Sometimes on here I have to stop and think about what it is that makes a song important. Sometimes I even have to struggle to come up with something nice to say. This is something I don’t have to wonder about at all. Heavy Horses is simply one of the most important songs in my life. (It’s one of the most important albums in my life.) Not least because I’ve always loved horses. If I loved horses how could I not love a song about horses? Especially since Ian Anderson isn’t just singing about horses on a whim or making some vague metaphor. He clearly knows a lot about them, enough to use proper terminology that leaves non-horse people confused. And of course, it’s clear he really loves them, too. Anderson is a guy with a passion for animals, farming, and the country life, rock’n'roll’s only nature poet. There are a few other animal lovers who like to sing about it, including Paul McCartney and (surprisingly) Nick Cave, but none of them approach Anderson’s passion and wide-eyed wonder towards mice, cats, horses, even moths. Here is a man after my own heart, I think. There are few sights more magnificent than a horse – they are the most beautiful animals, and besides cats and dogs, they are our closest and most beloved animal companions. There are a million reasons why horses are so appealing; besides their beauty we love their intelligence, their expressive personalities, their generous willingness to let us sit on their backs, etc. It would seem impossible to write a single song that captures that mystique, but here Jethro Tull has done it. Heavy Horses is like a little symphony, worthy of its subject, an ode to centuries of collaboration between man and animal, and an angry protest against an industrialized world that has turned away from that friendship. Yes, it’s a tragedy that horsemanship has faded from universal pleasure to boutique hobby, but we’ll never really forget, because we love them too much.
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