It was 1973. Ian Anderson was standing on the edge of a creative precipice, having just conquered the world with Thick as a Brick. Most bands would have played it safe. They didn't. Instead, they went to France, hated it, and came back with Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play album, a record so dense and bewildering that it nearly broke the band’s relationship with the music press forever.
Honestly, it’s a weird one.
You’ve got a 45-minute continuous suite of music, lyrics about the afterlife that require a degree in theology to untangle, and a bizarre interlude about a hare who lost his spectacles. It’s the ultimate "love it or hate it" prog-rock artifact. If you ask a casual listener, they might call it pretentious noise. Ask a die-hard Tull fan? They’ll tell you it’s a masterpiece that surpasses even their biggest hits.
The Chateau d'Isaster Tapes and the Birth of a Beast
The story doesn't start with a clean slate. To understand why Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play album sounds the way it does, you have to look at the mess that preceded it. The band moved to the Château d'Hérouville in France to record, mainly for tax reasons. It was a nightmare.
The studio was falling apart. Everyone got food poisoning. Technical glitches haunted the tapes. Eventually, Anderson scrapped nearly an entire album's worth of material—now famously known as the "Chateau d'Isaster Tapes"—and flew the band back to London.
They had almost no time left.
With a tour already booked and a deadline looming, Anderson wrote the entirety of A Passion Play in about ten days. Think about that. Most people can't decide what to have for lunch in ten days, but he mapped out a complex, multi-movement concept album about a man named Ronnie Pilgrim navigating the bureaucratic mess of the afterlife. It was frantic. It was desperate.
It shows in the music. The album is jagged. It’s syncopated in ways that feel like a musical panic attack. While Thick as a Brick had a certain rolling, folk-rock charm, this was something colder. More clinical. More challenging.
What’s Actually Happening in the Story?
A lot of people get lost in the weeds here. Basically, the album follows Ronnie Pilgrim through his funeral, a stint in a purgatorial waiting room, a trip to "The Midnight Show" (hell), and an eventual reincarnation.
It's cynical.
Anderson wasn't writing a "spiritual" album in the way Yes or Genesis might have. He was looking at death through the lens of a weary English satirist. He mocks the red tape of the afterlife. He pokes fun at the idea of eternal reward.
The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles
Then there’s the elephant in the room. Or rather, the hare.
Right in the middle of the record, the music stops. A narrator—bassist Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, doing a thick, stylized accent—tells a Lewis Carroll-style fable about a hare who loses his glasses. It’s backed by quirky, orchestral chamber music.
People hated it.
Even today, fans debate whether it ruins the flow or provides a necessary "breather" from the intensity of the main suite. It’s absurdism for the sake of absurdism. If you're looking for a deep, hidden meaning, you might be looking too hard. It’s a bit of British whimsy dropped into the center of a very dark, very complex record. Sometimes a hare is just a hare.
Musical Complexity and the Critics’ Wrath
Technically, the musicianship on Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play album is peak Tull. Barriemore Barlow’s drumming is frankly insane. He’s hitting accents that shouldn't exist. Martin Barre’s guitar work is sharper than ever, cutting through the thick layers of soprano saxophone and organ.
But the critics weren't having it.
Rolling Stone famously trashed it. The NME was brutal. There’s a long-standing myth that the band retired from touring because of the bad reviews, but that’s not quite true. They were exhausted, sure, and the press was becoming a circus, but the fans still showed up. The album actually hit number one on the Billboard charts in the US.
Think about that for a second.
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A 45-minute song about a dead guy and a hare with bad eyesight was the most popular record in America for a brief window in 1973. That’s a level of cultural dominance that prog-rock will never see again.
Why the 2014 Steven Wilson Remix Matters
If you’ve only ever heard the original vinyl or the early 80s CD transfers, you haven't really heard the album. It was originally mixed in a rush. The sound was thin. The layers were buried.
In 2014, Steven Wilson (of Porcupine Tree fame) stepped in to remix the whole thing. He’s the gold standard for this stuff.
Wilson’s mix breathed life into the low end. You can finally hear John Evan’s piano work clearly. The separation between the acoustic sections and the heavy, distorted sax riffs is startling. If you’re a skeptic, the Wilson remix is the version that might actually change your mind. It turns a "difficult" album into an immersive experience.
A Passion Play vs. Thick as a Brick
Most listeners compare these two, and it’s a fair fight. Thick as a Brick is the "fun" cousin. It’s got the big riffs, the catchy "really don't mind if you sit this one out" hook, and the parody newspaper.
A Passion Play is the brooding, introverted sibling. It’s less accessible but, in many ways, more rewarding.
- Structure: Brick flows like a river; Passion Play moves like a clockwork machine.
- Tone: Brick is a parody of a concept album; Passion Play is a sincere, albeit satirical, concept album.
- Difficulty: You can whistle parts of Brick. Good luck whistling Passion Play.
It’s the difference between a great novel and a complex piece of philosophy. Both have their place, but one requires a lot more coffee to get through.
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The Legacy of a Misunderstood Record
Does it hold up?
Honestly, yeah. In a world of three-minute pop songs designed for TikTok algorithms, Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play album feels like a monumental act of defiance. It’s music that demands you sit down and pay attention. You can’t put this on in the background while you’re doing dishes. It’ll confuse you. It’ll make you stop what you’re doing.
It remains a high-water mark for the "concept" era. It represents a time when a band could take a massive risk, alienate half their audience, and still come out on top. It’s weird, it’s jagged, and it’s occasionally annoying, but it is undeniably Jethro Tull at the height of their powers.
How to Properly Listen to the Album Today
If you’re diving in for the first time, or returning after years of avoiding it, don't just hit play on Spotify and walk away.
First, get your hands on the Steven Wilson "An Extended Performance" version. It includes the discarded French tracks, which are fascinating in their own right and provide context for the musical themes that survived into the final record.
Second, read the lyrics as you go. Anderson’s wordplay is dense. He uses "Old English" stylings and religious metaphors that are easy to miss if you're just listening to the rhythm.
Third, embrace the "Hare." Don't skip it. It’s part of the madness.
The best way to experience it is in one sitting, preferably with decent headphones. Let the transitions happen. Notice how the "Overseer" theme keeps coming back, shifting from a jaunty tune to a heavy, menacing stomp. By the time you reach the "Magus Perdé" section at the end, the payoff feels earned.
Jethro Tull never made another album quite like this. They pivoted toward the more folk-influenced Minstrel in the Gallery and later the "Folk Trio" of albums in the late 70s. A Passion Play stands alone as their most ambitious, most polarizing, and perhaps most impressive achievement.
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To get the most out of your listening experience, track down the 40th Anniversary "Chateau d’Isaster" box set. It’s the definitive way to hear the evolution from the failed French sessions to the final finished product. Read the extensive liner notes by Martin Webb; they clarify exactly what was going on in Ian Anderson’s head during that chaotic summer of '73. Finally, compare the original "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" film with the album audio—seeing the bizarre visual component helps the weirdness of the interlude finally click into place.