Jethro Tull Confirms Lavish Reissue of 1984’s ‘Under Wraps’

A reissue of Jethro Tull’s Under Wraps is in the works, bringing fresh attention to the 1984 album that split fans with its embrace of electronic drums and spy-novel themes. Ian Anderson, now 78, discussed the project by video call after a recent gig in Bournemouth. He framed the record as a deliberate experiment, not a programming exercise.

“Apart from the drum machine, which wasn’t programmed, the rest of it was played in real time by real people, just like all the other Tull albums,” Anderson said. He pointed to bassist Dave Pegg, whose folk background ran counter to the material, and guitarist Martin Barre, who brought a “maturity and confidence” to the sessions. The combination gave the album a peculiar tension: stiff rhythm beds under live, searching performances.

Anderson also spoke about songwriting as a fragile act. “A little butterfly comes into your orbit. You’ve got to catch it, but you must be very careful with it,” he said. That ethos steered a record that tried to squeeze Tull’s prog instincts into shorter, new wave-adjacent forms. Under Wraps landed at a time when stadium-sized crowds were still fresh in memory, but the record itself became a quiet, contested corner of the catalogue. This reissue, however lavish, will likely reframe that conversation on its own terms.