Jethro Tull Thick As a Brick hit #1 in the U.S.

Thick As a Brick Jethro Tull

Released: March 3, 1972 Peak: 12 US, 5 UK, 11 CN, 111 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.5 US, -- UK Genre: progressive rock

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Really Don’t Mind / See There a Son is Born [5:00] The Poet and the Painter [5:29] What Do You Do When the Old Man’s Gone? / From the Upper Class [5:25] You Curl Your Toes in Fun / Childhood Heroes / Stabs Instrumental [6:48] See There a Man Is Bon / Clear White Circles [5:58] Legends and Believe in the Day [6:34] Tales of Your Life [5:24] Childhood Heroes Reprise [2:56] Total Running Time: 43:46 The Players: Ian Anderson (vocals, acoustic guitar, flute, etc.) Martin Barre (electric guitar, lute, flute) John Evan (piano, organ, harpsichord) Jeffrey Hammond (bass, spoken word) Barriemore Barlow (drums, percussion, timpani)

Rating: 3.834 out of 5.00 (average of 18 ratings) Quotable: “A masterpiece in the annals of progressive rock.” – Bruce Eder, All Music Guide Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: “The follow-up to that FM staple, Aqualung, 1972’s Thick as a Brick demonstrated that Ian ‘Don’t call me Jethro’ Anderson had so much on his mind that even the previous record’s side-long suites would not suffice.” AZ “Jethro Tull’s first LP-length epic is a masterpiece in the annals of progressive rock, and one of the few works of its kind that still holds up decades later.” AM “The group created a dazzling tour de force, at once playful, profound, and challenging, without overwhelming the listener.” AM “Ian Anderson has been quoted as stating that Thick as a Brick was written ‘because everyone was saying we were a progressive rock band, so we decided to live up to the reputation and write a progressive album, but done as a parody of the genre.’” WK It was “a send-up of all pretentious ‘concept albums’. Anderson also stated in that interview that ‘the album was a spoof to the albums of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer much like what the movie Airplane! had been to Airport’.” WK “The album features only one song, lasting nearly 45 minutes. To accommodate the album on LP vinyl and cassette, the seamless track was split on both sides of the record.” WK The “stream-of-consciousness lyrics [are] so dense with imagery that one might spend weeks pondering their meaning – assuming one feels the need to do so.” AM The lyrics were reportedly based on “a poem by an intelligent English boy (named Gerald) about the trials of growing up.” WK In reality, Ian Anderson “wrote the lyrics himself.” WK The newspaper-style album cover includes an article about the “fictional 8-year-old literary prodigy, Gerald ‘Little Milton’ Bostock, …[and his] disqualification from a poetry contest.” WK “This article claims that although Bostock initially won the contest…the judges’ decision was repealed after a multitude of protests and threats concerning the offensive nature of the poem, furthered by allegations of the boy’s psychological instability.” WK “The epic is notable for numerous time signature and tempo changes (which is not uncommon in the then-emerging progressive rock subgenre of rock)” WK and “mixing hard rock and English folk music with classical influences.” AM There are also “a large number of themes throughout the piece, resembling a typical classical symphony in this regard, rather than a typical rock song.” WK “Not only was the musical structure complex, but many instruments uncommon in rock music were added. Whereas in prior numbers the band were content with guitars, drums, piano, Hammond organ, and Ian Anderson’s signature flute, Thick as a Brick included harpsichord, xylophone, timpani, violin, lute, trumpet, saxophone, and a string section.” WK “The original LP was the best-sounding, best-engineered record Tull had ever released, easily capturing the shifting dynamics between the soft all-acoustic passages and the electric rock crescendos surrounding them.” AM “The record was packaged in the popular fake-newspaper style of the day (John & Yoko’s Some Time in New York City of the same year, the Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers, and the Four Seasons’ bid for hipness, Genuine Imitation Life Gazette).” AZ “Jethro Tull’s official website states about the mock-newspaper, ‘There are a lot of inside puns, cleverly hidden continuing jokes (such as the experimental non-rabbit), a surprisingly frank review of the album itself, and even a little naughty connect-the-dots children’s activity.’” WK “Subtly scattered throughout the articles are references to the lyrics, to Bostock and Jethro Tull, and to other peculiar parts of the newspaper itself. The spoof newspaper had to be heavily abridged for conventional CD covers, but the 25th Anniversary Special Edition CD includes a partial facsimile.” WK Notes: A 25th anniversary reissue added a 1978 live recording of part of Thick As a Brick and in interview with Jethro Tull.

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Bruce Eder AZ Amazon.com review by David Wolf WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Links: First posted 8/10/2011; last updated 9/4/2025.

Jethro Tull “Aqualung” song released as album cut

Aqualung Jethro Tull

Writer(s): Ian Anderson, Jennie Anderson (see lyrics here) Released: March 19, 1971 (album cut on Aqualung) First Charted: -- Peak: 1 CL, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 29.4 video, 90.47 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Jethro Tull formed in 1967 in England. They started by playing a mix of blues, rock, jazz, folk, and even classical. By 1971’s Aqualung, they “became more complex and progressive.” HL Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson was also emerging as the band’s undisputed leader as new key players, including guitarist Martin Barre were coming on board to replace the original lineup. HL While it was the group’s fourth top-10 in the UK, it was a huge leap forward for them commercially in the U.S. as their first top-10 album and only platinum seller (three times over). The album was also “a loosely conceptual work…[that] heralded the direction the band would take during much of the 1970s.” HL In addition, the band’s “direction was becoming more and more song centric, and Anderson’s words more bitingly social.” HL The album found him “firing off against religion, homelessness, and other attendant ills of society.” HL On the album’s title cut, Anderson and his then-wife Jennie “built up a powerful image of what it was like to be out on the streets in winter.” HL The lyrics were based on actual photos she took of transient men. SF The song also painted a slightly romanticized notion of this homeless tramp as “a free spirit, who either won’t or can’t join in society’s prescribed formats.” WK Anderson clearly “saw himself in the character,” HL something reinforced by the Burton Silverman oil painting on the album cover which “depicted a derelict in a dirty old raincoat.” HL The name of the character – and the song’s title – presumably came from the sound of the “rasping wheezing coming from his disease-wracked body.” HL As author Dave Thompson said, this is “not really a song about the diver’s greatest friend, but a lament for a man who sounds like he’s wearing one.” DT The song was never released as a single. Ian Anderson explained that “it was too long, it was too episodic; it starts off with a loud guitar riff and then goes into rather more laid back acoustic stuff.” SF The song did become a staple at classic rock radio. Anderson said, “Radio sharply divided between AM radio, which played the 3-minute pop hits, and FM radio where they played what they called deep cuts…the obscure, the longer, the more convoluted songs.” SF Resources: HL Michael Heatley and Spencer Leigh (1998). Behind the Song: The Stories of 100 Great Pop & Rock Classics. Blandford Books: London, UK. Pages 60-1. SF Songfacts DT Dave Thompson (2011). 1000 Songs That Rock Your World. Krause Publications: Iola, WI. Page 125. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 4/10/2023.

Jethro Tull released Aqualung: March 19, 1971

Originally posted March 19, 2012.

“In the mid-seventies, during the wholesale slaughter of rock’s ‘dinosaurs,’ Tull provided an easy target. Everything they stood for was passé – extended solos, complex time signatures, jazz-styled improvisations” ^PR served up by “hairy prog-rock philosophers…[who managed] to incorporate flute solos” ^RS500 into FM-radio hits with “riff-heavy songs.” ^AMG However, in dismissing “dinosaur rock,” many critics overlooked the quality of the music.

In the case of Jethro Tull, they hit their peak with Aqualung, “an accomplished, intelligent, skillfully structured and eloquent collection of tunes.” ^PR The album was their “magnum opus and defining epic.” ^JD “The record was extremely profound…one of the most cerebral albums ever to reach millions of rock listeners.” ^AMG As one reviewer said of “captivating pied piper Ian Anderson” ^ZS and his “dour musings on faith and religion,” ^AMG, “He wants to make us think!” ^CRS

“Anderson insists to this day that it is not a concept album,” ^JD but each half seems devoted to one prevalent theme. “The first half is largely devoted to portraying the faces from the urban underground that most people never see: homeless men, prostitutes, assorted freaks and geeks. The flip side (these still being the days of vinyl albums) is a bitter, angry, and sustained attack on the hypocrisy of the Church of England, which gives such people false hope.” ^JD Specifically, the second half offered commentary on “how organized religion had restricted man’s relationship with God.” ^AMG

“Released at a time when a lot of bands were embracing pop-Christianity (à la Jesus Christ Superstar), Aqualung was a bold statement for a rock group, a pro-God antichurch tract that probably got lots of teenagers wrestling with these ideas for the first time in their lives.” ^AMG

Aqualung

“The title track (and arguably the vibe of the whole album) was inspired by Anderson’s first wife, Jennie, a photographer who’d been shooting images of destitute men living on the streets of London.” ^JD “The ‘poor old sod’ of the title cut is so-named because his labored breathing sounds like a scuba diver sucking from an oxygen tank (‘You snatch your rattling last breaths, with deep-sea-diver sounds/ And the flowers bloom like madness in the spring’).” ^JR “This one track encapsulates all of Jethro Tull’s musical variety and complexity in one handy package, intertwining three distinct parts: the nasty, hard-rock intro and exit powered by that monstrous, indelible guitar riff; the quiet, sympathetic acoustic interlude marked by Anderson’s distant, treated vocals, and the majestic, pseudo-orchestral build-up that links the other sections.” ^JD

“Like Led Zeppelin, …Jethro Tull had mastered the art of dramatic contrasts and swelling dynamics, shifting with seeming effortlessness from thunderous grandeur to quiet, folky introspection…The rollicking, undeniable classic-rock-radio staple Locomotive Breath, the vituperative Hymn 43, and the viciously grooving Cross-Eyed Mary are as close to heavy metal as Tull ever got (the band’s infamous 1988 Grammy for Crest of a Knave to the contrary).” ^JD

Locomotive Breath

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Awards:

• one of the top 1000 albums of all time
  
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
  
• Top 100 Classic Rock Albums
  
• one of the top 50 prog-rock albums of all time
  
• one of the top 100 albums of the 1970s
  

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Resources and Related Links:

• DMDB page for Aqualung
  
• DMDB Music Maker Encyclopedia entry for Jethro Tull
  
• ^AMG All Music Guide review by Bruce Eder
  
• ^JD Jim DeRogatis, The Great Albums (11/18/01)
  
• ^CRS Tim Morse (1998). Classic Rock Stories: The Stories Behind the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin.
  
• ^PR Paul Roland (2001). CD Guide to Pop & Rock. B.T. Batsford LTD: London. Page 141.
  
• ^RS500 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
  
• ^ZS Zagat Survey (2003). Music Guide: 1,000 Top Albums of All Time. Coordinator: Pat Blashill. Music Editor: Holly George-Warren. Editors: Betsy Andrews and Randi Gollin. Zagat Survey, LLC: New York, NY.
  

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