, he feels the piston scrapingSteam breaking on his browOld Charlie stole the handleAnd the train it won’t stop Oh no way to slow down
He sees his children jumping offAt the stations one by oneHis woman and his best friendIn bed and having funOh, he’s crawling down the corridorOn his hands and kneesOld Charlie stole the handle And the train it won’t stop goingNo way to slow downHey
He hears the silence howlingCatches angels as they fallAnd the all-time winnerHas got him by the ballsOh, he picks up Gideons bibleOpen at page oneI think God he stole the handle And the train it won’t stop goingNo way to slow down
No way to slow down
…
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Ian Anderson
Locomotive Breath lyrics © BMG Rights Management

 

Bursting Out was released in September 1978 and reached #17 in the UK and #21 in the US. It was inadvertently renamed in some markets, as a spelling error on the spine of the first US, Canada, Spain and Sweden LP pressings listed the title as “Busting Out.” That was soon corrected! The album was recorded during the band’s European Heavy Horses Tour in May/June 1978, and though I did also find several videos from a Madison Square Gardens show at that time I don’t think any of them were recorded for this album, and the treatments differ from these recordings. Locomotive Breath was on the band’s fourth album, Aqualung, which was released in March 1971, peaking at #4 in the UK and #7 in the US.

1978 was in the middle of the period in which Jethro Tull released a trio of folk-based albums, reflecting Ian Anderson’s longstanding interest in the genre and his new country lifestyle after moving to a farm. He had links with both Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention, the giants of the English folk rock genre, and even borrowed Dave Pegg, Fairport’s bass player, after the extended illness and subsequent death of John Glascock in 1979. Both albums were covered on Bursting Out, and I thought I’d play you one from each of the two which had been released at that point.

First, this one, the title track from their 1977 album Songs From The Wood:

Songs From The Wood reached #13 in the UK and #8 in the US, and is another album I bought and loved at the time.

And this is One Brown Mouse from the second of those albums, Heavy Horses:

Heavy Horses didn’t do as well in chart terms – #20 in the UK and #19 in the US – but I’ve always thought it was a superb album. The only thing stopping me from playing its title track is that it wasn’t on this live album!

For those of you who are feeling short changed by not having any pictures to watch while listening to the music – which I think stands on its own merits anyway – I’m adding in some links to live performances from around that time of these three songs:

Locomotive Breath

Songs From The Wood

One Brown Mouse

You can’t say fairer than that, can you!

Have a lovely day and I’ll see you again for another round of Tuesday Tunes. Take care 😊

36 thoughts on “Song Lyric Sunday: Bursting Out”

  1. Pingback: Caught In June | Take It Easy

    • For audio quality I’d generally agree with you, but there is something special about live music, the shared experience of being a part of it, that has always thrilled me. The brief for this week was a live album and I chose my all time favourite. I’m pleased you also recognised how good it is 😊

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  14. Brilliant choices from an album I played strangely enough only yesterday in amongst Benefit and the quite brilliant last three JT albums whilst toiling away at the keyboard. I have no idea why I was on a JT day, but it feels very prescient

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