Jeffrey Hammond

Jeffrey Hammond (born 30 July 1946) sometimes credited as Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, is an artist, musician, and former bass guitar player for the progressive rock band Jethro Tull.^[1]

Hammond adopted the name "Hammond-Hammond" as a joke, since both his father's name and mother's maiden name were the same.^[2] He also joked in interviews that his mother defiantly chose to keep her maiden name, just like Eleanor Roosevelt.

Musician with Jethro Tull

One of several band members from Blackpool, England, he met band leader Ian Anderson in school when he was 17 years old, eventually joining a band with Anderson and future Jethro Tull members John Evan and Barriemore Barlow. After leaving Grammar School, he opted to study painting rather than continue with music, but he was convinced to join Jethro Tull in January 1971. Before joining the band as a performer, Hammond appears to have spent much time with the band in the background. Ian Anderson wrote songs about his friend's idiosyncrasies, of which the best known are "A Song for Jeffrey" (This Was), "Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square" (Stand Up) and "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me" (Benefit). Introducing the first song, in the days before Hammond joined the band, Anderson would portray him in slightly condescending terms as someone with emotional problems who lost his way easily, as described in the first line of the song. His eventual appearance as a band member, therefore, was something of a surprise. Hammond is also namechecked in the lyrics of the Benefit track, "Inside".

Hammond is credited with creating the "claghorn", a hybrid instrument. He took the mouthpiece and bell from a toy saxophone and attached them to the body of a flute. The result can be heard on the track "Dharma for One" on the album This Was.

During the time of Tull's dramatic stage costumes, Jeffrey started wearing a black and white striped suit and played a matching bass guitar, and this became his trademark and a feature of Tull's Thick as a Brick stage performance. Hammond narrated the surreal piece "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" on the album A Passion Play, and the related short film. He also received credit, along with Anderson and John Evan, for writing the piece.

Hammond burned the suit in December 1975 upon his departure from the band.^[3] According to Ian Anderson's sleevenotes for the 2002 reissue of Tull's Minstrel in the Gallery, Hammond "returned to his first love, painting, and put down his bass guitar, never to play again."^[4] Hammond's replacement as bass player was John Glascock, a professional musician.

Later appearances

He made one last attempt to re-join Jethro Tull in the mid-80's, as told by Ian Anderson during Alan Freeman's Friday Rock Show in March 1988, while providing comments for the broadcast of Tull's show at Hammersmith Odeon which Capital Radio was airing. According to Anderson, "Jeffrey was almost about to re-join the band", but despite one audition being made with the band, the bass player declared himself unable to play the rather difficult music of Jethro Tull and decided to give up.

Hammond attended Jethro Tull's 25th anniversary reunion party in 1994. He participated in an interview, along with Ian Anderson and Martin Barre, that was featured as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of Thick as a Brick.

Discography

• Aqualung (1971)
• Thick as a Brick (1972)
• Living in the Past (compilation, 1972)
• A Passion Play (1973)
• War Child (1974)
• Minstrel in the Gallery (1975)

References

External links

• Official biography of Jeffrey Hammond on Jethro Tull website: JethroTull.com