Feature

Jethro Tull could be considered one of the founding fathers of “Prog Rock” (Progressive Rock). Since the late ‘60s, this band has made their mark in music history with their eclectic sound. They have not lost one bit of their momentum, with seemingly endless tours since inception.

As 2008 approaches, Tull is getting ready to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and drummer Doane Perry was more than happy to reflect back on the 20 years he’s spent with the band and what’s in store for Mobile when they hit the Saenger stage.

SC: You’ve been with Tull more than 20 years. In a few words, how would you describe the time that you’ve spent with this band?

DP: Actually, this is my 24th year with the band. In some ways, it’s gone incredibly quickly as only time can as you get older. It certainly has been full of many, many memorable moments onstage and off. It’s been a major part of my life, obviously, for the past 24 years, and even though I do a lot of things outside of Jethro Tull, when we come together to play, it’s always very exciting and always challenging even after all these years to play the music well and play correctly every night and fuse to a certain degree with a certain amount of passion and sense of newness about it that you would like the audience to feel as if it’s the first time you’ve played that piece of music for them that very evening.

SC: Like you were just saying, you have a lot of side projects and before Tull, you were a session drummer with a veritable “who’s who” of musicians. What is it about Tull that keeps you coming back for more?

DP: Music, very simply, the music. I love playing the music. Like I said, it’s an incredible challenge to be playing this music day-in and day-out. Even after all the years that I’ve played some of the pieces, we’re constantly rearranging and making it interesting for ourselves as well as the audience. I think that’s the only reason that any of us are still doing it. It’s just something that just feels wonderful to do. Playing well together, there’s nothing like that. Not every night is like that. There’s some nights where you don’t hit on all cylinders, but when all the vectors overlap in the right way and everything feels great and the sound is good, there’s very little that can compare to that feeling.

SC: How would you compare life on the road now with the way it was 20 years ago?

DP: I think it’s harder. It may be easier in certain respects in terms of…no, let me rephrase that. I think the travel is really the hardest part. That is really the hard part of the gig. It’s not the music or the challenging nature of the music; it’s the challenge of traveling in 2007. I personally do not like flying at all, and I get very sick of airports and all the stuff you have to put up with domestically and internationally. We’ve been all over the world this year, and you’re always in a different time zone. So, it takes awhile to get adjusted to that. I think that there’s certain things that as you get older that physically are just harder to do, and traveling is one of them. Drumming is a very physical art, and it certainly requires a lot more in terms of preparation and warming up to be able to do what is really natural. I didn’t have to go to some of the lengths I go through now just to feel really relaxed and my body to feel ready to play every night because I’ve been doing this a long, long time. There’s just certain things that, despite the fact that I’ve taken very good care of myself, there’s certain things that could be termed an occupational hazard that relates to my profession. Not to mention the nature of the aging process that affects all of us.

SC: Earlier this year, Jethro Tull released a “best of” acoustic album. What made you guys decide to do that?

DP: Fans love the acoustic side of Jethro Tull, and that’s been a big part of it as much as the heavier rock side of it. That was something that really didn’t exist in that way as a CD of music being more acoustic in nature. It’s also nice because it probably clues people into a side of the band if they had only previously listened to the staples of FM rock radio. They might not have heard some of those. Some of these might be complete surprises to them.

SC: I totally understand what you’re saying. Because of the way radio works these days, people only know a handful of Jethro Tull songs, and they don’t understand that there’s a plethora of excellent music from you guys that they haven’t been exposed to.

DP: Well, that’s right. The hardcore Tull fans know this and are always trying to indoctrinate new listeners to the group. The average, casual FM radio listener probably knows a half dozen of the songs and really thinks that this makes up the body of the good work that the band has done. Of course, as anyone who knows, we have been touring consistently since the inception of the band and putting out records. This is not just an obstacle that we as Jethro Tull have experienced. I think many bands that originally formed in that era find that a lot of their listeners are still entrenched in a certain era of the band, which is a shame.

If you listen to the band from the very beginning, you can see a huge development and change of styles and incorporations of many different styles of music, elements that weren’t there in the early days. As the band has evolved, you hear more and more of that and more sophistication of the playing. That’s something we’re quite proud of. We try to, as much as we can, represent a little bit from every era of the band. Of course, that’s impossible with the number of pieces there are to perform. We try to take a little bit from every era, and every tour is different. There might be a few songs that we may play consistently, but the rest of the set is constantly evolving.

SC: With the holiday season upon us, will you guys be breaking some songs off of your Christmas album?

DP: Actually, we have been playing some songs off of the Christmas album. There’s actually at least two that we’re doing in the set right now. There might be a third one coming in, but yes, absolutely. It’s that season, so we’re trying to pull a little bit to reflect that.

SC: You’re one of those legendary, old school bands that haven’t lost their momentum one bit. What does the future have in store for Jethro Tull?

DP: (Laughing) Who knows! We just keep playing, and it keeps evolving. I don’t think that everything gets planned out in minute detail. We are playing through next year; we have dates booked. That would be, technically, the 40th anniversary of the band. So, we have quite a bit of dates around the world planned for 2008. Then, when we get to the middle or the end of 2008, we’ll discuss 2009. We take it a year at a time. I think that if anyone had said to the band when it started, ‘You’re still going to be doing this 40 years from now’ or when I joined 24 years ago, I would have thought, ‘Well, the band’s been together for 15 years. Maybe it will be together another year for this tour, and that might be it.’ Here I am 24 years later, and we’re still playing and that’s remarkable.

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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