Why is Tull's "A Passion Play" rated so low?

Interesting post. Never knew anything about medieval "mystery plays" but always loved this album. 

You wouldn't happen to be Morthoron from the Tolkien boards, would you? Your avatar and general way of posting reminds me of him.

My 3 star PA review of APP:

The trouble I find with APP is not that it is a bad album but simply that's it's only half a good album. After the stunning success of Thick As A Brick, Anderson and co. decided to push the long suite album epic even further. But the first side of APP is a veritable dirge filled with verbose lyrics that narrowly fill every dragged out beat of the depressing narrative in a queasy sing song style with music supported by Anderson's sub par saxophone. A flute, a flute, my Kingdom for a flute! Why Anderson decided to focus on the sax and discard his superlative flute playing is beyond me. When the slow minor key verses and musically clumsy narrative verses cease, the band lunches into dramatic faux jams with loud drums and bass that never venture past punctuated staggered notes and rhythms. This would normally signify a change to some wonderfully melodious music that, for whatever reason, never happens, as if Anderson is driving this musical car yelling "Left turn, right turn, left turn" while missing the road to the better more coherent music to follow. It's as if the catchy rhythms and melodies that lie just around the bend are always being bypssed. This is some of the most unappealing prog rock that I've ever encountered but the lyrics that accompany this dirge are no saving grace either.

 

Lines like "the ice cream lady wet her draws" and "and your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulder of a young horse named George", while interesting and cute, are a far cry from anything that would be considered poetry and offer no deeper meanings, metaphorical or otherwise, and are certainly not close to any type of profound theological thought or comment. No great loss really as prog was never known for great lyrics but any help that they could have given to the music would have been welcome.

The mock theatrical debacle that is The Story Of The Hare That Lost His Spectacles (one of the worst fillers to be found in an album of any genre) is so poor and appalling that the least said about it, the better. An unfunny story with garish "acting" by sidemen Evan and Hammond-Hammond. In fact, it makes the myriad of ELP's "humorous songs" like Benny The Bouncer seem almost Shakespearian. Luckily, good songwriting, arranging and musical sense return for the album's concluding 18 minutes. We are returned the APP narrative which now boasts deft melodies and syncopated rhythms, particularly on the driving "Lucifer" section which boasts some very modern, for the time, sounding sythn accompaniment from Evan. This much needed bombast is too short but following suites offer beautiful near Flamenco type acoustic guitar from Anderson, as well as the return of his wonderful concert flute, which signals the feeling that one is back on safe and familiar Tull musical ground. Right after, Martin Barre interjects some of the most jaggered and brash sounding guitar chords he's ever played (or that I've ever heard!). The dramatic shift in the music is welcome and enjoyable until Old Ian ends this epic with slow acoustic strums and a plaintive last verse. The last 18 minutes of APP are some of the best music that Tull ever put on tape. But at what cost to the listener?

No one would be expected to consume a burnt entree only to get to a fantastic dessert. The same standard holds true for music. The last half of APP is quite a musical dessert, but no one should have to suffer through the main course in order to get to it. 3 stars.

And yet, here you are mentioning "Blake to Pilgrim" -- in the context of a rock album, and in an ass-backwards manner acknowledging APP's worth. 

But I suppose the term "progressive" to the stereotypical "lay person" you refer to is merely the perceived ability to fluff a three chord song into 20 or 30 minutes of doodling, rather than actually challenging the intellect of the listener. Or, god forbid, actually write lyrics that require more than the blithe acceptance of the crotch sniffing lines found in "Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin". You sound like Emperor Joseph II in Amadeus when he offered the blank summation "there are simply too many notes" to Mozart. What exactly was the point of "progressive rock" if not to go beyond the 12 bar blues-influenced structures of the 1950s and 1960s?

"Rehashed theology" is rather revisionist, don't you think? We are talking 1973, when women were still burning their bras and Catholic priests were allowed to fondle altar boys without the impedance of any legal authority -- or moral authority, for that matter. Coming from a Catholic school upbringing myself (I would say "reared" but that might give the wrong impression), the albums Aqualung, Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play were integral puzzle pieces in allowing a young teenager, such as myself, to go from a feeling of solitary unease and distaste about my indoctrination, to realizing that others felt the same way, and a rock band, no less, singing about it. Religion, and more precisely the Catholic religion, was a sham of Latinate mumbo-jumbo and archaic rituals, a facade to hide the nothingness behind the silken screen. 

I discussed this in another forum, but in part it can apply here. There was more to Ian Anderson's lyrical take on Mystery Plays than just a "Rehashed theology". Surprisingly, for a rock star perhaps, Anderson actually put in some research for the writing of the piece, rather than just crib some Willie Dixon lyrics and call it a day.

As a Medievalist in both a literary and historical sense (yes, degrees that never remotely impinged on what I actually accomplished career-wise), I was researching a poem by William Langland (b. 1332 - d. 1400) titled "The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman" (a famous 14th century work of allegorical satire), and the text I was using referenced an old and anonymous English morality play "Hickscorner" printed by Wynken de Worde (who died in 1534, and was partner of John Caxton, the first printer in England -- but you, of course, knew that).

A word in the reference material immediately struck me. Here is the section of the "Hickscorner" play in question:

What, sirs, I tell you my name is Freewill,
I may choose whether I do good or ill;
But for all that I will do as me list.
My condition ye know not, perdé,
I can fight, chide, and be merry;
Full soon of my company ye would be weary
An ye knew all.
What, fill the cup and make good cheer,
I trow I have a noble here!

Why is this so goddamned important, you ask? 

If taking a hero's journey from Joseph Campbell, or more to the point Dante, turning it on its head, and have the Pilgrim reject the afterlife offered by both God and Lucifer as not his cup of tea, and so return to life as a corporeal manifestation is rehashed theology, then Moby Dick is just a rehash of sailors' tales. I love how folks on here get Herculean erections over Gabriel and Genesis borrowing reams of material from Greek mythos or simply retell a legend of King Canute, and consider it bloody brilliant, yet Tull actually attacks the church establishment and religion in 1973 and it's "rehashed theology".