The band that became Jethro Tull got the name sort of by accident. In the beginning, they were a 3 piece band who had difficulty getting repeat business. They constantly changed the name of the band so that folks who’d otherwise refuse to let them play would pay them without knowing it.
Time passed and they became good enough that someone wanted to have them play again. The band had to figure out what they’d called themselves at that venue and it turned out that they’d called themselves Jethro Tull.
I first heard about Jethro Tull just after A Passion Play was released. One of my acquaintances told me that Passion Play was just one song and was really weird. That was enough for me. I saved my allowance and bought a copy a few weeks later.
Okay, it was pretty weird. As I read the lyrics, they made almost no sense but when I listened to them, it felt like they did make sense even though I couldn’t figure out what they actually meant.
As I explored the rest of Jethro Tull’s albums, I found that I loved Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, and A Passion Play, but not much else. I do like Songs from the Wood but it’s a totally different album from the other three. It’s a very English folkish album in contrast to the progressive rock of the other three.
Jethro Tull created a lot of other albums in a variety of styles, none of which appealed to me. Part of this is because they constantly changed their lineup – they were rarely the same band.
With my favorite three albums, they had the same lineup except for getting a new drummer after Aqualung.
Aqualung is a regular non-concept album but a few of the songs are sorta related. This prompted the reviewers and critics to announce that it was a concept album like the Who’s Tommy and other rock operas.
The story is that the band members were aghast when they heard this and decided that as a joke, they’d show them what a concept album really was. This was the origin of the Thick as a Brick album.
After Thick as a Brick, they were inspired to write a real concept album. That is, one that wasn’t written to spite reviewers and critics. Thus was born A Passion Play.
One difference between TaaB and APP is that Ian Anderson added a saxophone to his repertoire. I never noticed this before I was told about it and now I can’t not notice it. I think it’s a good addition.
I dug up an awful lot of information about this from the book “Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play : Inside Two Long Songs” by Timothy J. Smolko
If you’re wondering about the title of the post, it’s a lyric from Passion Play.
Stephen Squire 