The Helsinki gig was part of Tull’s ongoing Seven Decades tour, the name reflecting the band’s remarkable longevity and career span. It celebrates their extensive discography, from the seminal 1968 album This Was right up to their latest, last month’s Curious Ruminant.

The setlist in Helsinki was a time machine. It kicked off with Beggar’s Farm from This Was, and ambled through decades with the ease of a band that refuses to be fossilised. For someone like me, a teenager in the 1970s when Tull’s music was the soundtrack to rebellion and reverie, this was less a concert and more a pilgrimage down memory lane.

Back in the day, Jethro Tull weren’t just a band; they were a vibe. The 1970s were a messy, glorious sprawl — bell-bottoms, long hair, long arguments about music in smoky rooms. Led Zeppelin roared, Pink Floyd drifted into the cosmos, but Tull? They literally danced to their own tune.

Anderson, with his wild mane (like many of us, he’s lost much of that hair now) and medieval minstrel energy, brought something eccentric to the table. Even the band’s name, which in those pre-internet days we learnt was the name of an 18th-century English farm innovator who invented the seed drill, was outlandish.

That flute wasn’t just an instrument; it was a statement. While others wielded guitars like battle axes, Anderson twirled this wand, conjuring songs that were as cerebral as they were visceral — part rock, part folk, part jazz.

I remember the first time I heard Aqualung. It was 1975, and I was 16, sprawled on a friend’s bedroom floor, the LP spinning on a creaky turntable. The title track hit like a thunderclap, gritty riffs crashing into Anderson’s snarling vocals about a derelict watching the world go by. Then came Locomotive Breath, all chugging rhythms and existential dread.

Tull was heavy music, and yet not in the way that Deep Purple or Black Sabbath were. Tull’s heft came from their oddity, their refusal to fit into any boxes. They made concept records such as Thick as a Brick and my personal favourite, A Passion Play.

At last week’s gig, as Anderson, whose current bandmates include Jack Clark (guitar), David Goodier (bass), John O’Hara (keyboards) and Scott Hammond (drums), did a condensed version of Thick as a Brick, very early memories of listening to this band for the first time came back in a rush of nostalgia.

What set them apart, and still does, was their musical alchemy. The band weren’t content to ride one wave. Their sound was a patchwork quilt: blues roots in This Was; pastoral folk in

Songs from the Wood (1977); knotty prog experiments such as Thick as a Brick (1972); even synth-laced detours, as in A (1980).

Amid it all, Anderson’s flute gave them an edge no one else had. Imagine Jimi Hendrix trading his Stratocaster for a harmonica, and you’re halfway there. Sure, some of it was gimmickry delivered with a flourish. Yet, Tull’s legacy lies in how they fused genres into something unclassifiable, influencing everyone from prog giants such as Yes to modern successors such as The Decemberists.

In 1989, when they won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock / Metal Performance, they beat out Metallica — an absurd moment that showed how clueless the industry was and still is about classifying their music.

In music history, Tull are the glorious misfits, the band that proved rock could be brainy, rustic, heavy and raw all at once. They cared less about topping charts than about enduring cult devotion. At the Helsinki gig, I spotted some of that devotion. There were senior citizens among us, moving with the help of walkers; there were also young guns sporting Aqualung T-shirts.

When they launched into Aqualung, it was a dark and heavy, twisted version, which made that existential song seem even more relevant in these times. For the encore, they did a haunting version of Locomotive Breath, the relentless, flute-driven song that paints a vivid picture of a metaphorical train wreck of a man.

In the 1970s, Tull was my escape hatch. Life was simpler then, or maybe it just felt that way because we were too young to know better. School was a drag, parents didn’t get it, and the future was a hazy blob on the horizon.

After the gig, as we made our way to the queues at coat-check, I felt a bit of what I had felt then: that rare thrill of music that doesn’t just entertain but rewires you. At 77, Anderson’s still got it. And, in a much, much smaller way, I think I do too!

(To write in with feedback, email sanjoy.narayan@gmail.com)