Chords for Ian Anderson: Remembering Glenn Cornick

_ In the quaint seaside northern town of Blackpool we were _ a little band who
_ started out playing essentially blues covers of
_ Unusually for Blackpool's everybody did kind of top 20 cover jobs
but we were doing stuff by Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin' Wolf and we were kind of odd for
_ For a little northern seaside town wasn't exactly the most commercial thing to be doing but we heard of
A band who did top 20 covers they were called the executives and they worked a lot
they had a lot of gigs because they did the kind of stuff people wanted to hear play the working men's clubs and _ and
functions where people drank a lot and sang along to
cheerful top 20 ditties and the bass player in that band was a guy called Glenn Cornick and we
Knew these guys were pretty good musicians, even though we didn't really like their music terribly, but
It came to a moment where we were looking for a new bass player and
[Fm]
surprisingly to us
Glenn said yeah, I'll come and play with you guys and and so it was quite a step down for him, you know from earning
You know pretty decent money.
It's a
Working with a day job, but playing probably four or five nights a week regularly to joining a band
Who maybe only had one or two shows a week if we were lucky
So we were quite honored that Glenn chose to join us and I think found the music a bit more
_ honest perhaps more with
Integrity and because we ventured into kind of more jazzy blues as well.
_ So Glenn became the bass player
only to find a few months later that _
the band essentially broke up because we went to the south of England _ in an attempt to be _ _
_ _ Successful in the London area, but most of the band gave up after a week and of
Homelessness and hunger went back to Blackpool and Glenn and I were the two who stayed and we found another guitar player
Mick Abrahams who joined the band with his friend
Clive bunker.
So the original band that became Jethro Tull was
_ Glenn and myself and
Clive and Mick
_ _ So Glenn and I shared a very very frighteningly horrible _
Cold-water bed sits.
I mean you can't call it an apartment.
It was a shoe cupboard, you know
_ [G]
For a for a few weeks until he was lucky enough to take up _ residence
_ _ Somewhat further away with his with his mother and stepfather
So he had a warm bed a roof over his head and three meals a day
While I continue to be virtually homeless and certainly very very hungry for about four months until
_ The gig started to come in and Jethro Tull became Jethro Tull and we found ourselves on the road to somewhere
_ Somewhere was a long road and indeed I am still on it _ _ _ _ _
my memories of Glenn are always that of [N] being a
Sometimes a slightly bashful but smiley kind of guy.
He was always in good humor
I rarely remember seeing Glenn in a _ in a depressed or bad state of mind
He was always a smiley happy guy and he had time for everybody.
I mean he didn't
_ He didn't turn people away.
He would always be very invitational and warm with strangers or other band members or
Guys in the crew, you know, he was a
He was a smiley happy guy and he enjoyed _ life to the full
He enjoyed the recreational side of the business as well as the the actual musical part.
But you know, he always turned up
_ For work on time
He was always prepared and and was a good and useful spirits in the studio because he did have some musical
_ _ training whereas I
Had none at all I was just completely self-taught so so Glenn was able to you know be a useful figure in terms of
sometimes being able to point out some musical _ flaw in
in something we were working on and
He was a he was a a good guy to work with in the studio because he was a bright spirit
whereas I was a moody son of a bitch and tended to _ _
You know darkness
_ _ So it helps in a band to have different spirits those who are kind of light and breezy
those are a bit more intense and serious and and those that are a kind of the
_ like drummers, you know simple souls, but a powerhouse of energy _ and
You know Glenn was the was the perfect fourth member of that that band _ _ _ _
so then moved on to a band called
_ wild turkey who then became a
Knack that toured with Jethro Tull so, you know things were never really severed in that sense
The record company were supportive of Glenn's band
_ indeed our first guitarist McAbraham's his band
_ That he formed after leaving Jethro Tull was called bloodwind pig
So we had a kind of family of bands really going on and Clyde bunker though when he left the band
He didn't form another band he sort of just disappeared really from music for a while and he came back to it in later life
_ but you know, we we had a
Kind of a family spirit that it's like any family, you know, it's not necessarily everybody's _
Cuddly and cheerful and friendly with each other all the time, you know, we need our space
_ But you know, I think of it all as a big family of actually 28 musicians
Who've been the members of Jethro Tull over a period of some _ _ 47 years
_ It's a long time
_ so yeah, Glenn did his did his very formative work with Jethro Tull and _ _
Enjoyed some fruitful music after that and unlike most of the members of Jethro Tull
Glenn continued to play right up, you know to
Recent years and I played with him a few times in
in these last few years and as always he was cheerful and smiley and he came in knowing what it was he had to play and _ and
He was always a you know, happy man, _ and I hope wherever he is now.
He's a happy man too with _ with _ _ _
with the musical and _ other
spirits that may lie beyond
Hopefully they do I'll be getting there too one day so I'll find that
_ _ You know death is I think it's what you leave behind you
It's not where you're going so much as what you leave behind and it's that it's not just the _ it's not just the history
you find you might find on Wikipedia or _
_ Or on YouTube.
It's about the memories that people have they're much more important than social media
We got to keep it in here and in here
So this is where this is where I remember Glenn and the other band members
Including a couple of others who are no longer with us either.
So _ that's where I remember them
I don't have to go to YouTube to be reminded of their faces or the times we spent together _ _ _ _ _ _