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Jethro Tull (band)

Jethro Tull are a British rock band formed in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 1967. Initially playing blues rock and jazz fusion, the band soon incorporated elements of English folk music, hard rock and classical music, forging a signature progressive rock sound. The group's lead vocalist, bandleader, founder, principal composer and only constant member is Ian Anderson, who also plays flute and acoustic guitar. The group has featured a succession of musicians throughout the decades, including significant contributors such as guitarists Mick Abrahams and Martin Barre (with Barre being the longest-serving member besides Anderson); bassists Glenn Cornick, Jeffrey Hammond, John Glascock, Dave Pegg, Jonathan Noyce and David Goodier; drummers Clive Bunker, Barrie "Barriemore" Barlow and Doane Perry; and keyboardists John Evan, Dee Palmer, Peter-John Vettese, Andrew Giddings and John O'Hara.

The band achieved moderate recognition in the London club scene and released their debut album, This Was, in 1968. After a line-up change which saw original guitarist Mick Abrahams replaced by Martin Barre, the band released a folk-tinged second album, Stand Up, in 1969. Stand Up, which reached No. 1 in the UK, gave the band their first commercial success, and regular tours of the UK and the US followed. Their musical style shifted in the direction of progressive rock with albums such as Aqualung (1971), Thick as a Brick (1972), and A Passion Play (1973), and shifted again to contemporary folk rock with Songs from the Wood (1977), Heavy Horses (1978), and Stormwatch (1979). In the early 1980s, the band underwent a major line-up change and moved into electronic rock with the albums A (1980), The Broadsword and the Beast (1982), and Under Wraps (1984). The band won their sole Grammy Award for the 1987 album Crest of a Knave, which saw them returning to a hard rock style. Jethro Tull have sold an estimated 60 million albums worldwide, with 11 gold and 5 platinum albums. They have been described by Rolling Stone as "one of the most commercially successful and eccentric progressive rock bands".

The band ceased studio recording activity in the 2000s, but continued to tour until splitting in 2011. Following the band's split, Anderson and Barre continued to record and tour as solo artists, with Anderson's band billed variously as both "Jethro Tull" and "Ian Anderson" solo. Anderson said in 2014 that Jethro Tull had come "more or less to an end". In 2017, however, Anderson revived the Jethro Tull name and released new studio albums in the 2020s. The current group includes musicians who were part of Jethro Tull during the last years of its initial run, as well as newer musicians associated with Anderson's solo band, without Barre's involvement.

Origins
Ian Anderson, Jeffrey Hammond and John Evan (originally Evans), who would later become members of Jethro Tull, attended grammar school together in Blackpool. Anderson was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1947 and grew up in Edinburgh before moving to Blackpool in 1960. At Blackpool Grammar School he gained GCE O-levels in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English, Art, French, Geography and Latin, and was a student for two years at Blackpool College of Art. In his teens he wanted to be "an artist, a painter".

Evans became a fan of the Beatles after seeing them play "Love Me Do" on Granada Television's Scene at 6:30, and although an accomplished pianist, was inspired by the Beatles to take up drums. Anderson acquired a Spanish guitar and taught himself to play it, and he and Evans decided to form a band. They added Hammond on bass, who came with a collection of blues records.

The group initially played as a three-piece at local clubs and venues before Evans, influenced by Georgie Fame and the Animals, switched to organ. Drummer Barrie Barlow and guitarist Mike Stephens were recruited from local band the Atlantics, guitarist Chris Riley joined and the band developed into a six-piece "blue-eyed soul" group called the John Evan Band (later the John Evan Smash). Evans had shortened his surname to "Evan" at the insistence of Hammond, who thought it sounded better. They recruited Johnny Taylor as a booking agent and played gigs around northwest England, performing a mixture of blues and Motown covers. Hammond left the band to go to art school and was briefly replaced by Derek Ward, then by Glenn Cornick. Riley also quit and was replaced by Neil Smith. The group recorded three songs at Regent Sound Studios in Denmark Street, London, in April 1967, and appeared at the Marquee Club in London in June 1967.

In November 1967 the band moved from the north of England to Luton, Bedfordshire, 30 mi from central London, and signed a management deal with Terry Ellis and Chris Wright. They replaced Smith with guitarist Mick Abrahams, but quickly realised that supporting a six-piece band was financially impractical and disbanded. Anderson, Abrahams and Cornick stayed together, recruited Abrahams's friend Clive Bunker on drums, and became a British blues band. Cornick recalled that Evan had been told he would be welcome to rejoin. Anderson shared a flat with Cornick in Luton and worked as a cleaner at the Luton Ritz Cinema to pay the rent. According to Cornick, "we were so poor that we would share one can of stew or soup between us each evening".

Early years (1967–1968)
At first the new band found it difficult to obtain repeat bookings. They changed their name frequently to continue playing the London club circuit, using aliases such as Navy Blue, Ian Henderson's Bag o' Nails, and Candy Coloured Rain. Anderson recalled looking at a poster at a club and realising that the band name he did not recognise was theirs. The names were often supplied by their booking agent's staff, one of whom, a history enthusiast, gave them the alias Jethro Tull after the 18th-century agriculturist. The name stuck because they were using it when the manager of the Marquee Club liked their show enough to give them a weekly residency. In an interview in 2006, Anderson said that he had not realised it was the name of "a dead guy who invented the seed drill – I thought our agent had made it up". He said if he could change one thing in his life, he would go back and change the name of the band to something less historical.

The band recorded a session with producer Derek Lawrence which resulted in the single "Sunshine Day". The B-side, "Aeroplane", was an old John Evan Band track with the saxophones removed from the mix. It was released in February 1968 on MGM Records, miscredited to "Jethro Toe". The more common version of the single, with the name spelled correctly, is actually a counterfeit made in New York. Anderson met Hammond in London, the two renewed their friendship, and Anderson moved into a bedsit in Chelsea with Evan. Hammond became the subject of several songs, beginning with their next single, "A Song for Jeffrey".

Anderson possessed a large overcoat, which his father had given to him with the words "You'd better take this. It's going to be a cold winter." This overcoat, with flute, became part of his early stage image. Around this time Anderson had purchased a flute, after becoming frustrated with his inability to play guitar as well as Abrahams or Cream guitarist Eric Clapton. Their managers had wanted him to remain a rhythm guitarist, with Abrahams as the front man, and Anderson said later:

"I didn't want to be just another third-rate guitar player who sounded like a plethora of other third-rate guitar players. I wanted to do something that was a bit more idiosyncratic, hence the switch to another instrument. When Jethro Tull began, I think I'd been playing the flute for about two weeks. It was a quick learning curve ... literally every night I walked onstage was a flute lesson."

The group's first major break came at the National Jazz and Blues Festival at Sunbury-on-Thames in August 1968, where they drew a rapturous reception and positive reviews in the music press. They said their success at Sunbury was a result of persistent touring, which had generated a grassroots following who came to the festival and encouraged the rest of the audience. Cornick recalled, "From that moment on, we were a big band".

The group recorded their first album, This Was, between June and August 1968. Released in October 1968, it reached number 10 in the UK charts. In addition to original material, the album included the 1961 Doctor Ross blues "Cat's Squirrel", which highlighted Abrahams's blues rock style; and the Rahsaan Roland Kirk-penned jazz piece "Serenade to a Cuckoo", which gave Anderson a showcase for his growing talents on the flute. Anderson described the group's sound around this time as "sort of progressive blues with a bit of jazz".

Following the album's release, Abrahams left the band in December to form his own group, Blodwyn Pig. Several reasons were given for his departure. Abrahams had heard that Ellis wanted Anderson to be the frontman and group leader, at his expense, and he realised that he was unlikely to have the majority share in songwriting. Other reasons given were that Abrahams was a blues purist, while Anderson wanted to branch out into other forms of music; and that Abrahams was unwilling to travel internationally, or play more than three nights a week. Abrahams himself described his reasons more succinctly: "I was fed up with all the nonsense and I wanted to form a band like Blodwyn Pig."

The group tried several replacements for Abrahams. The first was David O'List, who had recently left the Nice. After a week's rehearsal, O'List did not show up and lost contact with the group. The next choice was Mick Taylor, who turned the group down because he felt his current gig with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers was a better deal. Following this, they approached Tony Iommi, guitarist for Earth (soon to be renamed Black Sabbath). Iommi had impressed Jethro Tull when Earth opened for them at a show in Birmingham; he briefly joined the band, but feeling closer to his old band, quit after a few weeks and returned to Birmingham to rejoin Earth. He stood in with Tull for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus on 11 December 1968, when the group performed "A Song for Jeffrey", although only Anderson's singing and flute were live. The rest was mimed to the studio track, which featured Abrahams' guitar playing.

The next choice was Martin Barre, who had seen the band perform at Sunbury and had auditioned for guitarist at the same time as Iommi. Barre arranged a second audition, and Anderson showed him new songs in a different style from the blues they had been recording. Anderson was impressed by Barre's technique and offered him the job. Barre played his first gig with Jethro Tull on 30 December 1968 at the Winter Gardens, Penzance.

Stand Up to Aqualung (1969–1971)
After Barre joined, the group played a few shows supporting Jimi Hendrix in Scandinavia, then began an extensive tour of the US supporting Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge. Jethro Tull attracted a substantial live following, and Ellis and Wright asked Anderson, who had become the principal songwriter, to write a hit single. The result was "Living in the Past", which reached No. 3 in May 1969 on the UK singles chart and No. 11 in the US and resulted in an appearance on Top of the Pops.

The next album was Stand Up, recorded during April–May and August 1969. It was released in September 1969 and quickly reached No. 1 in the UK, the only album by the group to do so. Anderson had now established himself as leader and songwriter and wrote all the material for the album, except for his jazzy rearrangement of J. S. Bach's "Bourrée in E minor BWV 996 (fifth movement)". The cover of the album unfolded to show a photo insert of the band attached like a pop-up book.

Immediately after releasing Stand Up, the group set off on their first headlining tour of the US, which included an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Barre recalled, "It was really the turning point for Jethro Tull—for everything that we were to become and everything we were to inspire in others." The band was invited to play at the Woodstock Festival but Anderson declined, not wanting to be associated with the hippie movement and risk being permanently moulded into one type of sound.

On 29 January 1970, Jethro Tull appeared again on BBC's Top of the Pops, performing "Witch's Promise". Evan rejoined the band in early 1970: he had stayed in London, sharing a flat with Anderson, after the John Evan Band broke up, and was studying music at the University of London. He was initially reluctant to rejoin the band because of his studies, which gave him access to a free studio, but he had played as a session musician on Tull's next album, Benefit (1970), and when Anderson needed someone to play the keyboard parts on tour, his tutor persuaded him that rejoining would be a good idea. The album reached No. 4 in the UK and No. 11 in the US and the group sold out 20,000-seat arenas, establishing themselves as a premier live act. In August they played to one of their largest audiences at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival.

The Isle of Wight appearance was followed by another US tour, in the course of which Jethro Tull became only the second rock band after The Beatles to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Cornick left the band at the end of the tour: he had wanted to socialise on tour, while the other band members were more reclusive. Cornick said later that he was fired by Anderson, while the band's official website said he was "invited to leave" and was given encouragement and support to form his own band. Cornick subsequently formed Wild Turkey, a band which he revived for Jethro Tull fan conventions decades later. He died in August 2014.

Anderson invited Jeffrey Hammond to replace Cornick, buying him a new bass for the purpose. Hammond had not played an instrument since leaving the John Evan Band, and he was chosen more for his compatibility with the other band members than for his musical skills. This line-up recorded Aqualung in late 1970 (released in 1971). The album was split into two parts, subtitled "Aqualung" and "My God", and featured among other things Anderson's views on organised religion. Recording the album was problematic because of technical difficulties in the studio, and also because of Hammond's rusty musical skills. On "Locomotive Breath", Anderson recorded the backing track by himself, singing to a hi-hat accompaniment, and the rest of the band added their parts later. Despite Anderson's concern that it may have been "too radical" compared with the band's previous albums, Aqualung was the first Jethro Tull album to reach the top ten in the US, peaking at No. 7. It sold over one million copies, earning it a gold disc by the RIAA in July 1971.

Progressive rock (1971–1976)
Drummer Clive Bunker quit the group in May 1971, citing heavy touring schedules and his wish to spend more time with his family, and was replaced by Barrie Barlow, whom Anderson renamed "Barriemore". Barlow had first recorded with the band for the five-track EP Life Is a Long Song. Except for Barre, the line-up of Jethro Tull now consisted entirely of former members of the John Evan Band from Blackpool. In July 1971, Jethro Tull relocated to Switzerland to avoid increasingly strict UK tax laws and became tax exiles. The move put strain on Anderson's marriage to his first wife, which lasted for another year before they divorced.

Anderson became annoyed with music critics who described Aqualung as a concept album, which he had not intended it to be. "I always said at the time, this is not a concept album. It's an album of varied songs ... in which three or four are kind of the keynote pieces for the album, but [that] doesn't make it a concept album." He decided to "come up with something that really is the mother of all concept albums" in response. Influenced by the style of Monty Python, he wrote a suite that combined complex musical ideas with offbeat humour and made fun of the band, its audience and its critics. This album, released in 1972 as Thick as a Brick, consisted of a single continuous piece of music running for 43 minutes, spread over two sides of vinyl, an uncommon format for rock albums. It was written and recorded in stages, the whole band helping with arrangements, and was co-credited to a fictional schoolboy, Gerald Bostock. Thick as a Brick became the first Tull album to reach number one on the (US) Billboard Pop Albums chart. The following year's A Passion Play was the only other album by the band to do so.

1972 also saw the release of Living in the Past, a double-album compilation of remixed singles, B-sides and outtakes, including the entirety of the Life Is a Long Song EP, which closed the album. The third side was recorded live at New York's Carnegie Hall on 4 November 1970. The album was a success and allowed new fans to catch up with the band's early singles, particularly in the US where they had not been popular on initial release. New Musical Express called Jethro Tull one of "Britain's most important and successful 2nd generation progressive bands".

In 1973, the band attempted to record a double album at Château d'Hérouville studios in France, which the Rolling Stones and Elton John among others were also using at the time, but they were not happy with the studio and abandoned the project, subsequently referring to it as the "Chateau d'Isaster". They returned to England and recorded and released A Passion Play (1973), another single-track concept album, with allegorical lyrics focusing on the afterlife and, like Thick as a Brick, containing unusual instrumentation. The album also featured an eccentric interlude, "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles", co-written by Anderson, Evan and bassist Hammond and narrated by Hammond. A Passion Play sold well but received poor reviews, including a particularly damning review of a live performance from Chris Welch of Melody Maker. After the negative reaction to the album, Anderson angrily shut himself away from all communication with the press.

While the band's popularity with critics began to wane, their popularity with the record-buying public remained strong, as was seen by the high sales figures of their follow-up album, 1974's War Child. Originally intended for the soundtrack of a film, War Child reached number two on the US Billboard charts, was given critical acclaim and produced two singles, "Bungle in the Jungle" (#12 on the US singles chart) and "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day". It also included a short acoustic song with satirical lyrics, "Only Solitaire", which was believed to have been aimed at L.A. Times rock music critic Robert Hilburn, who had written a harsh review of A Passion Play concerts at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Anderson said later that the song was written before Hilburn's review and was aimed at music critics in general. The War Child tour included a female string quartet playing on the new material.

In 1975 the band released Minstrel in the Gallery, an album in the style of 1971's Aqualung, which contrasted softer, acoustic guitar-based pieces with lengthier, more bombastic works reinforced by Barre's electric guitar. Written and recorded during Anderson's divorce from his first wife Jennie Franks, the album was characterised by a more introspective tone and received mixed reviews. By this point in their career, Jethro Tull had been awarded five RIAA gold records for sales of Stand Up (1969), Aqualung (1971), Thick as a Brick (1972), Living in the Past (1972), A Passion Play (1973), and would earn a sixth for Minstrel in the Gallery (1975). For the 1975 tour, Dee Palmer, who had long been the band's orchestral arranger, joined the band on stage on keyboards and synthesisers. In February 1975, Jethro Tull sold out five nights at the 20,000-seat Los Angeles Forum, prompting Melody Maker to run the headline "Jethro – Now The World's Biggest Band?" Bassist Hammond left the band after the tour and was replaced by John Glascock from flamenco-rock band Carmen, who had supported Tull on several dates on the War Child tour.

1976's Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! was another concept album, this one about the life of an ageing rocker. (On the Bursting Out live version of "Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll", released two years later, Anderson denies that the song is about himself.) Glascock made his first appearance as bassist with Tull on this album, and also contributed harmony and second vocals. Palmer continued as arranger, and appeared as a guest keyboard player on two songs. A television special was recorded showing the development of the album's concept in a live show, with the band dressed in tongue-in-cheek outfits, but was never officially released. On the 1976 tour, Jethro Tull became one of the first bands to use giant projection screens in the larger stadium shows. Too Old... did not sell as well as the other 1970s albums, but the 1976 compilation M.U. - The Best of Jethro Tull, achieved Platinum Album in US and Gold record in UK.

Folk rock (1977–1979)
In the late 1970s, Jethro Tull released three folk rock albums, Songs from the Wood (1977), Heavy Horses (1978), and Stormwatch (1979). Songs from the Wood (1977) was the first Tull album to receive generally positive reviews since the release of Living in the Past (1972). The Christmas/Winter Solstice-themed song "Ring Out, Solstice Bells" was released as an EP in the winter of 1976, prior to the release of Songs From the Wood, and was a moderate hit on the British charts. It later became a popular Christmas song in the UK and was re-recorded in 2003 for The Jethro Tull Christmas Album.

The band had long ties to folk rockers Steeleye Span - Tull performed as backing band on Steeleye Span vocalist Maddy Prior's 1978 solo album, Woman in the Wings, to repay her for the vocals she had contributed on their Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! album - and also to Fairport Convention. Fairport members Dave Pegg, Martin Allcock, Dave Mattacks and Ric Sanders have all played with Tull at various times, as well as folk drummer Gerry Conway, who became a Fairport member after playing with Tull. Although Jethro Tull were not formally considered to be part of the folk-rock movement, which had begun nearly a decade earlier with Fairport Convention, there was clearly an exchange of musical ideas among Tull and the folk rockers. By this time Anderson had moved to a farm in the countryside, and his newly bucolic lifestyle was reflected in his songwriting and in the title track of Heavy Horses (1978).

The band continued to tour and in 1978 released a live double album, Bursting Out, which had been recorded during the European leg of the 1978 Heavy Horses tour. During the US leg of this tour in 1979, John Glascock suffered health problems and was replaced by Anderson's friend and former Stealers Wheel bassist, Tony Williams.

Tull's third folk-influenced album, Stormwatch, was released in 1979. During the making of the album, Glascock suffered major health problems related to open-heart surgery from the previous year and Anderson played bass on much of the album. After the release of Stormwatch, Fairport Convention bassist Dave Pegg was hired for the ensuing tour, during which Glascock died from heart complications at his home in England.

The "Big Split" and electronic rock (1980–1984)
Following the Stormwatch tour in early 1980, Barlow, Evan, and Palmer left the band. Barlow was said to have been depressed after Glascock's death, and Evan and Palmer were having to reconsider their future after Anderson had announced that he wanted to record a solo album. In the 2008 Classic Artists documentary Jethro Tull: Their Fully Authorised Story, Barlow said he had left the band by mutual agreement with Anderson. Evan and Palmer both recalled being dismissed by letter. After their departure from Jethro Tull, Evan and Palmer briefly collaborated in a classical-based pop/rock band called Tallis. Jethro Tull was left with Anderson (the only original member), Martin Barre and Dave Pegg.

The first album of the 1980s was intended to be Anderson's first solo album, but after pressure from Chrysalis Records he agreed to release it as a Jethro Tull album. Anderson retained Barre on electric guitar and Pegg on bass and added Mark Craney on drums, plus special guest keyboardist/violinist Eddie Jobson (ex–Roxy Music, Frank Zappa, Curved Air and UK, the last of which had opened several shows on Tull's Stormwatch tour). The album featured prominent use of synthesisers and its style contrasted sharply with the established Tull sound. It was given the title A, taken from the labels on the master tapes of the scrapped solo album, which were marked "A" for "Anderson". A was released in mid-1980.

In keeping with the mood of innovation surrounding the album, Jethro Tull developed a music video titled Slipstream. Four staged and separately filmed music videos were mixed with concert footage from the A tour. London's Hammersmith Odeon was used for exterior scenes, but the main concert footage came from an American performance at the Los Angeles Sports Arena (as heard on the Magic Piper ROIO), filmed in November 1980. The video, released in 1981, was directed by David Mallet, who had directed the pioneering "Ashes to Ashes" video for David Bowie.

Jobson and Craney left following the A tour and the band had a succession of temporary drummers. Gerry Conway left after deciding he could not be the one to replace Barlow; Phil Collins played with the band at the first Prince's Trust concert in 1982; and Paul Burgess played for the US leg of the Broadsword and the Beast tour. Doane Perry became the band's permanent drummer in 1984.

1981 was the first year that the band did not release an album, although recording sessions took place with Anderson, Barre, Pegg, and Conway in which Anderson played keyboards. Some of the tracks recorded were later released on the Nightcap compilation in 1993. In 1982 Peter-John Vettese joined on keyboards and the band returned to a folkier sound, still with synthesisers, for 1982's The Broadsword and the Beast. The ensuing concert tour was well attended and the shows featured one of the group's last indulgences in theatricality, in which the stage was built to resemble a Viking longship and the band performed in medieval costume. An Anderson solo album (actually an Anderson-Vettese collaboration) appeared in 1983 in the form of the heavily electronic Walk into Light. As with later solo work by Anderson and Barre, some of the Walk into Light songs, such as "Fly by Night", "Made in England", and "Different Germany", later made their way into Jethro Tull live sets.

In 1984, Jethro Tull released Under Wraps, another electronic album which, like Walk into Light, used a drum machine instead of a live drummer. Although the band had reportedly liked the sound (Barre even considered the album one of his personal favourites), it was not well received. The video for "Lap of Luxury" was given moderate rotation on the newly influential MTV music video channel. Vettese quit the band after the tour, angry at critics for bad reviews of The Broadsword and the Beast (1982), Walk into Light (1983) and Under Wraps (1984), and the band took a three-year break because of vocal chord problems Anderson had developed while touring the demanding Under Wraps material. During this hiatus, Anderson continued to oversee the salmon farm on the Isle of Skye he had founded in 1978. The single "Coronach" was released in the UK in 1986 after it was used as the theme tune for a Channel 4 television programme called "Blood of the British".

Anderson, Barre, Pegg, and Perry: the "hard rock" Tull (1987–1994)
Jethro Tull returned in 1987 with Crest of a Knave. With Vettese absent, Anderson contributed synth programming, and the album featured early Tull 1970's-style electric guitar from Martin Barre. Three of the tracks on the album used a drum machine, with Doane Perry and Gerry Conway sharing drum duties on the others. The album was a critical and commercial success. Keyboard player Don Airey (ex-Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne, Michael Schenker Group, Gary Moore, Colosseum II) joined the band for the Crest of a Knave tour.

In 1989, Jethro Tull won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental, beating the favourite Metallica and their ...And Justice for All album. The award was controversial, as many did not consider Tull to be a hard rock band, much less heavy metal. On the advice of their manager, who told them they had no chance of winning, no-one from the band attended the award ceremony. In response to the criticism Tull received after the award, their label, Chrysalis, took out an advertisement in a British music periodical with a picture of a flute lying on a pile of iron and the line, "the flute is a heavy metal instrument". Anderson joked in an interview, "We do sometimes play our mandolins very loudly." In 2007, the win was named one of the ten biggest upsets in Grammy history by Entertainment Weekly, and ranked #1 in EW's 2017 listing of Grammy upsets. In 1992, when Metallica did win the Grammy in the hard rock/metal category, their drummer Lars Ulrich joked, "First thing we're going to do is thank Jethro Tull for not putting out an album this year". (A play on a Grammy comment made by Paul Simon some years before, who thanked Stevie Wonder for the same thing.)

The style of Crest of a Knave (1987) has been compared to that of Dire Straits. Anderson no longer had his previous vocal range and used lower registers, and Barre's guitar sound drifted towards Mark Knopfler's. Two songs in particular—"Farm on the Freeway" and "Steel Monkey"— were given heavy radio airplay. The album contained the popular live song "Budapest", the longest song on the album at just over ten minutes, which depicted a backstage scene with a local female stagehand. "Mountain Men", with lyrics which described a scene from World War II in Africa, was more popular in Europe. The band promoted Crest of a Knave with "The Not Quite the World, More the Here and There Tour" on which Anderson played occasional rhythm guitar, the first time in Jethro Tull's history that two electric guitarists had played together on stage.

In 1988, 20 Years of Jethro Tull was released, a five-LP themed set which was also released as a three-CD set, and as a truncated single CD version on 20 Years of Jethro Tull: Highlights. The set consisted largely of rarities and outtakes from throughout the band's history, including a variety of live and remastered tracks, with a booklet outlining the band's history. Many of the outtakes were later included as bonus tracks on remastered releases of the band's studio albums. In 1989 the band released Rock Island, which was less successful than Crest of a Knave. The opening track, "Kissing Willie", featured bawdy, double-entendre lyrics and over-the-top heavy metal riffing that seemed to make fun of the group's Grammy award win. The accompanying video was not given much airplay because of its sexual imagery. A couple of favourites emerged from the album: "Big Riff and Mando", a wry account of the theft of Barre's prized mandolin by a starstruck fan; and the upbeat "Another Christmas Song", which was re-recorded for the 2003 The Jethro Tull Christmas Album release. 1991's Catfish Rising returned to generous use of mandolin and acoustic guitar, and made less use of keyboards than any Tull album of the 1980s. Notable tracks included "Rocks on the Road", which featured acoustic guitar and lyrics about urban life; and "Still Loving You Tonight", a bluesy, low-key ballad.

Roots to Branches and J-Tull.com: the world music influences (1995–2000)

The band toured a semi-acoustic show in 1992 with Dave Mattacks on drums. The tour was recorded and became Tull's second official live album, A Little Light Music. At this point in his musical career, Anderson had to re-learn how to play the flute after his daughter, who was taking flute lessons at school, discovered that he used incorrect fingering. The first Tull releases that contained revised flute playing were in the 1993 25th Anniversary Box Set which included, with remixes of classic Tull songs and unreleased live material, a CD of songs from the band's entire back catalogue, re-recorded by the then current line-up. The box set also included the 1993 Nightcap compilation album which contained unreleased studio material, mainly from the scrapped pre-A Passion Play album, with many of the flute parts re-recorded.

Dave Pegg, Tull's bass player for fifteen years, made the decision to leave the band during the recording of 1995's Roots to Branches album to concentrate on his work with Fairport Convention. Anderson had begun writing songs that featured world music influences, and Pegg was unhappy with the musical direction the band was taking. He contributed to only three of the songs on the album, and played his last concerts with Tull in the UK in September 1995. Doane Perry, returning as the band's full-time drummer, recruited his friend and respected session bass player Steve Bailey to replace Pegg. Anderson relinquished control of the rhythm section arrangements, leaving them completely to Bailey and Perry, but despite his studio contributions Bailey did not join the band, and Pegg's eventual replacement as Tull bassist was Jonathan Noyce, who took over in October 1995.

Roots to Branches (1995) and 1999's J-Tull Dot Com were less rock-based than Crest of a Knave (1987) or Catfish Rising (1991). The songs on these albums reflected the musical influences of decades of performing around the world. In songs such as "Out of the Noise" and "Hot Mango Flush", for example, Anderson depicted third-world street scenes. These two albums reflected Anderson's feelings about being an old rocker, with songs such as the pensive "Another Harry's Bar", "Wicked Windows" (a meditation on reading glasses), and the gruff "Wounded, Old and Treacherous".

Live albums, world tours, and The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (2001–2010)
The original 1967 line-up of Jethro Tull (Anderson, Abrahams, Cornick, and Bunker) reunited in January 2002 for a one-off performance in an English pub. The gig was filmed for the Living with the Past DVD. This was the only time that the four original members of the band had played together since 1968, and the only time that a previous Tull line-up had been reunited.

The Jethro Tull Christmas Album, a collection of traditional Christmas songs and Christmas songs written by Jethro Tull, was released in 2003. It was the last studio album to be recorded by the band for nearly 20 years, and it became their biggest commercial success since 1987's Crest of a Knave. An Ian Anderson live double album and DVD were released in 2005, titled Ian Anderson Plays the Orchestral Jethro Tull. A DVD and album titled Nothing Is Easy: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 were released in 2005.

The entire 1971 Aqualung album was performed live for a small audience at the end of a US tour, on 23 November 2004, by Anderson, Barre, Perry, Giddings and Noyce. The performance was recorded for broadcast on radio station XM Radio as part of the station's musical milestones "most important albums ever recorded; timeless albums re-recorded by the original artists" project, and was later released as an album, Aqualung Live. Proceeds from sales of the album were donated to homeless charities (the 'Aqualung' of the song having been a homeless tramp).

A boxed set DVD Collector's Edition containing two DVDs, Nothing Is Easy: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 and Living with the Past, was released in 2006. Bassist Jon Noyce left the band in March 2006, and keyboard player Andrew Giddings quit in July 2006 citing constant touring and not enough time for family. They were replaced by David Goodier and John O'Hara. The Best of Acoustic Jethro Tull, released in 2007, was a 24-song collection of Tull's and Anderson's acoustic performances, taken from various albums, which included a new live acoustic version of "One Brown Mouse" and a live performance of a traditional song (attributed to Henry VIII), "Pastime with Good Company".

In 2007 the band also released a DVD/CD of a live concert, Live at Montreux 2003, which featured the longest unchanged line-up of Anderson, Barre, Perry, Noyce and Giddings. Songs performed included "Fat Man", "With You There to Help Me" and "Hunting Girl". In 2010 the band were commemorated with a Heritage Award by PRS for Music, and a plaque was placed on the church in Blackpool where the founders of the band had played their first gig in 1964.

Anderson and Barre split & disbanding (2011–2017)
Martin Barre stated in November 2011 that there were no current plans for further Jethro Tull work, and in 2012 he put his own band together and toured as Martin Barre's New Day. The new band included former Tull bassist Jonathan Noyce and played mostly Tull material. In 2015, Barre said: "It's important that people realize there will never be a Jethro Tull again. There will be two solo bands, the Ian Anderson Band and the Martin Barre Band, and long may they exist, and long may they enjoy playing music." Barre said he hated to hear "Oh, you've left Jethro Tull". He said, "Ian wanted to finish Jethro Tull. [He] wanted to stop the band completely."

On 30 January 2012, Anderson announced on the Jethro Tull website that Thick as a Brick 2: Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock?, recorded by Anderson and the "Ian Anderson Touring Band" as a follow-up to 1972's Thick as a Brick, would be released on 2 April 2012. The band's line-up on the album and on the ensuing tour included two former Jethro Tull members, bassist David Goodier and keyboard player John O'Hara, plus guitarist Florian Opahle, drummer Scott Hammond and additional vocalist Ryan O'Donnell. Thick as a Brick 2 had its world premiere on 14 April 2012 at Perth Concert Hall in Scotland, at the start of an 18-month tour to promote the new album and the original album.

In November 2013, Anderson announced that another new album, Homo Erraticus, ("The Wandering Man") would be released in April 2014. Tours of the UK and US followed the release, and the album was performed in its entirety. Homo Erraticus was a prog-rock concept album which, according to Anderson, "chronicles the weird imaginings of one Ernest T. Parritt, as recaptured by the now middle-aged Gerald Bostock after a trip to Mathew Bunter's Old Library Bookshop in Linwell village. Bostock and Bunter came across this dusty, unpublished manuscript, written by local amateur historian Ernest T. Parritt, (1873–1928), and entitled Homo Britanicus Erraticus." Like Thick as a Brick 2, Homo Erraticus was described as an Ian Anderson solo album.

In April 2014, after the release of Homo Erraticus, Anderson stated that in future he would release all his music under his own name. He said Jethro Tull had "more or less come to an end" during the past 10 years, and that in his twilight years he would prefer to use his own name, "for the most part being composer of virtually all Tull songs and music since 1968". Anderson also said in the album's liner notes that he would continue to perform under his own name.

In 2015 Anderson toured the project Jethro Tull – The Rock Opera with the "Ian Anderson Touring Band", performing lyrically modified Tull material and new rock songs about Jethro Tull the agriculturist, with elaborate video productions on stage. The touring band included for the first time a female vocalist, Icelander Unnur Birna Björnsdóttir, who also played the violin. The 2016 Tour visited Europe, Australia, and the US. In 2017, Anderson toured under the name "Jethro Tull by Ian Anderson".

Re-formation, 50th anniversary tour, The Zealot Gene, and RökFlöte (2017–present)
In September 2017, Anderson announced plans for a tour to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Tull's first album, This Was; and for a new studio album in 2018, for which the band line-up comprised Anderson, Hammond, Opahle, O'Hara, and Goodier, all members of Anderson's solo band since 2012. Martin Barre was absent from the line-up. On 2 January 2018, Anderson published on jethrotull.com a picture with the caption "IA in the studio working on a new album for release March 2019. Shhhh; keep it a secret..."

On 1 June 2018, Parlophone Records released a 50-track collection featuring all 21 Tull albums, named 50 for 50, to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary. The notes for the 50 for 50 booklet stated that a new album scheduled for 2019 would be a solo record by Ian Anderson, and not a new album by Jethro Tull.

In November 2019 "Ian Anderson and the Jethro Tull band" announced The Prog Years Tour, with eleven dates across the UK scheduled for September and October 2020. The tour was subsequently postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Guitar duties were to have been handled by new member Joe Parrish, Opahle having left the band at the end of 2019 to focus on production work and family. In March 2021, Anderson announced a new Jethro Tull studio album, The Zealot Gene, the first album under the Jethro Tull name since The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (2003), the first with all original material since J-Tull Dot Com (1999), and the first without Barre's involvement since This Was (1968).

In April 2021, on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of 1971's Aqualung, the official music video for the song, an animation directed by Iranian animator/director Sam Chegini, was premiered on Rolling Stone. Anderson said Chegini had created "a unique rendition of the 'Aqualung' song with abstract and documentary-type footage." On 13 July 2021 it was announced that Jethro Tull had signed with Inside Out Music for the release of The Zealot Gene in 2022. On 17 November 2022, the band announced that they had finished recording their 23rd studio album, which was expected to be released in spring 2023. In January 2023 the title of the album was revealed to be RökFlöte, with a release date of 21 April 2023.

Legacy
Other musicians who have been influenced by Jethro Tull include Iron Maiden's Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson, W.A.S.P.'s Blackie Lawless, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Dream Theater's John Myung, Blind Guardian's Marcus Siepen, Joe Bonamassa, the Decemberists' Jenny Conlee, and folk doom metal band Blood Ceremony.

Rush's Geddy Lee said: "I was a massive Tull fan from very young ... and I hope that [is reflected] in Rush. I was mesmerised by Ian Anderson. His presentation was simply magical and he delivered it with such a sense of humour and great style ... We [of Rush] saw it as a huge challenge to try and create something that can seem so dynamic onstage."

Gentle Giant's Derek Shulman considers Jethro Tull to be one of the greatest bands in the history of progressive rock. After touring with the band in 1972, he praised them as musicians and as friends.

Nick Cave is a fan of Jethro Tull and named one of his sons Jethro in honour of the group. His own group, Grinderman, performed "Locomotive Breath" during soundchecks. At Cave's request, Ian Anderson presented him with his Album of the Year trophy at the MOJO Awards in 2008.

Current line-up

 * Ian Anderson – vocals, flute, acoustic and electric guitar, other instruments (1967–2012, 2017–present)
 * David Goodier – bass (2007–2012, 2017–present)
 * John O'Hara – keyboards, accordion, vocals (2007–2012, 2017–present)
 * Scott Hammond – drums (2017–present)
 * Jack Clark – guitar (2024–present)

Previous musicians

 * Mick Abrahams – guitar, vocals (1967–1968)
 * Clive Bunker – drums, percussion (1967–1971)
 * Glenn Cornick – bass guitar (1967–1970)
 * Martin Barre – electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, lute, flute (1968–2012)
 * John Evan – keyboards (1970–1980)
 * Jeffrey Hammond – bass, vocals (1971–1975)
 * Barriemore Barlow – drums, percussion (1971–1980)
 * John Glascock – bass guitar, harmony and backing vocals (1975–1979)
 * Dee Palmer – keyboards (1977–1980; also worked with the band as an arranger between 1967 and 1976)
 * Dave Pegg – bass, mandolin, vocals (1979–1995)
 * Mark Craney – drums (1980–1981)
 * Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1981–1982; studio – 1987–1988)
 * Peter-John Vettese – keyboards, vocoder (1982–1986; studio – 1989)
 * Doane Perry – drums, percussion, vocals (1984–2012)
 * Maartin Allcock – keyboards, guitar, mandolin (1988–1991)
 * Andrew Giddings – keyboards, accordion, bass (1991–2007)
 * Jonathan Noyce – bass, percussion (1995–2007)
 * Florian Opahle – electric and acoustic guitars (2017–2019)
 * Joe Parrish – electric and acoustic guitars, vocals (2020–2024)

Guest musicians

 * David O'List – guitar (1968)
 * Tony Iommi – guitar (1968)
 * Tony Williams – bass (1978)
 * Eddie Jobson – keyboards, violin (1980–1981, 1985)
 * Phil Collins – drums (1982)
 * Paul Burgess – drums (1983)
 * Don Airey – keyboards (1987)
 * Matt Pegg – bass (1991, 1994)
 * Scott Hunter – drums (1991)
 * Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards (1992)
 * Mark Parnell – drums (1994)
 * Steve Bailey – bass (1995)
 * Lucia Micarelli – violin (2005–2006)
 * Anna Phoebe – violin (2006–2007, 2009)
 * Ann Marie Calhoun – violin (2006–2007)
 * James Duncan Anderson – drums (2007–2009)
 * Mark Mondesir – drums (2009)

Discography
Studio albums

 * This Was (1968)
 * Stand Up (1969)
 * Benefit (1970)
 * Aqualung (1971)
 * Thick as a Brick (1972)
 * A Passion Play (1973)
 * War Child (1974)
 * Minstrel in the Gallery (1975)
 * Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! (1976)
 * Songs from the Wood (1977)
 * Heavy Horses (1978)
 * Stormwatch (1979)
 * A (1980)
 * The Broadsword and the Beast (1982)
 * Under Wraps (1984)
 * Crest of a Knave (1987)
 * Rock Island (1989)
 * Catfish Rising (1991)
 * Roots to Branches (1995)
 * J-Tull Dot Com (1999)
 * The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (2003)
 * The Zealot Gene (2022)
 * RökFlöte (2023)

title: Jethro Tull (band)


text:
London Bridge

The name "London Bridge" refers to several historic crossings that have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London since Roman times. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It replaced a 19th-century stone-arched bridge, which in turn superseded a 600-year-old stone-built medieval structure. In addition to the roadway, for much of its history, the broad medieval bridge supported an extensive built up area of homes and businesses part of the City's Bridge ward and its southern end in Southwark was guarded by a large stone City gateway. The medieval bridge was preceded by a succession of timber bridges, the first of which was built by the Roman founders of London (Londinium) around 50 AD.

The current bridge stands at the western end of the Pool of London and is positioned 30 m upstream from previous alignments. The approaches to the medieval bridge were marked by the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr on the northern bank and by Southwark Cathedral on the southern shore. Until Putney Bridge opened in 1729, London Bridge was the only road crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston upon Thames. London Bridge has been depicted in its several forms, in art, literature, and songs, including the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down", and the epic poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.

The modern bridge is owned and maintained by Bridge House Estates, an independent charity of medieval origin overseen by the City of London Corporation. It carries the A3 road, which is maintained by the Greater London Authority. The crossing also delineates an area along the southern bank of the River Thames, between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, that has been designated as a business improvement district.

Location
The abutments of modern London Bridge rest several metres above natural embankments of gravel, sand and clay. From the late Neolithic era the southern embankment formed a natural causeway above the surrounding swamp and marsh of the river's estuary; the northern ascended to higher ground at the present site of Cornhill. Between the embankments, the River Thames could have been crossed by ford when the tide was low, or ferry when it was high. Both embankments, particularly the northern, would have offered stable beachheads for boat traffic up and downstream – the Thames and its estuary were a major inland and Continental trade route from at least the 9th century BC.

There is archaeological evidence for scattered Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement nearby, but until a bridge was built there, London did not exist. A few miles upstream, beyond the river's upper tidal reach, two ancient fords were in use. These were apparently aligned with the course of Watling Street, which led into the heartlands of the Catuvellauni, Britain's most powerful tribe at the time of Caesar's invasion of 54 BC. Some time before Claudius's conquest of AD 43, power shifted to the Trinovantes, who held the region northeast of the Thames Estuary from a capital at Camulodunum, nowadays Colchester in Essex. Claudius imposed a major colonia at Camulodunum, and made it the capital city of the new Roman province of Britannia. The first London Bridge was built by the Romans as part of their road-building programme, to help consolidate their conquest.

Roman bridges
It is possible that Roman military engineers built a pontoon type bridge at the site during the conquest period (AD43). A bridge of any kind would have given a rapid overland shortcut to Camulodunum from the southern and Kentish ports, along the Roman roads of Stane Street and Watling Street (now the A2). The Roman roads leading to and from London were probably built around AD50, and the river-crossing was possibly served by a permanent timber bridge. On the relatively high, dry ground at the northern end of the bridge, a small, opportunistic trading and shipping settlement took root and grew into the town of Londinium.

A smaller settlement developed at the southern end of the bridge, in the area now known as Southwark. The bridge may have been destroyed along with the town in the Boudican revolt (AD 60), but Londinium was rebuilt and eventually, became the administrative and mercantile capital of Roman Britain. The bridge offered uninterrupted, mass movement of foot, horse, and wheeled traffic across the Thames, linking four major arterial road systems north of the Thames with four to the south. Just downstream of the bridge were substantial quays and depots, convenient to seagoing trade between Britain and the rest of the Roman Empire.

Early medieval bridges
With the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century, Londinium was gradually abandoned and the bridge fell into disrepair. In the Anglo-Saxon period, the river became a boundary between the emergent, mutually hostile kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. By the late 9th century, Danish invasions prompted at least a partial reoccupation of the site by the Saxons. The bridge may have been rebuilt by Alfred the Great soon after the Battle of Edington as part of Alfred's redevelopment of the area in his system of burhs, or it may have been rebuilt around 990 under the Saxon king Æthelred the Unready to hasten his troop movements against Sweyn Forkbeard, father of Cnut the Great. A skaldic tradition describes the bridge's destruction in 1014 by Æthelred's ally Olaf, to divide the Danish forces who held both the walled City of London and Southwark. The earliest contemporary written reference to a Saxon bridge is c. 1016, when chroniclers mention how Cnut's ships bypassed the crossing during his war to regain the throne from Edmund Ironside.

Following the Norman conquest in 1066, King William I rebuilt the bridge. It was repaired or replaced by King William II, destroyed by fire in 1136, and rebuilt in the reign of Stephen. Henry II created a monastic guild, the "Brethren of the Bridge", to oversee all work on London Bridge. In 1163, Peter of Colechurch, chaplain and warden of the bridge and its brethren, supervised the bridge's last rebuilding in timber.

Old London Bridge (1209–1831)
After the murder of his former friend and later opponent Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the penitent King Henry II commissioned a new stone bridge in place of the old, with a chapel at its centre dedicated to Becket as martyr. The archbishop had been a native Londoner, born at Cheapside, and a popular figure. The Chapel of St Thomas on the Bridge became the official start of pilgrimage to his Canterbury shrine; it was grander than some town parish churches, and had an additional river-level entrance for fishermen and ferrymen. Building work began in 1176, supervised by Peter of Colechurch. The costs would have been enormous; Henry's attempt to meet them with taxes on wool and sheepskins probably gave rise to a later legend that London Bridge was built on wool packs.

In 1202, before Colechurch's death, Isembert, a French monk who was renowned as a bridge builder, was appointed by King John to complete the project. Construction was not finished until 1209. There were houses on the bridge from the start; this was a normal way of paying for the maintenance of a bridge, though in this case it had to be supplemented by other rents and by tolls. From 1282 two bridge wardens were responsible for maintaining the bridge, heading the organization known as the Bridge House. The only two collapses occurred when maintenance had been neglected, in 1281 (five arches) and 1437 (two arches). In 1212, perhaps the greatest of the early fires of London broke out, spreading as far as the chapel and trapping many people.

The bridge was about 926 ft long, and had nineteen piers linked by nineteen arches and a wooden drawbridge. There were 'starlings' around the piers to protect them (they had deeper piles than the piers themselves). The bridge, including the part occupied by houses, was from 20 to 24 ft wide. The roadway was mostly around 15 ft wide, varying from about 14 feet to 16 feet, except that it was narrower at defensive features (the stone gate, the drawbridge and the drawbridge tower) and wider south of the stone gate. The houses occupied only a few feet on each side of the bridge. They received their main support either from the piers, which extended well beyond the bridge itself from west to east, or from 'hammer beams' laid from pier to pier parallel to the bridge. It was the length of the piers which made it possible to build quite large houses, up to 34 ft deep.

The numerous starlings restricted the river's tidal ebb and flow. The difference in water levels on the two sides of the bridge could be as much as 6 ft, producing ferocious rapids between the piers resembling a weir. Only the brave or foolhardy attempted to "shoot the bridge" – steer a boat between the starlings when in flood – and some were drowned in the attempt. The bridge was "for wise men to pass over, and for fools to pass under." The restricted flow also meant that in hard winters the river upstream was more susceptible to freezing.

The number of houses on the bridge reached its maximum in the late fourteenth century, when there were 140. Subsequently, many of the houses, originally only 10 to 11 feet wide, were merged, so that by 1605 there were 91. Originally they are likely to have had only two storeys, but they were gradually enlarged. In the seventeenth century, when there are detailed descriptions of them, almost all had four or five storeys (counting the garrets as a storey); three houses had six storeys. Two-thirds of the houses were rebuilt from 1477 to 1548. In the seventeenth century, the usual plan was a shop on the ground floor, a hall and often a chamber on the first floor, a kitchen and usually a chamber and a waterhouse (for hauling up water in buckets) on the second floor, and chambers and garrets above. Approximately every other house shared in a 'cross building' above the roadway, linking the houses either side and extending from the first floor upwards.

All the houses were shops, and the bridge was one of the City of London's four or five main shopping streets. There seems to have been a deliberate attempt to attract the more prestigious trades. In the late fourteenth century more than four-fifths of the shopkeepers were haberdashers, glovers, cutlers, bowyers and fletchers or from related trades. By 1600 all of these had dwindled except the haberdashers, and the spaces were filled by additional haberdashers, by traders selling textiles and by grocers. From the late seventeenth century there was a greater variety of trades, including metalworkers such as pinmakers and needle makers, sellers of durable goods such as trunks and brushes, booksellers and stationers.

The three major buildings on the bridge were the chapel, the drawbridge tower and the stone gate, all of which seem to have been present soon after the bridge's construction. The chapel was last rebuilt in 1387–1396, by Henry Yevele, master mason to the king. Following the Reformation, it was converted into a house in 1553. The drawbridge tower was where the severed heads of traitors were exhibited. The drawbridge ceased to be opened in the 1470s and in 1577–1579 the tower was replaced by Nonsuch House—a pair of magnificent houses. Its architect was Lewis Stockett, Surveyor of the Queen's Works, who gave it the second classical facade in London (after Somerset House in the Strand). The stone gate was last rebuilt in the 1470s, and later took over the function of displaying the heads of traitors. The heads were dipped in tar and boiled to preserve them against the elements, and were impaled on pikes. The head of William Wallace was the first recorded as appearing, in 1305, starting a long tradition. Other famous heads on pikes included those of Jack Cade in 1450, Thomas More in 1535, Bishop John Fisher in the same year, and Thomas Cromwell in 1540. In 1598, a German visitor to London, Paul Hentzner, counted over 30 heads on the bridge:

"On the south is a bridge of stone eight hundred feet in length, of wonderful work; it is supported upon twenty piers of square stone, sixty feet high and thirty broad, joined by arches of about twenty feet diameter. The whole is covered on each side with houses so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street, not at all of a bridge. Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed on iron spikes: we counted above thirty."

The last head was installed in 1661; subsequently heads were placed on Temple Bar instead, until the practice ceased.

There were two multi-seated public latrines, but they seem to have been at the two ends of the bridge, possibly on the riverbank. The one at the north end had two entrances in 1306. In 1481, one of the latrines fell into the Thames and five men were drowned. Neither of the latrines is recorded after 1591.

In 1578–1582 a Dutchman, Peter Morris, created a waterworks at the north end of the bridge. Water wheels under the two northernmost arches drove pumps that raised water to the top of a tower, from which wooden pipes conveyed it into the city. In 1591 water wheels were installed at the south end of the bridge to grind corn.

In 1633 fire destroyed the houses on the northern part of the bridge. The gap was only partly filled by new houses, with the result that there was a firebreak that prevented the Great Fire of London (1666) spreading to the rest of the bridge and to Southwark. The Great Fire destroyed the bridge's waterwheels, preventing them from pumping water to fight the fire.

For nearly 20 years, only sheds replaced the burnt buildings. They were replaced In the 1680s, when almost all the houses on the bridge were rebuilt. The roadway was widened to 20 ft by setting the houses further back, and was increased in height from one storey to two. The new houses extended further back over the river, which would cause trouble later. In 1695, the bridge had 551 inhabitants. From 1670, attempts were made to keep traffic in each direction to one side, at first through a keep-right policy and from 1722, through a keep-left policy. This has been suggested as one possible origin for the practice of traffic in Britain driving on the left.

A fire in September 1725 destroyed all the houses south of the stone gate; they were rebuilt. The last houses to be built on the bridge were designed by George Dance the Elder in 1745, but these buildings had begun to subside within a decade. The London Bridge Act 1756 (29 Geo. 2. c. 40) gave the City Corporation the power to purchase all the properties on the bridge so that they could be demolished and the bridge improved. While this work was underway, a temporary wooden bridge was constructed to the west of London Bridge. It opened in October 1757 but caught fire and collapsed in the following April. The old bridge was reopened until a new wooden construction could be completed a year later. To help improve navigation under the bridge, its two centre arches were replaced by a single wider span, the Great Arch, in 1759.

Demolition of the houses was completed in 1761 and the last tenant departed after some 550 years of housing on the bridge. Under the supervision of Dance the Elder, the roadway was widened to 46 ft and a balustrade was added "in the Gothic taste" together with 14 stone alcoves for pedestrians to shelter in. However, the creation of the Great Arch had weakened the rest of the structure and constant expensive repairs were required in the following decades; this, combined with congestion both on and under bridge, often leading to fatal accidents, resulted in public pressure for a modern replacement.

New London Bridge (1831–1967)
In 1799, a competition was opened to design a replacement for the medieval bridge. Entrants included Thomas Telford; he proposed a single iron arch span of 600 ft, with 65 ft centre clearance beneath it for masted river traffic. His design was accepted as safe and practicable, following expert testimony. Preliminary surveys and works were begun, but Telford's design required exceptionally wide approaches and the extensive use of multiple, steeply inclined planes, which would have required the purchase and demolition of valuable adjacent properties.

A more conventional design of five stone arches, by John Rennie, was chosen instead. It was built 100 ft west (upstream) of the original site by Jolliffe and Banks of Merstham, Surrey, under the supervision of Rennie's son. Work began in 1824 and the foundation stone was laid, in the southern coffer dam, on 15 June 1825.

The old bridge continued in use while the new bridge was being built, and was demolished after the latter opened in 1831. New approach roads had to be built, which cost three times as much as the bridge itself. The total costs, around £2.5 million (£ in ), were shared by the British Government and the Corporation of London.

Rennie's bridge was 928 ft long and 49 ft wide, constructed from Haytor granite. The official opening took place on 1 August 1831; King William IV and Queen Adelaide attended a banquet in a pavilion erected on the bridge. The northern approach road, King William Street, was renamed after the monarch.

In 1896 the bridge was the busiest point in London, and one of its most congested; 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles crossed every hour. It was widened by 13 ft, using granite corbels. Subsequent surveys showed that the bridge was sinking an inch (about 2.5 cm) every eight years, and by 1924 the east side had sunk some three to four inches (about 9 cm) lower than the west side. The bridge would have to be removed and replaced.

Sale to Robert McCulloch

Common Council of the City of London member Ivan Luckin put forward the idea of selling the bridge, and recalled: "They all thought I was completely crazy when I suggested we should sell London Bridge when it needed replacing." Subsequently, in 1968, Council placed the bridge on the market and began to look for potential buyers. On 18 April 1968, Rennie's bridge was purchased by the Missourian entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch of McCulloch Oil for US$2,460,000. The claim that McCulloch believed mistakenly that he was buying the more impressive Tower Bridge was denied by Luckin in a newspaper interview. Before the bridge was taken apart, each granite facing block was marked for later reassembly. The blocks were taken to Merrivale Quarry at Princetown in Devon, where 15 to 20 cm were sliced off the inner faces of many, to facilitate their fixing. (Stones left behind were sold in an online auction when the quarry was abandoned and flooded in 2003. ) 10,000 tons of granite blocks were shipped via the Panama Canal to California, then trucked from Long Beach to Arizona. They were used to face a new, purpose-built hollow core steel-reinforced concrete structure, ensuring the bridge would support the weight of modern traffic. The bridge was reconstructed by Sundt Construction at Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and was re-dedicated on 10 October 1971 in a ceremony attended by London's Lord Mayor and celebrities. The bridge carries the McCulloch Boulevard and spans the Bridgewater Channel, an artificial, navigable waterway that leads from the Uptown area of Lake Havasu City.

Modern London Bridge (1973–present)

The current London Bridge was designed by architect Lord Holford and engineers Mott, Hay and Anderson. It was constructed by contractors John Mowlem and Co from 1967 to 1972, and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 March 1973. It comprises three spans of prestressed-concrete box girders, a total of 833 ft long. The cost of £4 million (£ in ), was met entirely by the Bridge House Estates charity. The current bridge was built in the same location as Rennie's bridge, with the previous bridge remaining in use while the first two girders were constructed upstream and downstream. Traffic was then transferred onto the two new girders, and the previous bridge demolished to allow the final two central girders to be added.

In 1984, the British warship HMS Jupiter collided with London Bridge, causing significant damage to both the ship and the bridge.

On Remembrance Day 2004, several bridges in London were furnished with red lighting as part of a night-time flight along the river by wartime aircraft. London Bridge was the one bridge not subsequently stripped of the illuminations, which are regularly switched on at night.

The current London Bridge is often shown in films, news and documentaries showing the throng of commuters journeying to work into the City from London Bridge Station (south to north). An example of this is actor Hugh Grant crossing the bridge north to south during the morning rush hour, in the 2002 film About a Boy.

On 11 July 2008, as part of the annual Lord Mayor's charity appeal and to mark the 800th anniversary of Old London Bridge's completion in the reign of King John, the Lord Mayor and Freemen of the City drove a flock of sheep across the bridge, supposedly by ancient right.

On 3 June 2017, three pedestrians were killed by a van in a terrorist attack. Altogether, eight people died and 48 were injured in the attack. Security barriers were installed on the bridge to help isolate the pedestrian pavement from the road.

Transport
The nearest London Underground stations are Monument, at the northern end of the bridge, and London Bridge at the southern end. London Bridge station is also served by National Rail.

In literature and popular culture

 * The nursery rhyme and folk song "London Bridge Is Falling Down" has been speculatively connected to several of the bridge's historic collapses.
 * Rennie's New London Bridge is a prominent landmark in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, wherein he compares the shuffling commuters across London Bridge to the hell-bound souls of Dante's Inferno. Also in that poem is a reference to the "inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold" of the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, which marks the northern approach to the bridge, and the poem also ends with the lines "I sat upon the shore/fishing, with the arid plain behind me./Shall I at least set my lands in order?/London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down".
 * In Charles Dickens' Sketches by Boz, in the story entitled Scotland-yard there is much discussion by coal-heavers on the replacement of London Bridge in 1832, including a portent that the event will dry up the Thames.
 * Gary P. Nunn's song "London Homesick Blues" includes the lyrics, "Even London Bridge has fallen down, and moved to Arizona, now I know why."
 * English composer Eric Coates wrote a march about London Bridge in 1934.
 * London Bridge is named in the World War II song "The King is Still in London" by Roma Campbell-Hunter & Hugh Charles.
 * Fergie released a song titled "London Bridge" in 2006 as the lead single of her first solo album, The Dutchess. The music video for the track features the singer on a boat near London's Tower Bridge, which, despite the song's title, is not London Bridge. The song peaked at number one on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: London Bridge


text:
Johnny Adair

John Adair (born 27 October 1963), better known as Johnny Adair or Mad Dog Adair, is an Northern Irish loyalist and the former leader of the "C Company", 2nd Battalion Shankill Road, West Belfast Brigade of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). This was a cover name used by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist paramilitary organisation. In 2002 Adair was expelled from the organisation following a violent internal power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by the mainstream UDA.

Early life
Adair was born into an Ulster Protestant loyalist family and raised in Belfast. He grew up on the Old Lodge Road, a now mostly demolished road linking the lower Shankill Road to the lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes and riots during the Troubles. The son of Jimmy and Mabel Adair, he was the youngest of their seven children, his siblings being (in age order) Margaret, Mabel, Jean, Etta, Lizzie and Archie (who was later also a UDA member).

Adair's father, Jimmy, had no involvement in loyalist activities and maintained close friendships with a number of nationalists in the New Lodge area, where he was a member of the local homing pigeon society. Jimmy continued his membership even after his son had emerged as a leading loyalist paramilitary. According to Ian S. Wood, Adair had little parental supervision and did not attend school regularly. However Hugh Jordan and David Lister insist that the Adairs were attentive and fairly strict parents who sent their children to Sunday school. As a child, Adair attended Hemsworth Primary School close to his Old Lodge Road home, where he was noted as an unremarkable student.

As he grew older Adair took to the streets, forming a skinhead street gang with a group of young loyalist friends, who "got involved initially in petty then increasingly violent crime". Members included Donald Hodgen, Sam "Skelly" McCrory, "Fat" Jackie Thompson, James and Herbie Millar. Adair, Hodgen, McCrory and Thompson were classmates at the Somerdale School on the Crumlin Road. Although the gang still officially attended school, they would frequently play truant, take a bus into the countryside and consume large quantities of cider.

The gang regularly congregated outside the Buffs Club on the corner of the Crumlin Road and Century Street, where their numbers were swollen by other young men from in and around the Shankill. Eventually, Adair started a Rock Against Communism-styled band called Offensive Weapon which openly espoused support for the National Front.

At 17, Adair began a relationship with Gina Crossan, three years his junior and also a skinhead, who at the time had shaved her head to leave only a tuft of hair at the front. The notoriety of the gang, which was part of a wider group in loyalist north and west Belfast known as the "NF Skinz" because of their support for the ideas of the National Front, gained widespread notoriety on 14 January 1981 when "Sieg Heiling" members launched a brutal attack on anti-racist fans of The Specials and The Beat when the two bands played a concert at the Ulster Hall. Adair would later be assaulted by Irish republicans while attending a UB40 concert.

This was followed in August 1983 by the so-called "Gluesniffers March", when 200 skinheads descended on Belfast City Hall determined to riot with Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament members who were holding a rally, with the march taking its name from the prevalence of solvent abuse among the skinheads. The gang was not sanctioned by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and led to South Belfast Brigadier John McMichael declaring that he wanted its members "run out of town". As a result, while still in his teens, Adair was threatened with knee-capping by the UDA after assaulting an old age pensioner but was given the option of joining the UDA's young wing, the Ulster Young Militants, instead. He joined the Ulster Young Militants, and later the UDA – a legal loyalist paramilitary organisation which used the cover name "Ulster Freedom Fighters" (UFF) when it carried out killings.

Paramilitary activity
Upon joining the UDA in 1984, Adair and his friends were assigned to C8, an active unit that formed part of the West Belfast Brigade's C Company, which covered the lower Shankill. The young members' early duties mostly consisted of rioting, along with occasional gun attacks on heavily armoured police vehicles or arson attacks on local businesses felt to be employing "too many" Catholics. The unit was eager to become even more active and from an early stage plotted to kill a nationalist solicitor, Pat Finucane, although the plan was initially vetoed by the brigade leadership.

By the early 1990s, a new leadership had emerged on the Shankill Road following the killing of powerful South Belfast Brigadier and UDA Deputy Commander John McMichael in 1987 by a booby-trap car bomb planted by the Provisional IRA; less than three months later, Supreme Commander Andy Tyrie resigned after an attempt was made on his life. He was not replaced; instead the organisation was run by its Inner Council. With the West Belfast UDA brigadier and spokesman Tommy Lyttle in prison and gradually eased out of the leadership, Adair, as the most ambitious of the "Young Turks", established himself as head of the UDA's "C Company", 2nd Battalion based on the Shankill. Adair formed a so-called "Dream Team" of active gunmen, with many of his friends from his former skinhead gang including Sam "Skelly" McCrory, Mo Courtney, "Fat" Jackie Thompson, and Donald Hodgen recruited into the unit.

Brigadier
Adair succeeded Jim Spence as brigadier in 1993 after Spence was imprisoned for extortion. When Adair became the first person in Northern Ireland charged with directing terrorism in 1995, he admitted that he had been a UDA leader for three years up to 1994. During this time, Adair and his colleagues were involved in multiple random murders of Catholic civilians, mostly carried out by a special killing unit led by Stevie "Top Gun" McKeag. At Adair's trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer said he was dedicated to his cause against those whom he "regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population".

Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people in this period. Adair once remarked to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland that normally Catholics traveled in the boot of his car. According to a press report in 2003, Adair was handed details of republican suspects by the Intelligence Corps, and was even invited for dinner with them in the early 1990s.

In his autobiography, he alleged he was frequently passed information on republican paramilitaries by sympathetic British Army members, and that his own whereabouts were passed to the IRA by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claimed, hated him. As brigadier of the West Belfast UDA, Adair was entitled to one of the six seats on the organisation's Inner Council and in this role, because he wanted to continue on the path of violence, clashed frequently with South East Antrim Brigadier Joe English, who advocated seeking a peace settlement.

The BBC described Adair as "the most controversial, high-profile and ubiquitous" of all the paramilitaries operating in Northern Ireland during this period. The IRA's Shankill Road Bombing of a fish shop in October 1993 was an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA's Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The office above the shop was the UDA's Shankill headquarters and a meeting was due to take place shortly after the bomb exploded. The bomb detonated prematurely, killing one of the two IRA men, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestants (a UDA volunteer and eight civilians). The UDA retaliated by carrying out the Greysteel massacre in County Londonderry, an attack on the Rising Sun bar in which eight civilians, two of whom were Protestants, were shot dead. While Adair was targeted for assassination a number of times, he frequently exaggerated the number of attempts.

First conviction
During this time, undercover officers from the RUC had recorded months of discussions with Adair in which he boasted of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He was convicted on 6 September 1995 and sentenced to 16 years in the Maze prison. As is standard practice in the UDA, Adair vacated his position as Brigadier upon entering prison, with his friend Winkie Dodds succeeding him.

Adair was held with other loyalist prisoners in their "block" of the prison. In prison, according to some reports, Adair sold drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5,000 a week.

In January 1998, Adair was one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Mo Mowlam. She persuaded them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement in April that year. Following the killing of Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader Billy Wright inside the Maze prison by the INLA the previous December, the UDA prisoners had voted two to one to withdraw from the peace process. Adair's co-operation was essential as he was regarded as the key figure in securing the support of the other loyalist prisoners.

At the end of April 1999, while he was on home leave from prison, Adair was shot at and grazed by a bullet in the head at a UB40 concert in Belfast which he had attended with his wife. He blamed the shooting on republicans, although a drug dealer was responsible. In September 1999, Adair was released as part of the early-release scheme for paramilitary prisoners under the Belfast Agreement.

2000
After his release, much of Adair's activities was bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groups. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together; it usually involves a combination of political differences over the ceasefires, rivalry over control of territory, and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.

In August 2000 Adair claimed he had been attacked with a pipe bomb by the IRA. That same month, on 19 August, he organised a "loyalist day of culture" on the lower Shankill Road. He invited the five other brigadiers from the Inner Council to attend, along with loyalist Michael Stone and politicians John White and Frank McCoubrey.

This event featured loyalist marching bands and a militant show of strength by the West Belfast Brigade. It also marked the start of a violent feud between the UDA and its main rival, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Clashes first broke outside the Diamond Jubilee on the Lower Shankill, then spread to the Rex Bar, a popular UVF drinking den where shots were fired and UVF members beaten up. Adair and his followers then attacked the homes of UVF members and their families in the Lower Shankill, forcing them out of the area, while orders were also sent to A Company in Highfield that the estate should be "cleansed" of UVF members.

Adair's men also sacked the homes of Gusty Spence and Winston Churchill Rea as part of a move to drive the UVF off the Shankill. The UVF struck back on 21 August, killing two of Adair's allies, Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood, on the Crumlin Road. In response, C Company members burned down the headquarters of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). Adair was arrested on 22 August 2000 whilst he and Dodds were driving down the Shankill Road. As a result of his involvement in the violence, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson revoked Adair's early release and returned him to prison. This time he was sent to Maghaberry instead of the Maze. With command reverting to Dodds, UVF member Samuel Rockett was killed by C Company the following night. The UVF struck back and 4 more people on both sides were killed before the feud then petered out.

2002
On 15 May 2002, Adair was released from prison again. Outside the prison he was greeted by up to 300 of his supporters. Once free, he was a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA and the LVF, a small breakaway faction of the UVF founded in 1996 by Billy Wright and following his killing, commanded by Mark "Swinger" Fulton, with whom Adair was on good terms. Fulton had been in Maghaberry since December 2001. The most open declaration of this alliance was a joint mural depicting Adair's UDA "C company" and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA strongly resisted these movements, which they saw as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members disliked his overt association with the drugs trade, which the LVF were even more heavily involved with. For his part Adair controlled a block of flats in his Lower Shankill stronghold from which he and his allies dealt drugs.

Adair also sought to work closely with Belfast-based dissidents such as Frankie Curry and Jackie Mahood, provoking further anger from the UVF. Another loyalist feud erupted, and ended with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes. The Rathcoole home of long-standing UDA member Sammy Duddy was raked by gunfire; although Duddy was not injured in the shooting attack, his pet chihuahua Bambi was fatally wounded by shots fired through the front door by masked gunmen from Adair's C Company. Adair later admitted in an interview he gave for journalist Suzanne Breen that Duddy never got over the loss of Bambi.

On 13 September 2002, Jim Gray – the head of the UDA in East Belfast and an archrival of Adair – was shot in the face by Adair's supporters. The shooting was described by the police as "loosely related" to the death of Stephen Warnock, an LVF leader, as part of a loyalist feud.

Adair had been spreading rumours that Gray and John Gregg, head of the UDA South East Antrim Brigade, were both to be stood down as part of his attempts to take full control of the UDA. As part of this campaign Adair had visited Warnock's family and told them that Gray had been involved in their relative's death, even though he was aware that it had actually been carried out by a hired Red Hand Commando (RHC) gunman after Warnock refused to pay a drug debt to a North Down businessman. As a result, Gray was shot by a lone gunman after he left the Warnock home, where he had been paying his respects to the deceased.

Expulsion from the UDA
On 20 September 2002, Adair was summoned to an Inner Council meeting held in Sandy Row where there was a showdown between him and the other brigadiers, including Gray. Fearing an ambush, Adair had his allies "Fat" Jackie Thompson and James "Sham" Millar smuggle a pistol for him to the meeting. Five days later, Adair was expelled from the UDA for treason along with close associate John White. Adair's response to the expulsion was "Fuck them uns" and declared the West Belfast Brigade a separate organisation from the mainstream UDA. He even erected "West Belfast UDA – Business as Usual" banners on the Shankill Road. By this point Adair had even lost the support of the Shoukri brothers, his proteges in north Belfast who had been amongst his closest allies outside of his own area but who decided to side with the mainstream UDA in this dispute. There were attempts on Adair's and White's lives.

Adair returned to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence was revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Paul Murphy on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. He appointed "Fat" Jackie Thompson as his replacement as Brigadier. On 1 February 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg was shot dead along with another UDA member, Robert "Rab" Carson, on returning from a Rangers FC match in Glasgow. The killing was widely blamed on Adair's C Company – Gregg was one of those who had organised the expulsion of Adair from the UDA. Among the mainstream UDA, a powerful faction of Adair opponents quickly formed under the leadership of South Belfast brigadier Jackie McDonald. In the early hours of 6 February (five days after Gregg's shooting and just hours before his funeral was due to take place), about twenty Adair supporters, including White and Adair's wife, fled their homes for Scotland after 100 heavily armed men from the mainstream UDA invaded Adair's stronghold, forcing them to quit Northern Ireland.

Exile from Northern Ireland and personal life
Following the ousting of C Company from the Shankill Road, Adair's family and supporters went to Bolton where they garnered the nickname 'Bolton Wanderers' after the football club of the same name. Following the killing of LVF leader Billy Wright in 1997 Adair became the new contact man for a group of Bolton-based members of the neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18 (C18) who up to that point had been close to the LVF. Adair built up a close relationship with these far right activists, even wearing an England shirt during UEFA Euro 2000 that one of the members had given him. Furthermore, when the feud with the UVF was launched in 2000 through C Company members attacking the UVF's Rex Bar stronghold a few C18 members fought alongside the UDA men. As a result, it was to the homes of these far rightists, in particular a Bolton-based tattoo artist and C18 member, that Adair's supporters fled in 2003.

Adair was released from prison on 10 January 2005 and immediately headed to Bolton after being taken by helicopter to nearby Manchester. The police in Bolton questioned his wife, Gina about her involvement in the drugs trade, and his son, Jonathan Jr (nicknamed both 'Mad Pup' and 'Daft Dog' ) has been charged with selling crack cocaine and heroin. Adair himself was arrested and fined for assault and threatening behaviour in September 2005. He had married Gina Crossan, his partner for many years, at the Maze prison on 21 February 1997. Together they had three children.

Several claims have been made about Adair's sexuality by his former girlfriend, Jackie "Legs" Robinson, and UDA hitman Michael Stone. Stone claimed in his autobiography that Adair had sex with other male inmates while in prison. Jackie Robinson, who beginning in 1991 sustained a nine-year off-and-on relationship with Adair, backed up this claim in an interview with The Mirror, in which she alleged that Adair has been having sex with long-term friend and fellow loyalist Skelly McCrory since they were teenagers.

Robinson told The Mirror journalist that she and Adair had sexual encounters during her visits to him in prison and that he received visits from prostitutes as well. In her book, In Love With a Mad Dog, Robinson stated that after a UDA killing had been carried out, he would become highly aroused and afterwards be "particularly wild in bed". It was also alleged that the mere discussion of the details of operations he had helped plan gave him a "sexually charged excitement", even when the killings had been done by others.

After his release, he was almost immediately re-arrested for violently assaulting his wife Gina, who had been diagnosed with and treated for ovarian cancer. After this episode Adair reportedly moved to Scotland but later relocated to Horwich, near Bolton in early 2003. In 2003 he became a grandfather for the first time.

In May 2006, it was reported that Adair had received £100,000 from John Blake Publishing for a ghost-written autobiography. In November 2006, the UK's Five television channel transmitted an observational documentary on Adair made by Donal MacIntyre. The focus of the film centred around Adair and another supposedly reformed character, a former neo-Nazi from Germany known as Nick Greger, and their trip to Uganda to build an orphanage. Adair was seen firing rifles, stating it was the first time he had done so without wearing gloves. In November 2008, Adair appeared in an episode of Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men which profiled fellow C Company inmate Sam "Skelly" McCrory.

On 20 July 2015 three Irish republicans (Antoin Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands) were found guilty of planning to murder Adair and Sam McCrory. Charges against one of the accused in the trial were dropped on 1 July.

On 10 September 2016, Johnny and Gina Adair's son, Jonathan Jr, was found dead in Troon, aged 32. Adair Jr died from an accidental overdose while celebrating the day after his release from prison for motoring offences. Adair Jr had been in and out of prison since the family fled Northern Ireland. He served a five-year sentence for dealing heroin and crack cocaine. The year before Jonathan had been cleared of a gun raid at a party and in 2012 was the target of a failed bomb plot. He was also facing trial later that year on drugs charges.

title: Johnny Adair


text:
Mafdet

Mafdet (also Mefdet, Maftet ) was a goddess in the ancient Egyptian religion. She was often depicted wearing a skin of a cheetah, and protected against the bite of snakes and scorpions. She was part of the pantheon of ancient Egyptian deities that was prominent during the First Dynasty of Egypt. She was prominent during the reign of pharaoh Den whose image appears on stone vessel fragments from his tomb and is mentioned in a dedicatory entry in the Palermo Stone. Mafdet was the deification of legal justice, or possibly of capital punishment. She was associated with the protection of the king's chambers and other sacred places, and with protection against venomous animals, which were seen as transgressors against Maat. In the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, she was mentioned as protecting the sun god Ra from venomous snakes.

Roles in Egypt
Mafdet defended Ra from threats during his daily voyage. She would hunt by night (earning the epithet "Piercer of Darkness") and ensure the coming of dawn.

When Osiris was separated into pieces, Mafdet protected him while she helped bind the pieces together.

Depictions in royal tombs associate the symbol of Mafdet with the symbol of Anubis, suggesting that Mafdet accompanied the gods as a hunter or executioner while Anubis fulfilled his role as messenger and attendant.

Art
In art, Mafdet was alternately shown as a feline or mongoose, a woman with such a head, or such an animal with the head of a woman. The type of feline varies but is commonly interpreted as a cheetah or serval.

She also was depicted in her animal form running up the side of an executioner's staff of office. It was said that Mafdet ripped out the hearts of wrong-doers, delivering them to the pharaoh's feet like cats that present humans with rodents or birds they have killed or maimed.

During the New Kingdom, Mafdet was seen as ruling over the judgment hall in Duat where the enemies of the pharaoh were decapitated with Mafdet's claw.

title: Mafdet


text:
Hu

HU or Hu may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

 * Hu Sanniang, a fictional character in the Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature
 * Tian Hu, one of the antagonists in the Water Margin
 * Hollywood Undead, an American rap rock band
 * The Hu, a Mongolian heavy metal band

Language

 * Hu (digraph), used primarily in Classical Nahuatl
 * Fu (kana), also romanised as Hu, Japanese kana ふ and フ
 * Hu language, of Yunnan, China
 * Hungarian language (ISO 639 alpha-2 code 'hu')

Mythology and religion

 * Hu (mythology), the deification of the first word in the Egyptian mythology of the Ennead
 * Huh (god), the deification of eternity in the Egyptian mythology of the Ogdoad
 * Hu (Sufism), a name for God
 * Hu (ritual baton), an early Chinese writing utensil later used in Daoist rituals
 * Hú, a kachina in Hopi mythology
 * Adir Hu, a hymn sung at the Passover Seder
 * Hu Gadarn (or Hu the Mighty), a Welsh legendary figure
 * HU, a mantra popularized by the religion Eckankar as a name for and love song to God

People

 * Hu (singer), an Italian singer-songwriter
 * Hu (surname), a Chinese family name represented by the character 胡
 * Hu (people), various "barbarian" peoples in Chinese history

Places

 * Shanghai, abbreviated Hù (沪/滬), the largest city in China
 * Hu County, in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
 * Huy, Walloon name Hu, Belgian city
 * Hu, Egypt, the modern name of an Egyptian town on the Nile, which in more ancient times was the capital of the 7th Nome of Upper Egypt
 * Hanau, Germany, on vehicle registration plates
 * Huesca, Spain, on vehicle registration plates
 * Hungary, from it ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code
 * HU postcode area, covering Hull and areas of East Riding of Yorkshire

United States

 * Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States
 * Hampton University a private, historically black university in Hampton, Virginia, United States
 * Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, United States
 * Harrisburg University of Science and Technology a private research university located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States
 * Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
 * Hofstra University in New York, United States
 * Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, United States
 * Howard University in Washington DC, United States
 * Husson University in Bangor, Maine, United States

Other countries

 * Habib University in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
 * Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon
 * Hajvery University in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
 * Hamdard University in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
 * Hashemite University in Zarqa, Jordan
 * Hazara University in Mansehra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
 * Helwan University, the largest university in Egypt
 * Henan University in Kaifeng, Henan, China
 * HITEC University in Taxila, Punjab, Pakistan
 * Humboldt University of Berlin in Berlin, Germany
 * Hunan University in Changsha, Hunan, China
 * Hongik University in South Korea
 * HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, the Netherlands

Other uses

 * .hu, the Internet country code top-level domain for Hungary
 * Hu (vessel), a type of ancient Chinese bronze vessel
 * Hainan Airlines (IATA airline code HU)
 * Holographic Universe, in quantum gravity and string theories
 * Hounsfield Units, on the Hounsfield scale, a unit of measurement used on a computed tomography machine (CAT)
 * HU, a bacterial histone-like DNA-binding protein
 * HU, handling unit
 * Wu Hu (disambiguation), an ancient Chinese term for multiple groups in China
 * Halo: Uprising, a comic book series

title: Hu