A Passion Play (Jethro Tull) | Extended Play Lounge, Ep. 52
Added 2023-09-20 23:20:43 +0000 UTCWe're back listening to Jethro Tull, and I'm excited to share my reaction to A Passion Play, celebrating it's 50th anniversary this year.
What a wild ride this is! One of the proggiest albums I think I've ever heard. And, the concept is pretty interesting! Come along for the ride!
Comments
I know. I know. I’m new to these environs, so I’m sure someone has informed Doug that pausing an iconic 70s prog album is wrong. 🤓🤘✌️
James Geckle
2025-12-08 23:52:46 +0000 UTCI worked stage crew at my high school from 1978-1982; I remember once subjecting my (maybe my older brother’s) Passion Play LP to one of those ancient public school record players with the cement styluses (styli?) but it was worth it because I connected it to the theater speakers and cranked the $&@! out of it. It’s always been among my very favorite albums of all time, yet, except for Dave Rees, I’ve never encountered someone on our team. ✌️
James Geckle
2025-12-08 23:07:02 +0000 UTCLate to this because I just joined, but I have been convinced for decades that this is the best Jethro Tull album and that, at least for a moment, Ian Anderson was my generation's T. S. Eliot.
Mark Singer
2024-12-04 03:04:41 +0000 UTCI'm floored by this also! This has been one of my Tull favorites for years. I'm really glad you gave it a listen!
Bryan Sheehan
2024-03-29 21:57:15 +0000 UTCI don't know if someone mentioned it, but the Devil is frozen up to the waist in Dante's Divine Comedy. A contrast to the modern view of fire and brimstone... That would be something Ian Anderson read, I bet!!
Éric Gagnon
2023-10-24 20:02:07 +0000 UTCI finally came around to this one. Thank you Doug. This is a rough listen 😂 You should do the original Chateau D'Isaster Tapes as can be found on the Nightcap album. Cheers from Sweden!
Thord Sandström
2023-10-20 16:57:41 +0000 UTCI agree with everyone who says this album grows on you with repeated listens. I'd also recommend checking out Steven Wilson's remix of this one. It really opens up the sound of the album and makes it a lot easier to digest. The original mix was always a bit congested and hard to parse in my opinion.
Paul D
2023-09-26 18:59:12 +0000 UTCEnjoyed this reaction but I think the album will take more listens before I appreciate it better. I am going to see JT next May so need to do more homework on them! I LOVE Thick as a Brick
Ruth James
2023-09-24 16:37:50 +0000 UTCDefinitely one of their “folk” albums next just for the contrast. I would pick Heavy Horses over Songs from the wood as my favourite and lyrical content
Chris Gadsby
2023-09-24 00:01:14 +0000 UTCHello Doug. As usual, I really enjoyed your review. As a big Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson fan for decades, I've listened to this album several times and I've never grown to appreciate it or enjoy it. Maybe it's because I enjoy melody and in APP, the melodies shift too frequently for me. I do appreciate, however, the complexity of the writing and instrumentation. Tull has an incredibly vast catalog of truly great music! I consider them to be one of the pillars of classic prog rock with the likes of ELP. Yes, and Genesis! In my opinion, Thick as a Brick is their real masterpiece. I would also highly recommend their Benefit album. It's not a concept album, but musically I find it very enjoyable! Cheers!
Gerard Dion
2023-09-23 15:20:29 +0000 UTCExcellent video Doug! Look forward to perhaps War child!
David Edinborough
2023-09-23 04:22:48 +0000 UTCSecond this! But also A, because Eddie Jobson. Hey, has Doug ever done the first UK album?
Jesstifer
2023-09-23 02:51:20 +0000 UTC“The ice-cream lady wets her drawers, to see you in the passion play.” One of so many humerous lyrics. Contemporary with Python’s Flying Circus I relied on British prog rock and British humor to deliver my stranded 18-year-old mind from the dreary confines of Kansas. Entertaining from the start but like most really good music it took many repeated listenings and much time tolodge permanently in my psyche. 50 years later the knowledge of this music is an important part of me.
Howaard Hughes
2023-09-23 01:54:53 +0000 UTCThanks Thom! I think it definitely deserves multiple listens!
R. Douglas Helvering
2023-09-22 19:21:21 +0000 UTCyeah...it's hard to get away with that type of playing on a sax!
R. Douglas Helvering
2023-09-22 19:20:33 +0000 UTCSongs from the Wood and Heavy Horses should be your next choices from Tull.
Dave Cohen
2023-09-22 17:50:31 +0000 UTCI am so happy for this reaction that I was probably grinning the entire time. You're right, opinion is split on this album. I think it's complexity either entices, baffles, or loses listeners. Critics were hard on this one and one critic disliked it so much that he called them "Jethro Dull." But 50 years later, it still has its staunch admirers. It's hard to rank JT albums because they are so different from each other. But my test of which one I like best is the one I listen to the most. That would be this one... for 50 years.
Thom P
2023-09-22 17:41:02 +0000 UTCDoug, Ian Anderson became so disenchanted with playing the sax because he approached it the same way he played the flute, very strong exhales, plus inhales while playing. His strong blowing ended up splitting the reeds, which he ended up inhaling. He very soon decided it just wasn't right for him.
Dave Cohen
2023-09-22 17:38:08 +0000 UTCGreat reaction Doug. It was good to hear your thoughts on how APP compares with the other albums from that early period of the band's history. There are parallels between what Tull were doing at this time and what their prog contemporaries were doing. Tull had released an acclaimed album in 1972 (Thick As A Brick) before following it up with this, a more ambitious and more challenging piece, in 1973. Yes had done much the same thing in those same two years, in following Close To The Edge with Tales From Topographic Oceans. You could even argue that Genesis were pushing the envelope in a similar way, but a year later, when they followed 1973's Selling England By The Pound with The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Prog is by its very nature an adventurous and somewhat experimental musical form, so I think it was inevitable that many of those legends of the 70s would have points in their careers where they pushed things as far as they could, past the tolerance threshold of critics, right up to the point where they would even divide their fanbase. People like Steven Wilson continue that time-honoured tradition to this day.
Nick
2023-09-22 14:24:17 +0000 UTCSongs from the Wood should be paired with Heavy Horses… Two of my fave Tull albums!
Steve Hartke
2023-09-22 06:55:00 +0000 UTCAlso, "Newt knew too much..." and "Owl was scowling!" The whole album is filled with puns and word play, and I love it!
Bill Brinkmoeller
2023-09-22 06:13:34 +0000 UTCOne of the things that I've always loved about Jethro Tull is the changing nature of their music from album to album. It would have been so easy after the success of Aqualung to try to keep going back to that well over and over. Instead, they went to Thick as a Brick and then to this completely different direction. I've always thought that A Passion Play was heavily influenced by Frank Zappa and Gentle Giant. By the way, I completely agree with Doug's order of those four albums. But truth be told I only listen to Aqualung and TAAB with any regularity these days.
Old Rocker
2023-09-22 02:11:40 +0000 UTCIt's a good thought!
R. Douglas Helvering
2023-09-21 18:53:33 +0000 UTCYeah, that’s quite an album. Definitely their most prog. And, like most prog, it’s hard to get on a first listen. I think I was 12 when the album came out. I loved it, but I’m sure I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on lyrically. This, of course, was pre-internet. The only way to try to figure out what was going on was via interviews with the band or going it on your own. The thing that amazes me about the early ‘70s was that albums as complex and seemingly uncommercial as “Passion Play”, “Close To The Edge”, and “Brain Salad Surgery” could make it to the top of the charts without hit singles (“PP” and “Thick as a Brick” each had one 40-minute song!) or radio airplay. BTW, I think the reference to “There was a rush along the Fulham Road” is a comment on how the protagonist died (car accident or being hit by a car). So, here’s a theory – it was more of a near-death experience than an actual death. Being that the piece both begins and ends with “There was a rush along the Fulham Road”, perhaps he survives his near-death experience and winds up where he started - on the Fulham Road. Just a thought…
Martin Broten
2023-09-21 16:18:56 +0000 UTCThanks for finally getting to this album. Some of us have been waiting a while for this reaction. FYI, Stand Up and Benefit came before Aqualung and were more bluesy. Songs from the Wood and Heavy Horses came in 1977-1978 (after the others you've heard) and were more folky/pastoral in places.
BRIAN MILLER
2023-09-21 15:59:23 +0000 UTCThanks Bill!
R. Douglas Helvering
2023-09-21 15:05:09 +0000 UTCI've always loved the pun on: you "can, guru" / "kangaroo"
BRIAN MILLER
2023-09-21 13:44:24 +0000 UTCAbout other Jethro Tull albums: Heavy Horses isn’t mentioned yet, but should be high on your list. It’s just magnificent, a tribute to rural Britain by the heavy horse theme.
Frits van Voorst
2023-09-21 13:26:39 +0000 UTCThank you, Doug! I love this album, but I view it as kind of an outlier in the Tull canon. He wanted to do another album-length composition, but wanted it to be nothing like "Thick as a Brick". And with the exception of a brief musical quote, he certainly accomplished that. My best advice is to sit and listen to it a few times; it gets better with repeated hearings. On my first-release LP (and probably on your copy, too), "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" comes hard on the heels of the music at the end of Side 1. I remember that the first time I listened to the record, I practically jumped out of my seat when Jeffrey shouted out the beginning of the "Intermezzo." So, I was a little disappointed when that didn't happen on your first listen. Even with your extensive studying up on the album (one of the things I love about your videos, by the way), I think that it might have caught you a little by surprise when it happened, but that was not to be. (Sure would have been fun to see you do one of your characteristic double-takes!) But it's full of the same sort of word-play that is all over the lyrics. You pointing out the bit about "the soles that tread the knife-edge" is one example, in an album about a "soul." Extremely enjoyable EPL! You're the best, Doug!
Bill Brinkmoeller
2023-09-21 08:30:11 +0000 UTCI never thought of that!
Richard Moore
2023-09-21 03:15:06 +0000 UTCBut you haven't yet explored the bomb that explodes in the dressing room - blowing the windows from their frames - and making the prompter in the corner sorry that he came... "No Rehearsal" was included in the live sets of Passion Play I believe.
TreeN6TR
2023-09-21 03:05:10 +0000 UTCThankx for putting in all that work you did......but this album is not one I cared for that much....They are very good at their craft...just not for me.....dk
Don K Mal 1
2023-09-21 01:35:40 +0000 UTCThanks for helping explain the storyline. I'm wondering if Ian Anderson (being a Brit) was aware of C. S. Lewis's "Great Divorce," in which a dead soul gets on a "bus" to Heaven, but decides to exit (willingly; he's not content seeing former enemies from his past who have been forgiven by God).
Allen
2023-09-21 01:23:09 +0000 UTC"He gets to go back? To Earth? Maybe his angel guide was Shirley McClain". I just about fell out of my chair LOL. Fantastic analysis as always. I always love how you get a basic story line in there to help me understand the music better, even though I've listened to A Passion Play about 100 times since I was in my late teens (a little over 30 years since then!). One of my absolute favorite prog albums, and now even more so. What do I think of it? I think it's Ian's perspective on the overly fanciful notions of heaven/hell/God/Satan that the church and/or some Christians have, which often results in judgmental and inane attitudes towards other people who don't believe what they do. So it's important for people to be open-minded to other points of view and not to lean too heavily towards one side or the other, but that can be a tough thing (like those tough soles that tread the knife's edge). It's all too easy to fall off. It takes real courage to truly live.
Ford H. Cotton III
2023-09-21 01:19:46 +0000 UTCYou definitely need to listen to the Chateau D’Isaster Tapes, or the album they scrapped. Some portions wound up in A Passion Play, including The Hare…, and two other tracks showed up on later albums. Three of the tracks were performed live for a tour, though they never made it to an album (until compilations later on). But it’s really very, very different than A Passion Play, and would have made a very strong album. It shows how high Ian’s standards were.
Randy Hammill
2023-09-21 00:46:17 +0000 UTCMy opinion on the album: it needs time to be digested. Thick as a Brick is more enjoyable from the first listen. This one I think needs more listenings (and probably more than five). The lyrics are really really great (to me, at least, but I'm probably biased, since english is not my mother language). A nice touch, just to quote one example, is the "well" used as the end of a line and the opening of the next: Where no-one has nothing and nothing is well meaning fool, pick up thy bed and rise up from your gloom smiling. The music too, but I remember that the first n times I listened to it, it felt a little too much. It gets better when you start to anticipate what comes next (ok, it is fairly obvious, probably), but just because it keeps changing it stays really fresh even after a great number of re-listenings. The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles was also the best part for me on my first listening. The rest of the album was like the tortoise in the famous race. :) Well, above all, thank you Doug for this ride and for sharing your first time listening to it!
Aarf
2023-09-21 00:32:31 +0000 UTCFigured I'd "explain the joke" given your quizzical look at the "escorted by a band of gentlemen in leather bound." It's the Bible. So either he's talking about literally seeing Biblical figures in the afterlife or following moral instruction from a religious background. (I think it's the latter, which is a fun metaphor)
Blinky
2023-09-21 00:15:55 +0000 UTCYay! Can't wait to watch this.
Richard Moore
2023-09-21 00:09:59 +0000 UTCwooooo!
Jason Stockwell
2023-09-20 23:30:58 +0000 UTC
