Jethro Tull’s admirers are wont to believe that the lads are an inventive, entertaining, eminently witty, oft profound rock group, with a propensity for satire matched only--if at all--by the Mothers of Invention.
While I prefer Tull’s verbal sallies (or sillies) to the L.A. Philistine’s, I can’t bring myself to entirely embrace Ian Anderson and his pack of Anglo-Philistines, either. Jethro Tull may think they are making art, which is something that isn’t of much use in the twentieth century in the first place, but it looks from here as though they are only making an ultra-sophisticated lounge music for the post-lunar space age.
Thick As A Brick is Tull’s most ambitious work to date. It is full of what Jethro is beloved for, lengthy, pseudo-weighty musical passages, much given over to soloing and other forms of British excess, and your typical comedic bit here and there.
Bonzo Dog they ain’t.
And, to be perfectly frank, Thick As A Brick bores me to tears. It doesn’t even have the calm chutzpah to offend. You can listen to it but it beyond me why anyone’d want to.
The targets are too easy. Organized religion was buffooned out of existence by Lenny Bruce’s “Religions, Inc.” sketch, and it is perhaps typical of Ian Anderson’s vaguely megalomaniac stance that he thinks himself capable of rendering the target worthy of the missile. Anderson’s ambition is finally so low that it is easy to find even the most pedestrian and finally, the most pleasant, portions of it offensive. Ian doesn’t really like his audience--veiled contempt was a phrase designed for persons of his demeanor--and the result is that his only ambition seems to be to please himself and some unnamed-but-obviously-elite clique of true artisans and the appreciators of same.
What you get, if you like it, is probably just what you paid for: some validation of your own sense of values, no matter how defensively couched. Some rationalization, even, of the idea that pop is made for low-level mentalities. Those are not necessarily bad things to get from a piece of what is, after all, pop itself--unquestionably, mass culture has earned its own disrespect. And, after all, Thick As A Brick’s posturings probably aren’t any worse that Lennon’s or McCartney’s, or, particularly, Frank Zappa’s.
Like the Mothers’, in fact, Jethro Tull’s stance is finally self-defeating, in all probability. As Zappa found out to his chagrin, when people you’ve trained to out-hip each other find out what’s up with YOU, then you’re positively outhipped.
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