Customer Reviews

A Passion Play

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

While so many of the rock bands of the seventies were "just a little touch of make up, just a little touch of bull, just a three chord trick embedded in your platform soul" (as Ian Anderson put it on "Crazed Institution") Tull were doing things that were in another space and time. And while not everything worked, they were never dull. A Passion Play has stood the test of time. Like a great piece of art, you can return to it endless times and discover something new. It is all at once pathetically shallow and profoundly deep, toe tappingly musical and irritatingly dischordant, it threatens to soar into brilliance, only to dwindle into nothingness, it is beautiful and clumsy, elegant and gawkish. It is music with a sense of humour. Like the comedy masters of the time who would never advertise a punch line, Tull keep you guessing. You never get what you expect. After all, familiarity breeds contempt.
A classic. Five stars.

Actually 4 1/2 stars . A Passion Play is a bit more melodic than Thick As A Brick .There is less of Martin Barres guitar and more of John Evans synth . The themes of the album are quite similar to Thick ' ... one wonders if Gerald Bostock had a hand in penning the lyrics , although The Hare Who Lost His Spec-a-ticles would suggest otherwise . I've heard a lot of people mentioning the fact that Jethro Tull should be in The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame . Its albums like Passion Play that will probably keep them out . All of rocks royalty from the Stones to the Clash To Zepp to Aerosmith couldnt , in their wildest dreams come up with something as imaginative as Passion Play . And while these and future hall of famers like Nirvana and Metallica are at the podium having thier butts kissed by the industry and thier peers ...I'll be sittin at home grinning over the fact that Tull is not a part of this nonsense .

Well let me start by saying that if you're sick of the music that's popular, uninspired, predictable, overplayed, and safely within the skill level of any old musician, then A Passion Play is your cure! It is the opposite of all these things. On the other hand, if you are perfectly happy just hearing "Honky Tonk Women" 5 times a day on the radio then stay AWAY from A Passion Play.
As a continuation of their parody of concept albums, Ian A. and Co. created this piece with the obvious intent of challenging themselves and their listeners to the utmost extent. It is brilliant and ridiculous, triumphant and melancholy, satisfying and disappointing. The music will lead up to what you hope will be a thrilling climax, and then completely die. It is easily one of the most densely inaccessible albums ever recorded. However, it is also ingenious. Another reviewer was right in saying that basically all the other rock & roll innovators combined could never have concocted such a ludicrously awesome creative masterpiece as this. The playing here is completely off the hook; the best you'll ever hear on a rock album, especially considering the extreme difficulty of the music. The lineup of Anderson, Barre, Hammond, Evans, and Barlow was, in my opinion, the best in Tull history. Ian's singing is so rich and full that his vocals on earlier albums just seem thin and tinny in comparison. The saxes and tastefully utilized synths are a nice addition, giving it a very distinctly different flavor from Thick as a Brick. In fact, I would say that the segment subtitled "The Overseer Overture" contains one of the saxophone's defining moments in rock music (not to mention that's the best part of the album too).
You won't find a lot of long instrumental solos here, as one might expect from more quintessential prog like ELP's Tarkus. It's all very tight and well thought-out. There are virtually none of the trippy, boring organ solos and white noise stuff often found in prog, which is a testament to Ian's strict no-drugs policy with band members. The lyrics are just nuts. Don't even try to make sense of them on the first time listening. I've listened to it like 20 times and I'd still be in the dark if not for the helpful online forums dedicated to deciphering its meaning.
I also find APP to be very funny. The music sounds like it would be perfectly at home during some kind of deranged circus act, and the lyrics contain endless oddities and wordplays. Everyone complains about the pointlessness of Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond's The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles. It's just a bit of fun, really, and it is pretty funny in a Monty Python sort of way. All in all, I'd say that this should not be your first Tull album, but fans should have it. Just remember: if you don't end up liking it at first, don't write it off as [...]. Give it some time and you may just find it to be a very rewarding piece of music after all.

THIS IS A VERY NICE ALBUM WITH SOME GREAT PARTS TO IT. I KNOCK IT DOWN A STAR FOR "THE STORY OF THE HARE WHO LOST HIS SPECTACLES".

This is Jethro Tull's sixth album. It came right after Thick As A Brick. It is right around 45 minutes long.

There have been many issues of this album on CD. They have had varying sound quality. None of them was poor, but some have very good sound quality. The remastered version contains an enhanced feature: the video of the Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles that was originally on the 25th anniversary VHS tape.

Like Thick As A Brick, A Passion Play is one long piece (over 44 minutes long). There are 16 parts to the work, but there are no gaps or any silence between parts. On the original LP, there was a change in the density of the grooves so you could figure out where to drop the needle if you wanted to play a certain section.

Most versions of the CD have the two LP sides broken out as two tracks. Although the version I have just has it as one long track. The Gold version of the CD has each of the 16 parts indexed so you can jump to the different parts. I prefer being able to access the tracks, especially to skip through The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectactles.

ENOUGH OF THE LOGISTICS. HOW IS THE MUSIC?

This is a totally different sound for Jethro Tull. It is a little more jazz oriented, kind of hard rock jazz. There is heavy emphasis on saxophones and synthesizers. It sounded even better when they played it live.

There are some great passages of both songs and music. These are interspersed with sections that are OK, but are there mainly to keep the story going. I have just listened to some epic songs from Transatlantic (one of the new generation of progressive rock bands) and they don't come close to the quality of A Passion Play.

The only real downside is the Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles. This is a stupid, pointless talking section that totally disrupts the flow of the music. It is right in the middle of the best part of the album.

What's worse is that there is no easy way to skip through the Hare story, unless you have the gold version of the CD. On my copy, with just one long track, you have to sit there with your finger on the fast forward button. On most CD's it comes at the end of the first track and continues to the beginning of the second track. If it were at the end of the first track, you could at least hit the skip button.

When I saw them on the War Child tour, they started into The Story Of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles, and then said they were only kidding. That got the biggest cheer of the night.

It was years ago but Ian Anderson said that this was his favorite Tull album. Need I say more, Tullsters? It is my favorite as well. I saw the complete performance of this piece of genius at the L.A. Forum in July of 1973. J.T. played the entire album beginning to end and in the middle "intermission" section played the movie "The Hare...." great show. After playing Passion Play for 45 minutes and receiving a roaring ovation, Ian said "Thanks so much, I thank you, and now for our second number"....and then launched into Thick as a Brick, the entire album as well. Back to back 40 minute-plus pieces of music to open a concert. That doesn't happen very often.....encore was Cross-Eyed Mary, Aqualung and a very long Wind Up, which included Ian leaving the stage for a well-deserved break and Martin Barre ripping off power chords and jamming with the band for a good 6 to 7 minutes. This jam was amazing and parts of it ended up on Minstrel in the Gallery (especially on the middle section of the title cut). All of that Tull magic played for hours. Steeleye Span was the opening act, excellent set. Passion Play is so complex and wonderful. For a brief period of time, Ian and Co. proved that they could more than hang with the prog heavyweights of the day. This was sadly their last "prog concept" album. I wish they would have continued in this vein for a few more releases considering how great they were at doing these albums. Buy this today and wear it out....."we sleep by the ever-bright hole in the door, eat in the corner, talk to the floor"......

No-one likes this album: they either love it or they hate it. It polarises people.

Upon first listening to A Passion Play I was quite disappointed, especially when compared with Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull's previous concept album. 'Why did I buy this junk?' I thought. My second listen felt a little better. By the third listen I was addicted.

It's fairly similar in structure to Thick As A Brick, though much darker in feeling. Brilliant chord progression and licks. I love the little intermission where "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" is told, backed with amazingly suitable music and other effects.

I absolutely love this album. It's a very close second to Thick As A Brick for me.

Lucas Biddle, above, said it all.

People either love or hate this album. I'm in my mid-30s, so I grew up in the 80s, when the only music with any real depth that was accessible on the radio was heavy metal like Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath/Dio. But this makes that stuff look like children's music.

Anyway, I have some friends in their mid-20s who think they have depth when it comes to music. They aren't far wrong- Coheed and Cambria and the other kinds of stuff they listen to isn't bad at all, and some of it has some real depth, but sorry, nothing compares to JT at the height of their musical powers- except perhaps ELP (the dove, bss, tarkus) or KC (red, larks, Islands or court of) of course. Anyway, I played Aqualung for them, and they said "that stinks, Courtney".
Why is it that when people actually HATE something, it's almost *almways* because they don't understand it. This album has taken a lot of flak. Now, I think anyone who's reading this review will agree that my 20-year old friends said that about Aqualung for one reason only: They couldn't get their minds around it- ie, they don't understand Aqualung, it didn't fit with the little model in their minds of what rock music "should" sound like.
So it is with APP. There are Jethro Tull fans who will slam this album the same way my ignorant friends slammed Aqualung, and with even greater passion in their revulsion. Why is that? It doesnt fit with thier little pre-concieved model of what Jethro Tull "Should" sound like. It breaks the barriers, shatters myths and preconceptions.

If you will look up the history of all of the greatest works of art that were considered ground-breaking, without variance they all have one thing in common: they were despised by their contemporaries, with a passion.

This album is like that. One day, mark my words, we will probably be long dead, but one day, if Rock every becomes a fully-fledged classical reperatoire like jazz and classical, someone will look back and understand what this album was about, and it will be studied the way Bach and Rameu and Mozart are studied now.
One other reason this album is so hated: it dares trod on the feet of jazz and classical, without being either. Society likes homogeneity and for things to be easily classified, tagged, and easily filed away, so we can make judgements on it without ever having to actually listen to it. If Metallica did a country song, could you imagine how angry thier narrow-minded fans and corporate backers would be? This is the same reason interracial couples were forbidden in society for a long time.

Anyway, as their opinions on Aqualung are so unevolved, I wonder what my narrowminded friends would say if they ever heard THIS album? It would probably turn their brains to slush and cause blood to flow out of their ears if they ever actually listened enough to begin to get an inkling of what it is about.

Courtney

As a Tull fan since my schooldays (first getting into Thick As A Brick when I was around 13), I can never decide which is my favourite album of theirs. It's usually the one I'm listening to at the time (with the exception of the bland disposable syntho-pap of Under Wraps). The same rule holds good for A Passion Play ....... but only just. Whilst superficially similar to TAAB, and even half-reprising a couple of the themes of that masterpiece, APP is certainly not an easy album to get into.

I recently bought the enhanced CD, as my old vinyl copy had become so scratchy as to be almost unplayable. The clarity of sound, the bonus video of the Hare Who Lost his Spectacles and the sumptuous packaging, containing some quite illuminating notes penned recently by Ian Anderson, were absolutely first class.

On my long drive into work each day, I've been playing the CD several times (yes, even the Hare bit!). Last night I woke up with the music so stuck in my head that I couldn't sleep for hours. Yes! A quarter of a century on, I had got into APP all over again! Never mind the somewhat pretentious concept and the downright morbid motif, just listen to the virtuoso performance as themes merge and intertwine in magical fashion. Heavy, almost Black Sabbath-like guitar assaults you from the left, swirling flute and sax from the right, atmospheric keyboard sounds and pounding, mesmeric drums punctuate everything, whilst Ian Anderson's vocals have rarely conveyed such passion.

For a pleasant chill-out session I would certainly plump for almost any other Tull album (notably Songs From the Wood, TAAB or Heavy Horses), but for a profoundly moving and ultimately highly satisfying musical appreciation, there is little to compare with A Passion Play.

I couldn't quite bring myself to award the maximum 5 stars, simply because the intensity of this piece precludes too frequent listening, and the whimsical humour of "Hare" grates after a while (the CD does not permit the listener to skip that track). However this much-maligned album remains an essential purchase for anyone interested in this most cerebral of classic Brit rockers.

Jeez, how do you tackle a 500 pound gorilla? Very carefully, with eyes (yea, the third one too) and ears wide open! This gorilla has an eye-patch, wears a tutu and wants to discuss Voltaire, Nietzsche and Kant (with a nice bottle of scotch and a cigar). He's an impressive beast, but has a scary asymmetry and might lull you into a menacing corner of Tulldom that might jade one forever. I have always been pretty content with the tribe of plain old monkeys (of the usual TULL songs). The times I CRANK IT UP and play guitar, bass or drums to it, the energy of the album bowls me over and it can do no wrong. It's exciting steppin' out with the gorillas. This could almost be described as the "musician's album" of the line-up - musicians will certainly want to study the great ideas explored here. There are brilliant and powerful passages throughout that equal Thick easily, but somehow (at other times) it can seem kind of flat in a melodic/harmonic sense, I guess gorillas don't sing quite as sweetly. I consider myself to be a prog old-timer and have explored the genre substantially, and this is one of the masterpieces for sure (listening to the first few minutes could tell you that), but it has a strange brew of ideas that sometimes don't gel totally. I'll admit that I've always found the Hare story to be a bit of an intrusion and too long...although somewhat charming in its own right (I have kids - they should have made a children's prog album!). The storyline has never taken my mind's eye to the great song-writing landscapes of many other great TULL songs (that's the tutu on the gorilla). My weakness for this album is all about powerful, and I mean POWERFUL playing of this great line-up of TULL. Man, are they smokin' in spots (eye-patch)!

This is certainly a treasured piece of the intricate TULL puzzle...figure it out if you can (Kant and Nietzsche are puzzling as well). Otherwise, just bang your drums or hammer your guitar until your tendons snap. Nice work-out tape! The real BENEFIT of being a TULL fan is the incredible diversity and uniqueness of each album. They are all great in their own way. In this tribe, gorillas and the more diminutive breeds live in musical harmony. Thank you TULL for adding so much to the musical fabric (and rockin' my obviously devolved world - us neanderTULLs can't get enough). Go buy if you like a King Kong sized challenge - I do (booklet includes lyrics great track notes/pictures, comments by IA, etc. - about 45 minutes of high-flyin'TULL)!

this record is probably the most progressive
than all of tulls music,next to thick as a brick
this music sounds great remastered,even though every
tull record is progressive,these two really stand out
for me as the greatest master pieces from tull,if you
are a tull freak like me,you will go out and buy these
cds,you will not go wrong.