SprachlosClassic Progster 5/2012 hat geschrieben:After the release of Thick As A Brick 2, a follow up to the classic Tull album of the same name that reached the no. 1 spot of Billboard in 1972, Ian Anderson, singer and one-legged flute player of the British Art Rock band, has confirmed plans to give another album the same treatment. A Passion Play, originally released in 1973, gave the band another no. 1 in Billboard, although not to the same critical acclaim as its predecessor.
"Thick As A Brick 2 is all about the what-ifs and could-have-beens that might have happened in the life of a 10-year-old fake "Wunderkind", a question I was certain has occurred to all of us. But no one seems to wonder what happens to someone who comes back from afterlife. And that is exactly what happened to young Ronnie Pilgrim."
Pilgrim, who was supposedly killed during a freak accident on Fulham Road, when a lorry lost its load of birth control pills, experienced "upstairs and downstairs but without Hudson" as 64-year-old Anderson puts it. "I did hint at the time that he was coming back from the beyond but I put the plans of a follow up to rest when the critics shred the album to tiny little pieces of progressive tinsel."
Apparently bits and pieces of the second outing of A Passion Play appeared on the follow up album War Child released a year later in 1974. Anderson continues:
"Songs like Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of The New Day were originally intended for the second part of A Passion Play. Despite my disinclination to plan too far ahead I had the concept for A Passion Play II already in mind when we did the ill-fated recordings at the Chateau D’Herouville studios. I later released parts of it on the album Nightcap. The fans thought that the recordings comprised of the embryonic A Passion Play when it was in fact a lot of the embryonic A Passion Play II."
The new album is to be released in time for Christmas this year, says Anderson.
"I'm going to tour both Thick As A Brick and Thick As Brick 2 for the best part of spring and summer but after that the band and I will be back in the studio to commence recording. Most of the material is written and there might be a glimpse of it on the current tour."
KH
