No wonder Time magazine put Ian Anderson on the cover of its issue covering The State of Pop. At the rate he and his band are going, it would be no surprise if he became the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for Epic Rock ’n’ Roll.
This time Ian Anderson and his band of lunatics, known collectively as Jethro Tull, have outdone themselves. After building a reputation as one of the finest live groups in the world, they’ve reached an equally high recording pinnacle with A Passion Play (Chrysalis).
What exactly it is that constitutes the subject matter of A Passion Play is best left up to the listener. While it’s apparently a real “Passion” play, you’d be hard-pressed to find authentic Pentecostals telling tales like “The Hare That Lost His Spectacles,” though Tull bassist Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond ably elucidates it with flair and cultivation.
A Passion Play is packaged in full theatrical greasepaint, with the current Anderson lady posing in her work clothes (she’s a ballerina) on the covers. Inside comes a tongue-in-cheek playbill complete with lyrics, none of which clears up the incomprehensibility surrounding the album.
Even if the lyrics don’t make linear sense, they fill the music with the right complementary images. And that’s no small task, considering that Anderson’s music on this album, more than on any other past Tull effort, is arranged to form a complete cycle unmatched in recent English music and never even attempted by an American band.
There are noticeable influences of early Frank Zappa, as well as instrumentation and reed charts the likes of which Tull has never before utilized. Despite the “serious” patina the work has, there’s also an overall feeling of positive fun and wit in the music.
With A Passion Play, Jethro Tull has finally put together the perfect full-scale rock concerto. The result is both a joy and an exhilaration.
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