Thick As A Brick

Well now, Zoo Freaks, settle back and let the Zoo Crew spin this one for you. Thick As A Brick from Jethro Tull is the whole album wrapped up as one long continuous piece of music, nearly forty-five minutes of flute, guitar, and that unmistakable Ian Anderson delivery. It came out in 1972 as their fifth studio record, and it was meant as a bit of a send-up. After critics kept calling the previous album Aqualung a concept album, Anderson got mildly irritated and wryly amused. He figured if folks wanted a concept album, he would give them the mother of all concept albums. Half joke, half serious musical ambition, it poked fun at the pretentious side of progressive rock while still delivering intricate playing that stands up all these years later.

The lyrics get credited to a fictional eight-year-old boy named Gerald Bostock, a precocious schoolkid who wrote a long poem that got disqualified from a contest for being a touch too much. Anderson invented the whole tale, drawing a little from his own school days in the north of England where kids called each other thick as a brick if they were not the brightest. The phrase itself is just an old British way of saying someone is stubbornly dim. The album cover is a full fold-out newspaper called the St. Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser, packed with fake stories, ads, a crossword, and the write-up about little Gerald. Anderson has pointed out that putting that newspaper packaging together took longer than writing and recording the music. They rehearsed the whole thing in about ten days, Anderson showing up each midday with fresh sections he had written that morning, then went into the studio and laid it down fast. Some listeners took the Gerald story at face value and kept asking what became of the boy years later.

Anderson has talked in interviews about aiming for that Monty Python kind of British humor, spoofing the concept album idea without completely mocking the music. He said it was fifty percent a send-up of bands like Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and fifty percent a real effort to push the songwriting and arranging further. The piece has wild time changes and passages that jump from acoustic strumming to full band sections. A short radio edit around three minutes got played on stations, but the full version is the one that rewards sitting through both sides of the old vinyl. Live, the band would sometimes stretch sections or play the whole thing. Anderson has noted that the humor did not always land the same way overseas, yet audiences kept coming back. He has called it both bombastic on purpose and something he wrote quickly in a fast and furious stretch.

Looking back at how the artist got started takes us to Ian Anderson himself, the flute, the voice, and the driving force behind Jethro Tull. He was born in 1947 in Dunfermline, Scotland, the youngest of three brothers, with a Scottish father and English mother. The family moved to Blackpool in the north of England when he was about twelve. As a teenager he joined school bands, starting with a group called the Blades that played blues, soul, and dance tunes on the northern club circuit. He handled vocals, guitar, and harmonica. Later lineups became the John Evan Band, named after keyboard player John Evan, and they gigged around with mixed results. Anderson studied art for a bit at college but decided music was the path. He has said he gave up on electric guitar because he figured he would never match players like Eric Clapton, so he traded the guitar for a flute. At first he could not get a note out of it, then someone told him to blow across the hole instead of into it, and within a week he was working blues solos into the set. That standing-on-one-leg stance while playing became his trademark early on.

By late 1967 the northern band was falling apart. Anderson and bassist Glenn Cornick stayed in the Luton area near London and linked up with guitarist Mick Abrahams and drummer Clive Bunker from a local blues outfit called McGregor's Engine. They tried out different names for the new group almost every week because the early gigs were rough and they needed fresh billing to get rebooked. Their agent, a history student, suggested Jethro Tull after the eighteenth-century English agricultural pioneer who invented the seed drill. The name stuck the week they landed a Thursday night residency at the Marquee Club in London. The early sound was blues-based with jazz and folk touches, and Anderson’s flute set them apart right away. Their first album, This Was, came out in 1968, then Stand Up followed as they moved away from straight blues. Anderson has recalled packing light when he first headed south, carrying a flute, a harmonica, a tin whistle, and a Jack Kerouac book in a small suitcase, wearing a big overcoat his dad gave him. The band built from there into the progressive and folk-rock mix that carried them through decades of albums and tours.

That early drive to stand out and mix styles shows up in Thick As A Brick, where the satire sits right alongside the complex arrangements. Anderson has said the work drew on childhood memories and the absurdity of a kid spinning big ideas, balanced with real musical craft. The band kept touring and recording through lineup changes, but Anderson stayed the constant, still leading performances of the catalog. For more on the music and the story, check the official Jethro Tull website, which has the full discography including the Thick As A Brick pages. You can also follow along on their Facebook page, the Instagram account, and the X profile. Fans gather in groups such as the large Jethro Tull Facebook community to share stories and set lists. Keep listening here at THE ZOO, where the Zoo Crew keeps the freeform rock rolling for all you Zoo Freaks.