track

Thick as a Brick - Edit #1; 2001 Remaster

2000Released
3:02

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Thick as a Brick - Edit #1; 2001 Remaster. By Songfacts®.

This is the only song on the album. Side 1 is "part 1," running 22:31, and Side 2 was "part 2," clocking in at 21:05. Each side is over 20 minutes long. A radio edit, running just 3:01, was sent to radio stations and is the version used on most compilation albums. Speaking with Songfacts in 2013, Ian Anderson explained: "Back in 1972, you had to be aware of what was then called AOR radio - it was a delicate beast. It could only in most cases manage to play music that was in bite size portions. So we had to think about giving the option to American radio playing little edited sections of 'Thick As A Brick,' so they didn't have to delicately drop the needle into the middle of a long track or lift it off after the three and a half minutes. So we did that specially for American radio. It was never released publicly in that form, but in limited editions which were sent out to radio stations in the US, which is the only place where the record got played, anyway. It never got played in the UK or anywhere in Europe, it was just not that kind of music."

"Thick as a brick" is a phrase meaning stubbornly dumb, as one's head is so thick that no new thoughts can enter it. The song starts with Ian Anderson expressing his low expectations for his target ("I may make you feel but I can't make you think") before singing about class structures, conformity, and the rigid moralistic beliefs of the establishment that perpetuates it. The song follows a young boy who sees two career paths: soldier and artist. He chooses the life of a soldier, just like his father. We see him assimilate into the society he once rebelled against, becoming just like his dad.

With minimal meddling, the album took only two weeks to record, and was written in less than a month. The packaging was designed to look like a small-town newspaper called the St. Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser. When opened, the album revealed 12 pages of newspaper stories, making innovative use of the square foot of sleeve space with a fold-out so the Chronicle measured 12"x16". Under the headline "Thick As A Brick," we learn that an 8-year-old boy genius named Gerald Bostock wrote the lyrics for a poetry competition, but was disqualified on moral grounds by the governing body, The Society for Literary Advancement and Gestation (SLAG). According to the story, Ian Anderson of the "Major Beat Group" Jethro Tull read the poem and wrote 45 minutes of "pop music" to accompany it. The newspaper also contained ads, recipes, TV listings, a crossword puzzle, and a review of the album. Jethro Tull wasn't the first to use the newspaper theme for album art: The Four Seasons 1969 album Genuine Imitation Life Gazette was made to look like a newspaper with lyrics to the songs appearing as stories. It even had a comics-section insert.

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Thick as a Brick - Edit #1; 2001 Remaster.
FKey
MajorMode
3/4Time Signature
168BPM

Album

The album Thick as a Brick - Edit #1; 2001 Remaster is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Thick as a Brick - Edit #1; 2001 Remaster.
Parlophone UK
© 2001 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company
℗ 2001 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company

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