IF IT’S OUT THERE, IT’S IN HERE JETHRO TULL’S THICK AS A BRICK HITS 50

Released in 1972, Tull’s classic ‘spoof’ concept album is getting a birthday vinyl reissue, complete with its original, iconic packaging. Ian Anderson remembers it well.

This month, Intro was compiled by Robin Armstrong Chris Cope Jerry Ewing Hannah May Kilroy Dom Lawson Dannii Leivers Rhodri Marsden Matt Mills Grant Moon Natasha Scharf Phil Weller Rich Wilson

Brick layers! L-R: Jeffrey Hammond, Martin Barre, John Evan, Ian Anderson, Barrie ‘Barriemore’ Barlow.

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

Jethro Tull’s classic Thick As A Brick was released 50 years ago, on March 3, 1972. To commemorate this anniversary, Warner Music is reissuing the album on vinyl, complete with the original St Cleve Chronicle & Linwell Advertiser newspaper packaging (pictured right). While the record and its iconic cover are now part of prog lore, Ian Anderson recalls that, back in the day, the band’s label, Chrysalis, took some convincing about it.

“I think it scared the proverbial out of them,” he tells Prog, “because of the music, and the album cover that I came up. They weren’t exactly sure about the wisdom of it. Happily, it was proven to be instrumental in the success of the record. The presentation of the album in that form is fairly unique, to this day. John Lennon came out with an album right after it [Sometime In New York City] and the cover was the front page of The New York Times. But ours was far more elaborate – a16-page provincial newspaper, not just a single sleeve. I took it to a much higher level of absurdity.”

“The label weren’t exactly sure about the cover…”

The band’s fifth album and the follow-up to the hit Aqualung, Thick As A Brick saw Anderson and the band (comprising guitarist Martin Barre, keyboardist John Evan, bassist Jeffrey Hammond and then-new drummer Barrie ‘Barriemore’ Barlow) doubling down on the prevailing idea of the concept album.

“It was presented as bit of a spoof on the concept album genre,” says Anderson. “I remember vividly that it started off with me and a little acoustic guitar riff. I was finding something that melodically would fit over it, and out came the words, ‘I really don’t mind if you sit this one out’ [that became the album’s first line], which is about the most negative way of opening an entire album – to say to the audience, effectively, ‘Bugger off!’ That kind of amused me, so I expanded upon that notion to create something throwing down the gauntlet in terms of the listening experience.”

With those lyrics mischievously attributed to one Gerald Bostock – aprecocious and fictional eight-year-old schoolboy – Thick As A Brick topped the US album chart, went Top 5 in the UK, and became a mainstay in Tull’s catalogue. To cap it all, it was ranked fifth in Prog’s 2014 list of The 100 Greatest Prog Albums Of All Time.

The 50th anniversary vinyl features the remix that Steven Wilson created for its 40th anniversary reissue in 2012, but this time the vinyl has been cut at half speed for greater audio quality. Anderson recalls that Wilson began that remix by “taking the original stereo mix I did all those years ago and laying things out in pretty much the same way in terms of the stereo spread and the relative balance of the different instruments.

“Where the magic comes in is that, with the digital recording, you can keep the bits you want and you can simply remove all those periods of relative silence where there’s just hiss and hum. So you start off by creating the transparency to the music that perhaps wasn’t there originally, and you have the opportunity to create a little more sparkle in the digital world. It’s the same material as the 40th anniversary edition, but the difference the vinyl has been cut in half speed, which is a way of extending the audio fidelity of vinyl records. The album artwork and the album book are exactly as it was back in 1972. So it’s a true re-creation of the original artwork.”

The 40th anniversary CD/DVD Special Collector’s Edition of the album will be reissued on October 7, having been out of print for nearly a decade.

In other Tull news, Anderson tells Prog that the 40th anniversary reissue of 1982’s The Broadsword And The Beast – also remixed by Wilson – has been moved to next year. He also reveals that work is proceeding apace on the follow-up to the band’s latest album The Zealot Gene, which entered the UK Top 10 in February. “I’m halfway through the next one at the moment,” he says. “I have to deliver it by the end of October in order to have an April release in 2023.”

The 50th anniversary vinyl reissue of Thick As A Brick is available from July 29, see www.jethrotull.com for more. GRM

ELP FIRST SINGLES VINYL BOX UNVEILED

Due in August, the lavish Singles collection brings together the prog giants’ 7” releases.

Singles party: ELP.

BMG LICENCED/DAVID GAHR/GETTY IMAGES

Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s singles output will feature in a new deluxe, coloured vinyl box set out this summer.

Released through BMG Records on August 26, Singles is the first ever boxed collection of the trio’s singles, and includes remastered, two-sided 7” pressings of their 12 singles released between 1971 and 1992.

“This box set of singles is very important to the development of ELP,” says their surviving member, drummer Carl Palmer. “The music that you will hear opened the door to radio around the world, and then the musical concept of ELP was born.”

While they were renowned as an albums band, that radio coverage was crucial to ELP’s wider success. The original 1971 German pressing of Lucky Man is included (with its B-side Knife- Edge), and although that song didn’t chart in the UK the single did help raise their profile on US radio.

Fanfare For The Common Man (the 1977 Japanese pressing is in here, with B-side Brain Salad Surgery) was their biggest hit in the UK, peaking at No.2 and leading to their Top Of The Pops performance that June.

Singles goes through the 1970s up to ’78’s Canario (from the Love Beach album), then skips to 1992’s Black Moon and Affairs Of The Heart. All singles come with rare original picture sleeves and label artwork. The box also contains an extended booklet with a foreword from Palmer, detailed notes from Prog’s own Sid Smith, along with rare photos and companion artcards.

Full details and pre-orders at www.bit.ly/elpsingles. GRM

BANCO HEAD TO ORLANDO FOR THEIR 50TH BIRTHDAY!

The Italian band back with “ambitious” new concept album.

Italian prog veterans Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso will release their new album, Orlando: Le Forme dell’Amore (‘Orlando: The Form Of Love’), on September 23 via InsideOut. The LP comes three years after their long-awaited comeback album Nudo, and it’s their second full-length studio release since longtime frontman Francesco Di Giacomo died in 2014.