“I was always the lowest common denominator”: Jeffrey Hammond’s five years with Jethro Tull

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When Jethro Tull fired bassist Glenn Cornick in 1970 after a three-year stint, the band turned to an old friend to take over. Jeffrey Hammond would soon become known as Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond – a reference, he said, to the fact that his parents had the same surname before they’d met, and his mother refused to give up her maiden name.

That kind of quirkiness would be a trademark of his five years in Tull, during which time the band would release Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, A Passion Play, War Child and Minstrel In The Gallery – establishing Ian Anderson and co among the vanguard of progressive music.

“John Evan, Ian and I were at school together and played at youth clubs and seedy working men’s clubs,” Hammond told Prog in 2011. “After a couple of years of the transit van life the initial excitement wore off, and I deserted to begin a foundation course in art. I then hoped to do a postgraduate one at the Royal Academy Schools. But I wasn’t offered a place, and within a few months Ian offered me a position in Tull, making Aqualung.”

He had no qualms about admitting his creative input to Aqualung – his first-ever recording experience – was minimal. “Any influence from me would have been obtuse or indirect at best. I was always the lowest common denominator. The Locomotive Breath and the Aqualung riffs might be examples of that basic simplicity, and occasionally less can be more. “

He recalled enduring additional challenges: “It probably felt more difficult than for the others, being thrust in at the deep end, having not played at all while at art school – not to mention the wide gulf in musical ability between the rest of the band and myself. And not all the initial recordings were exactly to Ian’s liking.”

But he described the experience as “very special,” adding: “It was sink or swim, and I suppose I needed an Aqualung more than most! I thought it might be my first and last recording, so I did have a sense of relief and achievement.”

In 2012 Hammond told Prog he’d known nothing about Thick As A Brick’s creation as a comical riposte to those who’d called Aqualung a concept album. “Being on the very fringe of all things musically and lyrically creative might explain some of that philistinism and misconception,” he reflected. “Of course, I can now really appreciate how Thick As A Brick fits neatly into the concept album box, and as such deserves to be repackaged and reappraised.”

While he gleefully contributed to the spoof newspaper that accompanied TAAB, he said the project had been entirely Anderson’s and never a “band visualisation,” but noted: “The finished article is a homogenous whole – though how much that reflects the original big idea, one hesitates to speculate.”

He argued that the recording work was easier than many have assumed over the years. “Perhaps a continuous flowing piece of music is easier to achieve than a three-minute tune which, by definition, has all the constraints that time brings to bear upon it.

“Possibly there is more freedom to manoeuvre on a larger stage, a bigger canvas. Although Thick As A Brick may have been recorded over a number of days or weeks, it retains the sense of a linear journey rather than roughly mortared-together brickwork.”

Another key element was the arrival of drummer Barriemore Barlow – which, Hammond said, led to “birth pangs” around the album sessions fading out in favour of a much more fun environment. “A certain degree of togetherness [reflected] the camaraderie and very close friendships that had been formed during heady embryonic teenage days in Blackpool,” the bassist said. “None of this was contrived or artificial – rather the opposite, it being a natural and often spontaneous outpouring of the energy and excitement of the moment.”

Guitarist Martin Barre fondly recalled some of that camaraderie, telling Prog. “The Minstrel In The Gallery tour marked the end of Jeffrey’s time in the band. Still, he bowed out with a flourish, wearing a striking black-and-white striped suit, with matching zebra-striped bass.”

He added: “The theme continued in the form of a pantomime horse-style zebra that wandered onstage during the show. It was two roadies. The zebra pooed out tennis balls, and Jeffrey used to juggle with them. Totally stupid – but it was us being self- deprecating and saying, ‘We’re stood onstage in front of 20,000 people for pretty well no reason, but we’re going to entertain you.’”

The spirit of brotherhood served Tull well during that era. They might not have survived the disaster that was their 1972 trip to France to record at Chateau D’Herouville – a misadventure that resulted in illness, malnutrition and the abandoning of a complete album’s worth of material in favour of what would become A Passion Play. It’s been said it was Hammond who renamed the location “Chateau D’Isaster.”

After five years of prog stardom, he could no longer ignore the call of his other artistic ambitions. “He returned to his first love, painting, and put down his bass guitar, never to play again,” Anderson wrote in the sleeve notes of Minstrel’s 2002 reissue.

The band leader has written more than one song about Hammond over the decades, possibly the most notable of which is A Song For Jeffrey, released as a single two years before the bassist joined the band. Also memorable are Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square from Stand Up; and For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me from Benefit.

In 2017 the band leader told Prog of Minstrel: “It’s the last one that Jeffrey played on, so it has this negative undertow to it as we knew he was going. So with Jeffrey leaving, it made me think, ‘Maybe I need to do this without relying on others so much.’ I started working more on my own in the studio, writing and recording, playing to a click track, so a lot of it was a bit more ‘them and me’ – a bit more insular, musically speaking, which wasn’t great in the spirit of working together.”

Hammond – whose character abounds in his narration of A Passion Play’s The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles – has often named TAAB as the best album he worked on. “I find it difficult to listen to it without immediately being thrust back on stage and filled with many warm memories,” he told Prog in 2012. “At the same time I have to ask myself: ‘Was that really me?’ It’s a piece of music one so strongly associates with a certain time and feeling.”

And in 2017 he said the best part of his time in Tull had been “having the good fortune and privilege to play a small part in their journey. But unquestionably the camaraderie between us at that time was what I value the most.”