Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson Revisits The Band’s Controversial ‘Under Wraps’ Album

Martin Barre and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull perform on stage at Congresgebouw, The Hague, Netherlands, 24th September 1984. (Photo by Rob Verhorst/Redferns)

Redferns

Of Jethro Tull’s 24 studio albums in their nearly 60-year career, 1984’s Under Wraps is considered the most polarizing among the band’s fans. A departure from Tull’s distinct folk/progressive rock from the 1970s, the album marked a noticeable shift towards state-of-the-art electronic rock typically associated with 1980s music. More than 40 years after Under Wraps’ cool reception, the band’s singer, flautist and leader Ian Anderson says he is happy with the overall outcome of the record, especially for its lyrics and melodies. Yet he does admit one disappointing aspect about Under Wraps.

“The only thing that let it down in hindsight was the electronic drum machine that I programmed in order that we would all play to that,” Anderson explains, “because we were working in a studio that I had just built at home, which didn’t have any facility for recording live drums. To do it in an external studio with a live drummer seemed an added chore, given that we had written the songs and we’d done some rehearsals. We were ready to play it live, but we played live in the studio to the drum machine.”

For the 40th anniversary of Under Wraps, Anderson had an opportunity for a do-over of sorts. With assistance from musician/producer Bruce Soord, Under Wraps was recently released as a 5-CD/1-Blu-Ray box set featuring the album remixed twice containing new drum samples and original drums. Subtitled as The Unwrapped Edition, the new set also includes Ian Anderson’s 1983 debut solo album, the equally electronic-sounding Walk Into Light, along with bonus material and a 1984 concert.

“Once we got used to it, I found the experience quite good,” Anderson continues about working with a drum machine. “I think the other guys in the band never really gave it much of a second thought after we’d started work because it became the way in which we developed all the songs. Once we had the arrangements, I programmed the drums to fit the actual final arrangements of the songs. At the time, it was okay. We just got used to it.”

Initially, Anderson considered replacing the dated drum machine sounds from the original Under Wraps with a live drummer for the reissue, but eventually decided to employ the new drum samples instead.

“It’s just using samples of real drums that are today’s real drum samples, which are of a much higher quality,” he says. “We did try a few different approaches going back about a year ago now, including a drummer who did a couple of tracks playing along with it, which he did. He analyzed the original arrangements and wrote them all out and played real drums, which had the sound quality we were after. But it perhaps just didn’t have quite the metronomic accuracy of using a programmed source, which is what we have. So we tried some different samples, two different engineers and a live drummer and made a choice based on what sounded the best.”

Walk Into Light and Under Wraps weren’t Anderson’s initial forays into electronic sounds; their origins could be traced to Tull’s 1980 record A. “The use of a lot of electronic keyboards, which were around the time of that album, had reached a level of growing sophistication,” he says. “So they were no longer the simple synthesizers, which had been monophonic up to that point. Suddenly, we had electronic keyboards that had eight voices. It was the cutting edge of new keyboard technology. They could sound like a piano. They could sound like strings or an organ or harpsichord or whatever you wanted. At that point, they were every bit as organic as a Hammond organ.”

While the synthesizers and drum machine were prominent on Under Wraps, the album featured the members of Tull — Anderson, guitarist Martin Barre, bassist Dave Pegg and keyboardist Peter-John Vettese — in the studio performing in real time, Anderson emphasizes.

“We can’t really condemn the keyboard sounds as being something unnatural,” he says. “They were just the state of the art at the time. But other than that, it was a real bass guitar. It was a real electric guitar. We were playing the standard instruments of rock and roll. And I, of course, played my instruments, which were acoustic.”

He continues: “We had a very natural way of working that mimicked in many ways the sounds and the approach to recording that had been in place since the days of Aqualung or Thick as a Brick. It was not such a different experience, except that we had the reliable drum machine to play to rather than an erratic drummer. Musically speaking, it would have been very testing for a human drummer to have to learn those arrangements and play them. And we didn’t have a drummer at that particular time anyway. So that was the natural thing to do.”

For the album’s lyrics, Anderson drew inspiration from classic spy novels in the vein of John Le Carré, Graham Greene and Ian Fleming—hence the record’s title. The songs reflected the Cold War sentiments of the 1980s.

“It was not in any way to glorify the realms of secrecy and deception,” he says. “It was to explore the world of secrecy and deception…I chose not to make them gloomy and mid-tempo or slow-tempo pieces, which might have been the obvious choice for something brooding and dark. For the most part, the songs were quite uptempo and upbeat in terms of the sound and the way that they developed lyrically as well as musically.”

Under Wraps’ first and only single, “Lap of Luxury,” was Anderson’s attempt at writing a radio-friendly song, although he now considers it the weakest track on the album. “It was because it didn’t really gel with the subject matter of most of the other songs,” he says. “It was an odd man out, really, in the whole album. The title track Under Wraps is really talking more about relationship fidelity or lack of rather than secrecy and espionage.

“But “Lap of Luxury” doesn’t really have anything to do with anything else. So in a way, it’s a bit of a rather heavy-handed approach to coming up with something a bit catchy and maybe that would get some radio play, which it did in the U.S.A. and in places where music was being played on radio…That’s why I wrote that piece and arranged it that way to be a little more attractive.”

Under Wraps also marked a turning point for Anderson and not in the band’s music. During Tull’s 1984 tour, he experienced serious vocal issues. “It was a bad mistake to have pushed myself to that degree in the studio,” he reflects. “When developing the melodies and singing along in the studio, in the context of a recording in the studio, you probably sing it two or three times, and you can push yourself to the limit. Whereas when you’re performing within the context of a two-hour live concert, then that’s a whole different ball game. The performance itself, dynamically and physically, takes its toll. And when you’re struggling to reach the top of your vocal range, you end up trying too hard and hurting yourself.

“But it did take its toll…We didn’t return to touring until Crest of a Knave in ’86’-’87 It was a long period of time with deliberately just trying to let my voice relax and try to get back to where it was, but it never really did. I had done a bit of permanent damage. But in a way, that just pushed me to work with what I had.”

When it came out in 1987, Crest of a Knave was regarded as a return to form and a comeback for the band. By that point, Anderson already knew he wasn’t going to continue in the electronic direction of Walk Into Light and Under Wraps. Additionally, Vettese, who played a key role on shaping the sound of those two earlier albums, had left the band before the release of Crest of a Knave.

“In ’86, I recorded Crest of a Knave and played the keyboard parts such as they were myself,” he says. “I didn’t want it to be too keyboard-oriented in the sense of lots of notes and showing off sort of musical skills. I wanted the keyboard to be very much a backing instrument behind the guitar. And again, Martin was recording with his little Marshall amp in the studio. That was where I suppose I felt I had managed to combine the elements of contemporary keyboard technology but in a more supportive way, not out front playing lead lines and solos and things. It was really much more in the background.”

Now with the new remix, Under Wraps is overdue for renewed appreciation from fans and critics. “That’s all been greatly improved in the new remixes by Bruce Soord, who has given the whole thing a new lease of life with real drum sounds, and alongside the original mixes, the new mixes in stereo and surround sound and Dolby Atmos,” Anderson says. “So it all sounds very sparkling and new…It’s a cleaner, dynamic sound. I’m very, very pleased with the end result, and it’s great to hear it sounding as good as it does.”