meet
Jethro Tool
 Jethro
Tool is the one member of The Mangledwurzels who is not
from Somerset. A Geordie-lad, Jethro was born in Whitley Bay, on
the storm-wracked Northumberland coast a few miles east of Newcastle
upon Tyne. He has lived in Cambridge, Northumberland, Salford, Nottingham,
Stretford, London, Edinburgh, Stow (in the Scottish Borders) and
Liverpool before finally arriving in Bristol over a decade ago.
He appears to have now settled midway between Bath and Frome in
the village of Hinton Charterhouse with a partner and a growing
menagerie of pets and livestock.
Jethro's
first band was the six-piece college band called The
Norman Winterbottom Cosmic Purple Laser Experience,
whose live performance (all one of it!) was considerably shorter
than the band's name. That however gave him the impetus to invest
in a bass guitar, and in 1982 while at university in Nottingham,
he formed the short-lived five-piece folk-rock band Dryad;
a band that never really recovered after the keyboard player broke
a finger setting-up for a gig. At this time, Jethro was also working
hard booking and promoting bands and other music events around the
university scene, as well as hosting his own radio show 'Let
There Be Rock!' on the University radio station; certainly
working harder at this than at his degree!
In
the 1983, he formed a five-piece rock band called Orion.
They played various gigs around the Nottingham area, and achieved
insignificant chart success with one minor hit single in the local
radio station charts in 1984, before splitting the year after as
work took Jethro back 'oop north. It was another 20 years and a
change of instruments before Jethro got back on  stage
with The Mangledwurzels, although
several years as Buyer and later Manager for Virgin Retail, and
five years as founder and director of the Bristol-based Entertainment
Dot.Com Ents24
meant that he was never truly away from the music scene.
As
well as keyboards (or electronikal wurzelhorns, as he calls them)
and bass guitar, Jethro also lists drums and percussion, violin,
double bass, and guitar as instruments that he has never quite mastered.
He is currently not practising with his bodhran, and considering
piano accordian as the next instrument to abuse. Indeed it was during
Jethro's guitar lessons with Seth as teacher, that the whole idea
of a Wurzels tribute band came up. Jethro claims that this was a
masterful stroke of innovative thinking - although Seth knows that
it was just an excuse to change the subject from why Jethro hadn't
been doing any guitar practice - again!
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