Jethro Tull - Benefit
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CD Details
Artist: Jethro TullEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2002-01-08
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- 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
- Singing All Day
- Witch's Promise
- Just Trying To Be
- Teacher (Original UK Mix)
Music reviews of Benefit
Music Review: Step "Inside" this Flawed Gem...
Rating: 5 Stars
As a newbie to Tull fanaticism (a casual listener who only recently got into the albums and found that he loved them!), there is probably not much I can say here that has not already been said: very briefly, this is a very good album that has been underrated because of its position between two of Tull's greatest and most popular albums. Like other newbies, I bought Aqualung and Stand Up before this one, and on first listen to Benefit I agreed with the majority that this one did not quite match up. More so than the other two albums, it is not quite "lovable" upon the first listen, or even the first two or three. There is indeed a melancholy dreary feeling that seems to seep from the album, starting with the dark and gloomy album cover, and captured perfectly by the first song "With You There to Help Me", which seems to set the tone for what is to come. This dark mood established at the outset seems to cast a shadow over the album as a whole, coloring each tune that follows, and giving the album an overall mournful, dirgelike feel that is unpleasant at first listen. And, reading Ian Anderson's liner notes, it seems that this dark tone was what he was going for, as he bemoaned life on the road, began feeling the pressures of stardom and commercialism, and felt strong dismay at the current state of the music industry in general and the bland, unoriginal taste of fellow musicians, and their listening public.
Strangely enough, however, a few more listens reveals this album to be a richly textured, dense, fascinating masterpiece that challenges the listener and breaks new ground. It is an album whose experimental nature makes it sound fresh to contemporary ears, very ahead of its time, matching up well against (and perhaps easily defeating) any contemporary alternative music of today. In fact, I would argue that it demonstrates Tull's true nature as the prototypical "alternative" band, long before that label was invented, and long before "alternative" suddenly became ironically translated into "mainstream" somewhere in the late 80s or early 90s. I would strongly assert that the "alternative" aspect of Tull's work is really its essential thrust, as it is never truly folk, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive, jazz, classical, or any other label that you want to place on it...it is primarily just DIFFERENT from anything else out there, and as such cannot be adequately labeled.
This gets to the heart of the main problem with the album, which is also the quality that makes it great: Ian Anderson's giant "F You" to the entire music industry in creating an album that does not follow what might be thought of as the logic of the commercial music industry. This sentiment is not confined merely to this Tull album, as such defiance of logic can be found throughout the Tull catalogue, but perhaps the defining characteristics of this defiance and the acerbity with which they are performed and delivered are perhaps most strongly felt on Benefit. For example, as is the case with much of Tull's work, many of the songs here are what might be considered overlong (including perhaps its three best songs, "With You There to Help Me", "Nothing to Say", and "To Cry You A Song") and thus seemingly incompatible with heavy rotation on the radio. Most of the songs do not follow a standard verse chorus verse chorus bridge solo verse chorus formula, like most contemporary pop or rock songs of the era. Good melodies here are sometimes cut off a bit soon to make way for a sudden shift in the song, good riffs are sometimes spoiled by overrepetition, and both melodies and riffs are often interspersed with discordant or otherwise disturbing sounds which risk disrupting the casual listener's pleasure. All of this makes the album strikingly uncommercial in its sensibilities, and surprisingly so perhaps considering that one might expect the band to expand upon its newly established image, given the recent massive success of the immensely popular album, Stand Up. But it is also what makes it an extraordinarily interesting listen in comparison to its predecessor.
However, the main area where this giant "F you" poses the greatest problem is in the SONG ORDER, which seems to be designed specifically to resist the logic of the music industry. Whereas Aqualung and even Stand Up have a very appealing flow in their song order, starting with a very strong, rocking song of wide commercial appeal ("Aqualung" or "New Day Yesterday") then mixing it up with acoustic numbers and rockers paced evenly and then ending up with satisfying rockers ("Locomotive Breath"/"Wind Up" or "For A Thousand Mothers"), this one begins with the sad, subtle, and somber "With You There to Help Me" and ends with the relatively quiet acoustic number "Sossity; You're A Woman". Neither song seems immediately likable or even memorable, even though both certainly grow on you after repeated play. That said, they are both very good songs that would probably show up somewhere in the middles of either Aqualung or Stand Up. Moreover, there is no song on Benefit that has the widespread commercial appeal of the two big singles that came out just prior to the release of this album, included here as bonus tracks: "Teacher" and "Witch's Promise". From a purely commercial standpoint it was clearly a huge mistake to fail to include both of these two songs on the original album as they are both standouts. Still, from an artistic standpoint, they are not perhaps in line with the mood that Anderson was going for on Benefit, nor the statement that he was obviously trying to make by resisting commercialism in the music industry. I would actually go as far as to say that with the inclusion of these two songs and a rearrangement of the order of the other songs, this album would have a COMPLETELY different feel and would have probably even be interpreted differently. For example, to rearrange Benefit to follow an Aqualung-like format, imagine beginning with the cynical yet hard rocking winner "To Cry You a Song", followed up another one in "Son" (perhaps the "Aqualung" and "Cross-Eyed Mary" of Benefit), then move to a couple of shorter, quieter, more folky numbers like "Sossity; You're A Woman" and "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey, and Me", and "Witch's Promise". Then you might move to "Play in Time" (maybe the "My God" of Benefit) and and then back to a rocking, commercially appealing song like "Teacher" (possibly the "Hymn 43" of Benefit). Then you might move back again to some of the shorter quieter numbers with "Inside", "Alive and Well and Living In" and "A Time for Everything?". Then you would end on a strong note again with the powerful but underrated "Nothing to Say", a song which might find itself quite comfortable on today's alternative rock stations. This change-up would accentuate the best, most hard rocking songs on the album but would also make the quieter acoustic numbers more refreshing as a counterpoint to the rockers.
To use another analogy, we might say that this is the "Let it Be" of the Tull catalogue, as an underrated collection of songs, oozing with tension and world-weariness, overwrought with layers of production, and suffering from similar problems such as lack of "sensible" song order. In the case of the Beatles, these are problems which were to a large degree corrected on the remastered and reshuffled Let it Be Naked album. Although I understand that there were significant improvements in the albums sound quality in this new remastered version, Tull/Ian Anderson chose not to "correct" the song order, and in fact substituted "Teacher" from the US version with the far less appealing "Alive and Well and Living In", only to tack on "Teacher" at the end as a bonus track (seemingly a strong insult to what is by most accounts a very good song).
In my opinion, this kind of change-up in the song order would make the album more appetizing in terms of commercial appeal, and, using today's technology, one might simply reprogram the song order to achieve such an effect, if they so wished. Still, the brilliance of Ian Anderson's musical and artistic vision might be lost. Much of the album's energy is drawn from its depression and darkness, and its song order magnifies this overall feeling of bleakness and despondency. I highly recommend this album to anyone with the patience to give it a few spins to let the artistic brilliance shine through. For those who prefer a more commercially-oriented album, I suggest reprogramming the song list to give it more of the Aqualung-style pacing that it currently lacks. In either case, it is an album that invites you "inside" its window, and is definitely worth the price of admission.
Description of Benefit
Digitally remastered reissue of 1970 album includes four bonus tracks, 'Teacher' (Original UK Mix), 'Witch's Promise', 'Just Trying To Be' & 'Singing All Day'.Classic Rock CDs
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