A Passion Play

Artist: Jethro Tull
Label: Capitol
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording reissued
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 094632104021
EAN: 0094632104021
ASIN: B000007MVX

Release Date: 1999-09-14

A Passion Play

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Tracks:

A Passion Play Pt. 1
A Passion Play Pt. 2

Similar Items:

Thick As A Brick
Minstrel in the Gallery
Warchild
Songs from the Wood
Benefit

Amazon.com essential recording

Having previously challenged their audience with the lengthy opus Thick as a Brick, Jethro Tull went back to the concept-album for the even more difficult A Passion Play. The sometimes impenetrable work is part biblical allegory, part postmodern epic poem, and part psychedelic fairy tale. Such were the machinations of 1970s prog rock. The music mixes rock, English folk, and neoclassical material, an amalgamation that somehow hangs together. Reviled by critics when it was first released, A Passion Play has been redeemed over time thanks to the devotion of Tull fans, for whom it has always been an essential work. --Daniel Durchholz

Amazon.com

Following quickly on the heels of their career-defining Aqualung and Thick as a Brick, Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull demonstrated that their musical and thematic ambitions were as muscular as ever on 1973's Passion Play. But if Thick was a bit tongue in cheek about its conceptual conceits, Passion was a dizzying example of the prog-rock era's overweening musical aspirations at their zenith. Anderson now sums up it its obtuse, theater-as-metaphor libretto as "the theme of post-death meanderings in another world," but the sheer propulsive tension of Tull's sprawling musical interplay insures its folk-rooted baroque and roll a tight orbit around this mortal coil for nearly the album's entirety. This digitally remastered, enhanced CD edition features the complete video for the album's Lewis Carroll-esque interlude "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles," a theatrical program and typically self-effacing new introduction by Ian Anderson. --Jerry McCulley

Album Description

Digitally remastered reissue of 1973 album includes the enhanced bonus track 'The Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles' & theatre programme (enhanced section taken from the album 25 Years Of Jethro Tull Longform VHS video release). Includes liner notes written by Ian Anderson. Chrysalis. 2003.

Album Details

Remastered Reissue of their 1973 Classic. Includes Enhanced Bonus Video Track of "The Story of the Hare who Lost his Spectacles".

Customer Reviews:

terrible tull!.......2007-05-11

This is the most disjointed record I have ever heard. No cohesivness whatsoever. Just when you think It can't get any worse, they throw in a nursery ryme to make things really entertaining. A big Tull throwaway!

The most underappreciated album in Tull's career up to 1973.......2007-04-12

Jethro Tull's sixth studio album entitled A Passion Play was released in July of 1973.
1973 was seen as the peak of prog commercially as ELP released Brain Salad Surgery, Genesis gave us Selling England By the Pound, Yes gave us both the classic live Yessongs and the derided Tales From Topographic Oceans and Pink Floyd unleashed their arguable classic Dark Side of the Moon.
Also that year, Jethro Tull gave us A Passion Play. The album came to be by accident. You see, initially they were to record an album full of shorter songs at Chateau D'Herouville in France but the band was not happy with the sound so the aborted the sessions (three of those tracks would appear on 1974's War Child whilst the rest of the album would emerge as disc one of the rarities set Nightcap).
Then lead singer/songwriter/flute player Ian Anderson, guitarist Martin Barre, keyboard player John Evan, bass player Jeffrey Hammond and drummer Barriemore Barlow went to Morgan Studios in London to begin work on the proper follow-up to their 1972 album Thick As a Brick (which consisted of ONE 43 minue song which was split into two halves to accomodate the record format).
Like TAAB, A Passion Play was an album length song but unlike its predecessor was mainly a dark album with some humor (or as the British call it "light and shade") throughout.
The album was the jazziest in musical terms that Tull had recorded up until 1973. The piece was more of a jazzy hard rock than its predecessor. The album saw Ian Anderson utilize more saxophones to his arsenal of instruments (in addition to his usual flute and acoustic guitar and had used some saxophones on Thick as a Brick). Also, John Evan added more synthesizers to the mix. There are plenty of great musical and lyrical passages. The lyrics were some of the darkest Ian Anderson had written to date save for the song's middle section.
The section in particular is called The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles. This is hilarious, especially if you watch the accompanying film on the enhanced part of the CD and/or the concert footage. All I can think of when I hear this is a lost Looney Tunes cartoon with Monty Python-esque humor.
Then the rest of the piece is just as good, if not better, than the first half.
A Passion Play, like TAAB, hit #1 on the Billboard album chart. However, its success was short-lived as opposed to TAAB (and even Aqualung and successors War Child, Minstrel in the Gallery, Songs From the Wood and even Crest of a Knave) and was what led the way for punk to become the rage according to rock critics in the mid-1970s (although punk would not hit commercial popularity here in the US until the 1990s, long after critics raved about it).
In 2003, the album was re-released as a remastered CD and sounds excellent.
RECOMMENDED!

Seminal work.......2007-04-03

A Passion Play is , by far , the best album the Tull ever recorded , and would have been the best album I have listened to in my life , had it not been for the Soft machine's " Third" ( although sometimes I'm still in doubt which one is the best ) .
The complexity of rhythms and textures , the incredible technique of the band's members , the immaginative , yet somehow obscure lyrics , the wittiness and the elegance of the arrangements have indeed no parallel in the "rock" universe. Closer to Bach than rock , it may appear a bit difficult at first , but is allways rewarding and revealing with repeated listenings. I , at least , have been listening to it , continuously over the past 34 years and still am amazed at the genious of Ian Anderson. I even enjoy the "Story of the Hare who lost his spectacles" as the orchestration is clever and leans more to the classical side of things .

"Invest your life in the memory bank.".......2007-03-23

Jethro Tull decided to contiune the idea of the concept album by following 1972's Thick As A Brick with the equally complex A Passion Play. Released in the summer of 1973, it was just behind the arrival of Pink Floyd's classic Dark Side of the Moon LP, and was striving for the same kind of innovative style that most progressive rock groups were trying to experiment with at the time. Pink Floyd's release faired much better in the long run and turned out to be a much stronger album. A Passion Play rose to #1 on the album charts, but soon became forgotten. The album sort of strectched the imagination with thoughts of life, death, and the afterlife with some references to the second coming of God("Man of passion rise again we won't cross you out"). Much of the lyrics are of a poetic and biblical nature, while questioning the purpose of God's existence in one of the story's best parts as is posed, "Tell us is it you who are here for our good cheer, or are we here for the story, for the glory, for the gory satisfaction of telling you how absolutely awful you really are?" Where as Pink Floyd fused rock with the blues, Jethro Tull were likely attempting a softened jazz sound as they blended the harder progressive rock with the folk rock style they always played with from the early days. The musical tones and melodies change throughout the album, leaving the listener never knowing what to expect next. Ian Anderson's flute solos are as dynamic as ever and always helped to give Jethro Tull it's uniqueness. But is this also a confusing piece of rock history? Many listeners who first purchased this album back then felt so, and had many fans questioning at the time what the group was trying to accomplish with an album they found to be much weaker than Thick As A Brick. I'd say this is one of those releases were each person is going to form their own individual opinion. Consider this an album you will either love or hate because Jethro Tull made it clear that sometimes life has no in between.

Pleasant Romp Through Heaven @ Hell..Neither Am I Good Nor Bad.......2007-03-11

There comes a time when artistic favours are granted selling artists by their record companies and by fans who savor with patience the great expectations they anticipate by some of their musical heroes.
a Passion Play, an extremely sophisticated rock musical statement for it's day was one of those albums that critics despised but fans loved.
There is no excess as each note flows seamlessly into the next..taken as a whole, as intended to be, The Passion Play, coming after thick As A Brick Ian Anderson explains in this really great remaster was to be an "similarly upbeat concept album" that turned he explains into a "darker set of tunes".
The darkness fuses into lightness, as does lightness into dark throughout the CD,as the seriousness of the subject matter of repentance hearkens back to the unconscious fantasy world (see the attached video selection) meanderings as in the "story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" that then pushes forward into familiar Tull styles of jazzy soundscapes, brilliant accoustic sections of guitar and flute,as well as fierce (and to my ears) some of the most tuneful hard hitting music Tull recorded as evident as on the "Summoned by name I am/the overseer section on Part 2.
Intellectual musings aside, one is advised if interested to research for historical background purposes the original Passion Play and it's controveries that graced European playhouses at the time and for a more serious study look into the poetry of Goethe and Schiller as to their takes on the introvert and extrovert, the basic theme of The Passion Play and the reconciliation and balance of the two....anyway, this "Faustian" as ever Passion Play goes on and the steady mix of classical folk, gorgeous melody, fierce rock hooks makes this concept one song album, one eclectic piece of music that seams together into a whole quite nicely. A rare gem.

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