Thick as a brick

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Thick as a brick
Studio album by Jethro Tull

Publication
(s)

April 1972

Label (s) Chrysalis Records

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

Progressive rock , concept album

Title (number)

2

running time

43:42

occupation
  • Ian Anderson - flute, vocals, acoustic guitar, violin, saxophone, trumpet
  • John Evan - piano, Hammond organ, harpsichord

production

Ian Anderson

chronology
Aqualung
(previous album)
Thick as a brick Living in the Past
(next album 1972)
A Passion Play
(studio album 1973)

Thick as a Brick is a 1972 concept album by the rock band Jethro Tull . It is Jethro Tull's first album to reach number 1 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. The album consists of a single piece that spans two LP pages. The composer and author is the front man and spiritus rector of the band Ian Anderson , and Gerald Bostock as his pseudonym.

The title (literally: "dense as a brick") is a slang expression and means " stupid as bean straw " or simply "stupid".

music

Thick as a Brick is assigned to progressive rock and, in addition to melodic hard rock, is heavily influenced by folk rock and jazz elements. It was one of the trends of the time. The Dutch band Ekseption since the late 1960s, but above all the hard rock band Deep Purple with compositions influenced by Jon Lord , brought out rock music with partly long passages of adapted baroque music in the early 1970s . The album is a concept album because of its continuous textual context . It shows a multiple change in pace and style.

text

The lyrics of the songs are about the world of a child whose worldview is twisted and sketchy due to educational requirements and so-called taboo topics, who has surely left the time of carefree play behind, between precocious and clueless, but is depressed by prepubescent expectations. It is certainly still a long way from adulthood, but it was pushed into “adult” patterns by the obtrusively ambitious and missionary English environment of the lower middle class.

According to the information on the record cover , all of the lyrics were written by eight-year-old school boy Gerald Bostock and sent to the band that made it into the album. As the son of good, church-loyal middle-class parents, the boy is said to have developed a talent for poetry. Therefore he is said to have got the nickname "Little Milton" after the poet John Milton . However, at the age of eight he said incomprehensible and allegedly offensive things and was put in the vicinity of rampaging and foul rock musicians of his time. He was admitted to a psychiatric clinic with the result that a prize for child poetry was given to a more adapted little girl.

However, this is a deliberately circulated legend . Gerald Bostock is a fictional character behind whom Ian Anderson hides, to which his friends at the time, bandmates and others may also have contributed. When the record was released in 1972, the musicians and their entourage spoke publicly about Gerald Bostock without explicitly revealing the (overt) legend. Even today, the name Bostock occasionally appears in interviews with Ian Anderson and is asked about him or talked about as if he were a real person.

Cover

Newspaper cover as a background image at a Jethro Tull concert in Wuppertal (2009)

The first edition of the album is packaged in a counterfeit newspaper. It is ostensibly a typical English small town newspaper of its time. The title: St. Cleve Chronicle & Linwell Advertiser . The main headline runs right below the header across the first page and is the album title. A red field in the page header indicates a Jethro Tull feature article on page 7. Otherwise there is no visible evidence of the record, and even the named ones fit into the appearance of a newspaper.

The “feature article” about Jethro Tull turns out to be a short article that one could easily overlook between a comic, horoscope and radio program. In terms of content, it should rather give the impression of a contribution from the pen of public relations departments, which have almost nothing to say and do this verbatim with useless details and names, including the coffee carrier. So it says about the album: " Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond played the bass guitar and spoke a few words " - like some others in the "St. Cleve Chronicle “- ambiguous humor close to real satire .

Much more important is the actual main article of the double page, which reproduces the entire text of the plate over half the page height. Under the heading “Thick as a Brick. By Gerald 'Little Milton' Bostock "it says in the introduction:" ... let's print here for everyone to read ... Gerald Bostock's controversial poem that sparked so much controversy (The Editor) ".

The album was later reissued several times in different covers. It also exists as a digitally edited CD and was available again in 1997 with a new edition of the original newspaper cover of the first LP edition.

The outside of the Chronicle has changed between different countries and for different editions (see links below).

reception

The album was generally very well received by audiences and critics. Allmusic awarded 4.5 out of 5 possible stars, Rolling Stone 5 out of 5 points.

The Billboard magazine wrote in 1972: "... Ian Anderson and his friends prepare a penchant for creation of albums, the joy, surprise and entertain through and through. Thick as a Brick is no exception ... "

In June 2015, the renowned trade journal Rolling Stone voted the album at number 7 of the 50 best progressive rock albums of all time .

Track list

Original edition

Page A:

Thick as a Brick, Part I  (22:37)

Side B:

Thick as a Brick, Part II  (21:04)

25th Anniversary Edition

  1. Thick as a Brick, Part I  (22:40)
  2. Thick as a Brick, Part II  (21:10)
  3. Thick as a Brick, Live  (11:50)
    • Live at Madison Square Garden 1978
  4. Interview with Jethro Tull  (16:30)
    • Ian Anderson, Martin Barre and Jeffrey Hammond

Thick as a Brick 2

In April 2012, 40 years after the first album, Ian Anderson released the concept album Thick as a Brick 2 , which takes up the story of Gerald Bostock again. Musically, it is based on Thick as a Brick and other early albums by Jethro Tull.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Thick as a Brick on the Billboard 200
  2. ^ Translation of Thick as a brick , accessed December 25, 2010
  3. a b Review on jethrotull.com , accessed November 9, 2015
  4. Review at Allmusic
  5. June 22, 1972 Review by Rolling Stone
  6. ... Ian Anderson & friends have a penchant for creating albums that delight, amaze and thoroughly entertain, Thick as a Brick being no exception ...
  7. Rating of Billboard on Superseventies
  8. ^ Reed Fischer: 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time - Jethro Tull, 'Thick as a Brick' (1972). In: Rolling Stone . Wenner Media, June 17, 2015, accessed on September 23, 2015 .