Jethro Tull
A Passion Play

Release Date: 1973 | Tracklist

“A Passion Play” is the sixth studio album of Jethro Tull and was released in 1973. The line up on the album is Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, John Evan, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond and Barriemore Barlow.


Pleased with the critical and commercial success of his previous megaproject, Ian tried to keep up the music of Jethro Tull’s next musical project even further than the previous one. Perhaps it will not be an exaggeration to call “A Passion Play” the most bombastic musical project of Jethro Tull ever. It took a lot of gall, ambition, and pretence, not to mention, of course, hard work and trained musicianship, to fulfil it. And yet, it was partially a failure in terms of popularity. Well, except one sense, of course, the album reached number one in the United States, just like its predecessor. The critics hated it. “A Passion Play” was the album that definitely defined Jethro Tull in the world. From now on, rock music listeners became segregated with their music. Some are fanatically dedicated, hardcore Jethro Tull followers and other refused to listen to the band any longer. From now on, except for a few surprisingly accessible albums, the Jethro Tull legacy is definitely an acquired taste, an acquired taste especially for all progressive rock fans.

“A Passion Play” is another conceptual album of Jethro Tull. The story is about a man’s spiritual journey in the afterlife and is narrated by their bass player, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond. It does represent a young man who’s died and gone to hell, and it supposedly deals with problems of life, death, regeneration, life in the other world. “A Passion Play” takes us away from the lovingly British interplay between the medieval and the modern on the previous album and plunges us into the esoteric deeps of Anderson’s “metaphysical vision”, a much more dark and complex vision, indeed.

Like its predecessor “Thick As A Brick”, “A Passion Play” has only one long track split across both sides on the vinyl LP version. However and unlike with “Thick As A Brick”, this album is interrupted on the end of the side one, by the reading of a strange but funny tale, “The Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles”. Unfortunately, the album had to be interrupted in the middle, as with “Thick As A Brick”. It was a shame, but as all we know, in those times of the vinyl music, the records were unable to store more information than 30 to 35 minutes, on each side of the disc.

“A Passion Play” like “Thick As A Brick”, is another very ambitious album. Lyrically, as it title suggests, it seems to be a truly passion played, depicting death, ascension to heaven and reincarnation. The lyrics are, as is to be expected of Anderson, impossible, excessive and theatrical, but surprisingly, rarely come across as being too pretentious. Musically, we can listen on it soft acoustic guitars, playful pianos, jovial keyboards, frantic flutes and the usual passionate vocal work by Anderson. Here we have some of the Jethro Tull’s greatest melodies ever made by them. Anderson and his band mates chosen to make the tone a bit more gloomy and dark, while still maintaining their typical light heartedness, but behind this, the song writing remains largely unchanged. The instrumentation is pretty diverse, of course, maybe even more diverse than on “Thick As A Brick”, with more reliance on synthesizers. Perhaps also Ian must have been listening to a lot of Van Der Graaf Generator’s albums lately, so he brought in some saxophones and played them himself. The use of the saxophones on the album, somehow replaced a bit the usual and traditional sound of his flute on the album. However and fortunately, the flute does stand out and remains great as always, though.

Finally, some words about “The Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles”. As I said before, the piece was broken up in the middle by the childish fairytale “The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles” in an attempt to make a more soft broken in the lengthy album storyline and an attempt to bring some humour to the album too. It’s a nice story narrated with a very funny English accent. Jeffrey’s pompous accent is absolutely wonderful, emphasizing each word on the story.


Conclusion: “A Passion Play” is a great album and remains as one of the best works from the band. It’s much darker than “Thick As A Brick” and is one of the most progressive albums of them. It’s, musically and lyrically one of the most eclectic albums that progressive rock has ever produced. However, it has been view as a shadow of “Thick As A Brick” and considered a clone of it. I completely disagree. It surely doesn’t deserve that. “A Passion Play” certainly deserves the properly attention of all fans of the progressive rock world by its own merits and not to be a copy of their previous album. This is a very mature album displaying some very delicious progressive moments. For those wanting to hear Jethro Tull at their most progressive, this is one of the best albums to get, a real must. “A Passion Play” is a chock full of excellent musicianship and in thirty years on, it still manages to intrigue delightfully, “artsy and pretentious”.


Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)

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