This week at Glyn Wilton’s Mixed Music Bag,
he’s asking us to write about a song in which
the title or a line mentions the current month.
Here’s my featured March artists and their song.
My featured song today is “March, the Mad Scientist”, an acoustic gem by the British band, Jethro Tull ….. giants of progressive rock from the town of Blackpool. With their mix of heavy rock, flute-led folk melodies, blues licks, densely surreal lyrics and overall profundity, they are a unique phenomenon in music history. Since 1967, the band has been led by singer/flautist/guitarist Ian Anderson. With an impressive history and vast discography, it’s impossible for me to do justice to the story of Jethro Tull. If you wish to read more about this incredibly innovative band, you may do so HERE and HERE.
🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶
This is my interpretation of the lyrics of “March, the Mad Scientist”.
The imagined character in the opening stanza isn’t too happy about life in modern society. There’s a lost, restless feeling and the need to find a more meaningful direction ….“a new polarity”. The lyrics speak of the struggle for success and wealth which has affected people and there is an ambiguity about it; they don’t want to give it up, yet they feel they would like to change it all and live a more relaxed and fulfilled life. This fulfillment will not be found in material matters but in tradition, family and sense of community …. in nature itself. While society is preoccupied with chasing the dream, nature takes its course and Spring arrives in all its splendor, so abundant and omnipresent. Even though it’s around for everyone to see, no one pays attention to it or to what the world has become. The wisdom of nature remains hidden for a future time, when people are more willing to look for it, experience and appreciate it. “In March, the mad scientist brings new change.”
Recorded in 1975 while the band was in tax exile in Monaco, this is “March, the Mad Scientist” by Jethro Tull
LYRICS
What would you like for Christmas?
A new polarity?
You’re binary and desperate
To deal in high figures that lick us
With a hotter flame.
Look – each and every one the same.
In March the mad scientist
Brings a new change
In ever-dancing colors.
He rings it here and he rings it,
But no one stops to see
The change of fate and the fate of change
That slips into his pocket,
So he locks it
All away from view
And shares not what he thought he knew.
And April is summer-bound,
And February’s blue.
And no one stops to see the colors.
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Ian Anderson
March the Mad Scientist lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Big thanks to Glyn Wilton for hosting Mixed Music Bag each week. Please be sure to follow the link and check out Glyn’s site.
Thanks for joining me today and spinning some tunes.
See you on the flip side. 😎
NAR©2025
All text, graphics and videos are copyright for Nancy’s Notes 🖊️🎶, The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk, and The Rhythm Section, et. al., and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 
Never heard of this song, always nice to find new listening material. Thanks, Nancy! 🎶 🎧
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Honestly, I would have been very surprised if you did know it, Laura. This song is one of Tull’s more obscure and isn’t on any album that I know of except a compilation (and they don’t count! 🤣)
Thanks for coming by for a look and a listen, cara. Glad you enjoyed Tull! 🎶♡🕶️
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The more I hear of Jethro Tull, the more I like the band. There’s more to them than ‘Aqualung’ and ‘Thick As a Brick’.
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You’re right about that, Glyn. Definitely a deep group.
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Impressive that you know this song. I’ve been a big Jethro Tull fan since their very first record and for me this one ranks as obscure in their impressive catalogue! Great to hear it again 👍
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Guess I’ve still got a few tricks in my bag, Clive! Nice to know you’re a Tull fan and enjoyed this little gem. Thanks!
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This is a very cryptic song, and I read it is about a teenage girl in the afterlife, meeting characters based on God, St. Peter, and Lucifer portrayed as shrewd businessmen, but whatever it is about, it is a lovely song. Nice find Nancy.
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Seriously? That’s some description! Makes my interpretation sound like a day at the beach! Thanks so much, Jim.
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It’s crazy, but I still love March because there is finally hope at the edges o the snowbank.
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That’s one optimistic way to look at it! I’m not much of an outdoorsy rugged type so the sooner the soft petals of spring make an appearance, the happier I am! Thanks D.
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I witnessed their live show in Dallas, early 70s. It was a show, not a concert. Jumping around, stopping a song to read poetry, more jumping around, crazy songs, it was weird at best. I’m not a fan of the month of March: too cold, then too hot, then windy, then thunderstorms, it’s a screwed-up month, so I no likey. I once wrote a half-assed story and then a more than half-assed song called, ” I left My Heart At The March Of Dimes.” I penned the little story when I was a kid and my cousin wore a leg brace because he had a slight case of Polio, if there ever was a slight case. He didn’t appreciate the story, or the song decades later. He recovered well enough to become the family smart-ass that we all hated, so I guess the March of Dimes worked well for him. We haven’t spoken in almost thirty-years, so I assume he is still holding that grudge about the story and the tune. I figured the last year in his Forest Gump leg brace, he was faking it to get attention and sympathy, and it worked well. Me, I got hit by a car while riding my bike to school and damn near died, no one even sent me a get well card or a box of Snickers bars, nothing, I believe the accident on the bike happened in the month of March in 1957, so there’s another reason to hate the damn month. Sorry for the ramble, but the mention of the month..”slowly I turn, step by step.”
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“Stranger With a Kind Face”; I’m not as young as I look and I remember that routine. Nyuk nyuk nyuk!
A slight case of polio. Is that like being a little pregnant?
Sorry to hear about no Snickers; that’s a tasty treat.
I don’t love March but I really don’t like February. March, as they say, is “changeable”. We need winter coats, light jackets, t shirts and don’t even think of putting the snow shovel away!
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