The album Ian Anderson considered a “Monty Python-esque parody”
Everyone hates doing self-reflection evaluations at work. The trouble is, when you’re a musician like Ian Anderson, you’re almost forced to complete them on a daily basis.
As the years go by, there are only so many dissections and post-mortems you can carry out on previous work until you’re just left with the pulverised carcass of what used to be one of your defining works, which must be pretty soul-destroying for anybody. As such, Anderson has probably made the right decision by consciously choosing not to take things too seriously.
This is not suggesting for a moment that he is not completely and utterly dedicated to his craft, but there is clearly a piece in the Jethro Tull frontman’s psyche that just wishes not everything in music had to be taken with such gravitas. It was the exact reason that, when given the opportunity with one specific album, he decided there was nothing better to be done than just take the piss.
Indeed, the idea was born out of Anderson’s outrage that people could view his music in an overly serious light, being angered that his band’s 1971 record Aqualung was somehow misconstrued as a concept album in the eyes of the critics. But rather than set off on a rampage of indignation, he cleverly decided to flip that notion on its head – and for his next project, gave the people exactly what they asked for.
That was Thick as a Brick, the concept album released the following year by Jethro Tull, which was never really meant to be a concept album. Instead, it was Anderson’s way of giving the middle finger to those who tried to figure his music into something that it never was. “Thick as a Brick is an amusing thing because it was a response to the critics who saw Aqualung as being some kind of concept album. So we, tongue-in-cheek and with good humour, delivered duly a concept album,” he explained in 1993.
But this was no case of settling on a theme and sticking with it. Instead, Anderson produced something which was “deliberately overblown” and an “almost Monty Python-esque parody of what a concept album is supposed to be,” and, without even knowing it at the time, set a precedent in its own way for what the future of rock could achieve.
Yet, often the idea of concept albums can be overly artistic and inaccessible to the masses, which was never something Anderson intended in his work. Even though, on the face of it, Thick as a Brick is one continuous piece of music based on an epic poem by a fictional eight-year-old genius, he said the record “was done with a sense of humour and warmth that I don’t think alienated the critics or the public. It kind of hit the spot.”
As such, with Thick as a Brick going on to be considered as an early cornerstone of progressive rock, it was far more than just a mockery of the naysayers. Indeed, by choosing to be bold, outlandish, and ultimately not too serious, Anderson took his career on to a whole new level of rock innovation – the irony being, of course, that he did so originally as a way of resetting the status quo.
