“You could be a Luddite and ignore these new instruments, or you could say, ‘Let’s give it a spin.’ And I chose the latter”: How Jethro Tull embraced synths, drum machines and the 1980s – and split their fans

Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson posing for a photograph in 1984.

It was two weeks before Christmas 1984 when Ian Anderson finally lost the battle with his own throat. Jethro Tull were on tour in Australia in support of their most recent album, Under Wraps, a record that had caused widespread disgruntlement among fans due to its prevalence of synthesisers, sequencers and, most heretical of all, a drum machine.

The tour was better received than the record, thanks to a stage set that featured the band emerging, literally, from under wraps, along with moonwalking astronauts and women bursting out of large paper bags. For Anderson, though, the shows had been a trial for very different reasons. He had pushed his voice to the edge of its limits in the studio, not realising the toll performing these new songs every night would take on him. By the time Tull reached the US that autumn, his strained larynx was starting to give out, necessitating the cancellation of a handful of gigs.