M.U. – The Best of Jethro Tull


M.U. – The Best of Jethro Tull, released in 1976, is the first proper greatest hits album by Jethro Tull. It spans the years 1969 to 1975. The earlier Living in the Past compilation mainly dealt with non-album material, but this album only features one previously unreleased song, "Rainbow Blues".
"M.U." in the album title stood for "Musician's Union", which is probably a reference to the various musicians from different line-ups of the band appearing throughout the album.
The album peaked at number 44 in the United Kingdom charts and number 13 in the United States, and went gold in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Germany and went Platinum in the US and Canada.
It was later re-released as The Essential in 2003, with exactly the same song order, but a different album cover.

Track listing

Side one

  1. "Teacher" – 4:07
  2. "Aqualung" – 6:34
  3. "Thick as a Brick Edit #1" – 3:01
  4. "Bungle in the Jungle" – 3:34
  5. "Locomotive Breath" – 4:23

    Side two

  6. "Fat Man" – 2:50
  7. "Living in the Past" – 3:18
  8. "A Passion Play Edit #8" – 3:28
  9. "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day" – 4:02
  10. "Rainbow Blues" – 3:37
  11. "Nothing is Easy" – 4:23

    Personnel

As mentioned and sorted on the back cover:
Production by Ian Anderson and Terry Ellis.
Orchestrations arranged and conducted by Dee Palmer.
Art direction by OZ Studios.
Designed by Eric Michelson.