A PASSION PLAY

My relationship to Jethro Tull's music has been complex. They have passed through so many styles and phases during their career that I have found myself liking different records or series of records at different times. This is to some extent natural for anyone who listens to a lot of music, but Tull seem to have experimented more than most with directions and I've found myself growing into their various developments. I began with the late 80's rock phase of Crest Of A Knave (1987) and Rock Island (1989), for which Tull somewhat farcically won a Heavy Metal award (over Metallica!). Then progressed backwards to the greatest hits of the early 70's. Then rocketed forward to the early 80's electronics of The Broadsword And The Beast (1982). Then backward again to the late '70s folk-based albums. The two albums I would not part with now are are A Passion Play and Minstrel In The Gallery. The point is really that at each time I thought I knew Tull and knew what I liked, only to rediscover them again later (A Passion Play became a foil for my increasingly electronic-dance orientated musical tastes), so I've been spared the nostalgia of 'I used to listen to this' but have instead found that Tull have remained relevant to my musical environment, from the beginning on, in a way that no other band have.

A Passion Play is the most complicated album Tull recorded, and, following Thick As A Brick, the second and last album to be 45 minutes of continuous music. And 45 minutes it is, rather than two sections of 23-ish minutes. In that comment lies my first criticism of every cd release. On both Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play, there is a sense of trying to overcome the physical constraints of the medium of a vinyl record. The end of the first side of Thick As A Brick fades out and the second side fades in from the same point. On A Passion Play there is an interval song, The Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles, and the bridge occurs in the middle of the story, during a natural pause after the main characters have been introduced. In fact the album anticipates the cd medium with its single side, and it was not until being issued on cd that this endeavour was truly fulfilled. However, every cd I've seen begins the second part of the album from the beginning of The Story... . It would be more appropriate to begin from the middle, as the vinyl did, or to dispense with such divisions altogether, out of acknowledgment of what the album was trying to do.

The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles is an oddity amongst Jethro Tull songs, in that it is narrated and indeed not even by Ian Anderson, but by Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond. Musically it is a psychedelic mutation of Peter And The Wolf filtered through Winnie-The-Pooh and only flirts with what we would recognise as Rock in the last few bars. But the words are the key for me: the punning makes you cringe in delight. My favourite part is quote on the right. On the newly re-mastered release, we are treated to a 7-minute promotional video of The Story... , complete with ballerinas, oversize animals dancing and frantic editing. As you watch this or listen to the music, it's worth bearing in mind that only two years previously Tull had been awarded a Heavy Metal award for Aqualung, on that occasion over Led Zeppelin, as this is as far from Heavy Metal as it's possible to get.

The words and lyrical plays are part of what makes the album so impressive. Perhaps the best line is on the second side: I'd give up my halo for a horn and the horn for the hat I once had. Overall, the album is about death and possibly life afterwards, beginning as it does with a funeral. Yet, 30 years after its original release, it is not only the lyrics which make the album rewarding. Released in the same year as the 'definitive' concept album, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon, A Passion Play is for me the better recording, and a major part of the reason is the music. A Passion Play is more unified musically than The Dark Side Of The Moon; the latter is really just songs which cross-fade, whereas the former has an 'approach' and a sense of continuous development. The music often is among Jethro Tull's most playfully eccentric, flowing in and out of seeming incoherence. The opening instrumental, for example, has an inverted Teddy-bear's Picnic quality (which reminds me of the truly disturbing start of Faust's eponymous 1971 album) before turning to the apparent gravity of funeral described in the lyrics. Regular song structures are rare, while repeated motifs tie the various sections together. There's still a lot of acoustic guitar in there, but there's also a lot of jazz-based rhythm and extreme contrasts of electric to acoustic and wild to ethereal.

The strange thing is that this album marked the turn of critical acclaim for Tull. The critics hated it, and for some reason have never recovered. Maybe part of the problem was that Ian Anderson seemed to resent being put in a category (on both occasions of a Heavy Metal award, the next album was a violent reaction, almost as if to say, "Try calling this Heavy Metal!") Or maybe that Ian Anderson gave the impression of not caring whether they liked him and his music or not. Maybe the swing between introspective albums (A Passion Play and Minstrel...) and extroverted albums (War Child and Too Old...) meant that Tull were hard to get a grip on. And maybe it was simply a bandwagon that everyone got onto, and a guy playing a flute whilst standing on one leg is an easy target. But whatever the reason, Jethro Tull remain unpopular amongst critics and are for some reason considered to highlight the excesses of the 1970's prog-rock scene, even though their music has dated better than that of Pink Floyd, never had the classical bombast of Yes, ELO or even Deep Purple, and Martin Barre's guitar playing never degenerated into widdling and 40-minute solos.

And if you want more, then the 1993 compilation Nightcap is essential. The double cd set contains the original session for A Passion Play, recorded in France and labelled under The Chateaux D'Isater Tapes. Although much of the material was simply abandoned, some of the pieces, especially instrumentals, crop up again on A Passion Play, sometimes with alternative lyrics. For the full 'Passion Play Sessions', of course, you need to have War Child too, since Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of The New Day and Bungle In The Jungle were also recorded at the 'Chateaux D'Isaster', along with Solitaire, which appears in its original form on Nightcap. The compilation makes it easier to tie up various threads in this period of Anderson's writing, as for example with the animal metaphors and Law Of The Bungle.

All in all, a work of eccentric genius, in my opinion, closer to avant-garde than Rock. The critical headlines of 'Play without Passion' could not be further from the truth. Certainly a difficult album to listen to, but well worth the effort of trying. Still vibrant and inspiring 30 years after the original release.