During freshman year at Holy Cross High School in Bayside, Queens I discovered Jrthro Tull and they quickly became my favorite band. While my Aunt Pat gave me my first album as a gift, “Meet the Beatles” when it was first released, and my father bought me the Moody Blues “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” after that, the first rock album that I purchased on my own was Jethro Tull’s “Warchlld”. I was pretty miserable at the all boy school and the wild haired rock and roll flautist with his eclectic band became an instant diversion from teenage angst.
I had been anticipating seeing Jethro Tull in concert for seemingly forever but on the day of the first Madison Square Garden show the word was out that Ian Anderson was ill and would be playing a shortened set.
As I recall, this was supposed to be a “greatest hits” tour supporting one of Jethto Tull’s compilation albums.
James Taylor’s younger brother Luvingston was added on as an opening act which turned out to be a big mistake.
Livingston Taylor took the stage alone with his acoustic guitar and the Madison Square Garden Tull fans were none to pleased.
As Mr. Taylor began to strum his guitar and play, an angry crowd began to pelt him with anything they could find. I told this story to an acquaintance years later and it turned out that he had been a pretzel vendor at the Garden; Mike told me that this was the best night he ever worked at MSG as people were buying pretzels just to throw at Livingston Taylor.
Livingston Taylor tried to continue playing while dodging and ducking the increasing bombardment but it was too much to ask and he quickly gave up and fled the stage.
We watched from midway up to the left of the stage and when Taylor ran off of the stage we were excited that this might mean Jethro Tull would come on earlier and play a longer set.
Unfortunately all the commotion was for naught as Livingston Taylor’s quick exit just meant a longer intermission and Tull apparently played as planned.
Nothing is Easy
Rock on
GQ