Jethro Tull has to be one of the strangest bands to ever become successful. They mixed rock, folk, blues, jazz, and classical music, with Ian Anderson standing on one leg playing the flute. Somehow it all worked.
They were certainly an album band, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be catchy. Songs like Living in the Past, Teacher, Aqualung and Locomotive Breath could stick in your head with the best of them. Even when they stretched a song across an entire album, they didn’t forget about melody.
That brings me to Thick as a Brick. After Aqualung was released in 1971, some critics called it a concept album. Ian Anderson has said that wasn’t really what the band intended. So for the next album he decided to take the idea to an absurd extreme. If people wanted a concept album, Jethro Tull would give them one.
Thick as a Brick was released in 1972 and consisted of one continuous piece of music lasting more than 40 minutes. Obviously, an LP had two sides, so the song had to be divided between them. The original album was even packaged like a small-town British newspaper called The St. Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser.
Then there was Gerald Bostock. The lyrics were presented as a poem written by an eight-year-old boy named Gerald Bostock, who was completely fictional. It was all part of Anderson’s joke. They took the idea of the serious progressive-rock concept album and pushed it about as far as they possibly could.
The funny thing is that the joke produced some seriously good music. The album constantly changes. There are acoustic passages, hard rock, flute, keyboards and odd time signatures. It can become complicated and then suddenly return to something incredibly melodic. The opening acoustic section is the part I always remember. You don’t have to sit down with a calculator and work out the time signatures to enjoy it. The melody sticks with you.
The band at this point was Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, John Evans, Jeffrey Hammond and Barriemore Barlow. Anderson wrote the music and lyrics, although the lyrics were originally credited to our eight-year-old friend Gerald Bostock.
For something created partly as a parody of overly serious concept albums, Thick as a Brick did remarkably well. It reached number one on the American album chart.
Think about that for a second. A band featuring a flute player standing on one leg released an album containing one song that lasted nearly 45 minutes, based around a poem supposedly written by a fictional eight-year-old boy, and America made it the number one album.
The seventies were wonderful. Jethro Tull could be complicated, strange, and sometimes completely over the top. That’s part of what makes them interesting. But underneath all of that, Ian Anderson could write melodies.
That’s what keeps Thick as a Brick from becoming a musical homework assignment for me. It wanders all over the place, but there are sections that grab you immediately. I’m not going to pretend that every time I want to hear the song Thick as a Brick that I have 40-plus minutes available. Sometimes I just want that opening section.
But once it starts, it’s awfully hard to stop. I’m not a huge progressive rock fan. Sometimes I’ve heard bands change time signatures seemingly just because they could. I never get that feeling with Thick as a Brick. The changes seem to have a purpose. Underneath all of the progressive rock, odd time signatures and Ian Anderson’s flute, there are some real pop sensibilities. There are melodies here that stick with you.
One Note: Later CD and digital releases can make Thick as a Brick look like it contains a number of individual tracks or sections. Those divisions were added to make the music easier to navigate in the digital age. The original idea hasn’t changed. It is still one continuous composition, originally divided only by the necessity of flipping the LP over. So if your CD or streaming service shows a list of titles or sections, don’t worry, we haven’t suddenly discovered a bunch of missing Jethro Tull songs.
Thick As A Brick
See there, a man was born and we pronounce him fit for peace
There’s a load lifted from his shoulders with the discovery of his disease
We’ll take the child from him, put it to the test
Teach it to be a wise man, how to fool the rest
We will be geared to the average rather than the exceptional
God is an overwhelming responsibility
Oh, fluffy duck
We walked through the maternity ward and saw two hundred and eighteen babies wearing nylons
It says here that cats are on the upgrade (upgrade?)
Hipgrave, downgrades are rare, it’s got that fat and old cat
In the clear white circles of morning wonder, I take my place with the lord of the hills
And the blue-eyed soldiers stand slightly discoloured
In neat little rows sporting canvas frills
With their jockstraps pinching, they slouch to attention
Whilst queueing for sarnies at the office canteen
Saying “how’s your granny?” and good old Ernie
Coughed up a tenner on a premium bond win
The legends worded in
The ancient tribal hymn
Lie cradled in the seagull’s call
And all the promises they made are ground beneath the sadist’s fall
The poet and the wise man stand behind the gun, behind the gun
And signal for the crack of dawn, light the sun, light the sun
Do you believe in the day?
Do you believe in the day?
The dawn creation of the kings has begun, has begun
Soft Venus, lovely maiden brings the ageless one, the ageless one
Do you believe in the day?
Do you believe in the day?
The fading hero has returned to the night, to the night
And fully pregnant with the day, with the day, wise men endorse the poet’s sight
Do you believe in the day?
Do you believe in the day?
Let me tell you the tales of your life
Of your love and the cut of the knife
The tireless oppression, the wisdom instilled
The desire to kill or be killed
Well, let me sing of the losers who lie
In the street as the last bus goes by
The pavements ar empty, the gutters run red while the fool toasts his god in the sky
So come all ye young men who are building castles!
Kindly state the time of the year
And join your voices in a hellish chorus
Mark the precise nature of your fear
Let me help you pick up your dead
As the sins of the father are fed
With the blood of the fools and the thoughts of the wise
And from the pan under your bed
Well, let me make you a present of song
As the wise man breaks wind and is gone
While the fool with the hour-glass is cooking his goose and the nursery rhyme winds along
So come all ye young men who are building castles
Kindly state the time of the year
And join your voices in a hellish chorus
Mark the precise nature of your fear
See the summer lightning casts its bolts upon you
And the hour of judgement draweth near
Would you be the fool stood in his suit of armour or the wiser man who rushes clear?
So, come on ye childhood heroes!
Won’t your rise up from the pages of your comic-books, your super-crooks
And show us all the way?
Well, make your will and testament
Won’t you join your local government?
We’ll have Superman for president
Let Robin save the day
So where the hell was Biggles when you needed him last Saturday?
And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you through?
They’re all resting down in Cornwall writing up their memoirs
For a paper-back edition of the Boy Scout Manual
So you ride yourselves over the fields
And you make all your animal deals
And your wise men don’t know how it feels
To be thick as a brick, yeah