For the Record: "A Passion Play"

Let’s start with a quick quiz. Read the following lines, excerpted from the speech of Satan to the damned in a famous work:

“Summoned by name—I am the overseer over you.

Given this command to watch o'er our miserable sphere.

Fallen from grace, called on to bring sun or rain.

Occasional corn from my oversight grew.

Fell with mine angels from a far better place,

offering services for the saving of face.”

Who wrote these lines?

a) John Milton

b) T. S. Eliot

c) William Shakespeare

d) Christopher Marlowe

There are arguments for each. The content is Marlovian, the tone is Miltonic, but the metrical irregularity suggests Eliot, and the closing couplet keeps Shakespeare in the game.

However, none of these is correct. This passage comes from Jethro Tull’s dark 1973 masterpiece, “A Passion Play,” the only album the band released during their heyday that was almost universally disliked. Astonishingly negative reviews were published upon its release: among titles like “Tull: Enough is Enough” (Chris Welch, “Melody Maker) and “Jethro: Nothing to Get Passionate About” (Steve Clarke, “New Musical Express”), one finds such comments as this: “In tone, it is the ultimate exaggeration of self-indulgent English whimsy, an intellectual tease inflated with portent but devoid of wonder—in its cumulative expression mean and trivial” (Stephen Holden, “Rolling Stone”). The dense lyrics were considered juvenile, pretentious, and unintelligible, and the music, while thought better than the lyrics, was compared unfavorably to that of prior albums. The one-song structure was thought to be fatiguing, and due to the perceived opacity of the lyrics, the instrumentals were considered to be completely divorced from the words. All in all, “A Passion Play” was regarded as a flop, an overproduced marker of the band’s decline into irrelevance.

“A Passion Play” is not perfect. Some sections are ridiculous without warrant—the bizarre intermission occupied by “The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles” comes especially to mind. However, it possesses a grandeur of scope and architecture unrivalled by any other rock album released by a major group in 1973—or any other rock album released at any time. The Who’s 1973 concept album “Quadrophenia,” while a magnificent work in its own way, deals only with the subjective struggles of an angsty teenager. “A Passion Play” deals with metaphysics. The comparison is Catullus to Lucretius, 2 Chainz to Kanye. The elevation of theme and treatment remains unapproached by any rock album ever composed.

From the beginning, the grave nature of “A Passion Play” is clear. The first side opens with indistinct whirring and saxophone strains, punctuated only by a heartbeat that slowly comes to a stop. There is the bang of a closing door—or coffin lid—and distantly, plaintively, frontman Ian Anderson’s cracked voice rises: “‘Do you still see me even here?’ / (The silver cord lies on the ground.) / ‘And so I'm dead,’ the young man said—over the hill (not a wish away).” With this, the audience is introduced to the album’s protagonist, a young Englishman named Ronnie Pilgrim, who has suddenly died and found himself in the afterlife. The heavily allusive nature of the text is evident from the second line—the “silver cord” is a reference to the thread of life cut by the classical Fates. The sophisticated narrative structure is also quickly demonstrated: while the whole song is ostensibly sung in the first person by Ronnie himself, he is giving his own words in the third person. Similarly, the numerous speeches given by other characters in the album are introduced without any sort of warning. As a result, the listener occasionally has difficulty determining when the speaker is a third party or Ronnie addressing himself, an interesting effect that emphasizes the self-inflicted, self-driven nature of his experiences in the underworld.

Much of the album’s greatness comes from this mature and sophisticated treatment of free will, which transcends the teenage-rebel ballads of contemporary bands. Ronnie’s progress through the underworld begins with his judgment at the hands of an unnamed chorus that shows him his life as a movie, numbering to him his earthly virtues, but more importantly, his failings: “Are we here / for the glory / for the story / for the gory satisfaction / of telling you how absolutely awful you really are.” This section is full of the wordplay for which Jethro Tull’s lyrics are famous. The chorus addresses Ronnie about his life’s “premiere”: “Lover of the black and white—it’s your first night,” alluding both to the black-and-white of the film and to Ronnie’s lack of moral sophistication. Throughout, responsibility for his deeds is placed squarely and unrelentingly on Ronnie’s shoulders. The viewing ends with the recurring lyrical and melodic motif that unifies the whole work: “There was / a rush along the Fulham Road. / There was / a hush in the Passion Play.” With this, the first side ends.

The theme of the sovereignty of the human will becomes even stronger on the second side. Despondent after judgment, Ronnie refuses to dwell in heaven, addressing the Deity: “God of Ages / Lord of Time—mine is the right to be wrong.” He then begins his descent with the chilling lines: “Show me a good man. / I’ll show you the door. / The last hymn is sung and the devil cries ‘more.’” Upon meeting Satan, who addresses him with the lines at the beginning of this article and many others in the same vein, Ronnie decides that he has made a terrible mistake and chooses to leave hell: “Flee the icy Lucifer. / Oh, he’s an awful fellow!” His rejection of both hell and heaven leads to the emotional heart of the album, Ronnie’s beautiful recognition of the ambiguous nature of man: “Here’s the everlasting rub: neither am I good nor bad. / I’d give up my halo for a horn and the horn for the hat I once had.” And, in the face of this heartbreaking ambiguity, Ronnie’s need for resolution is recognized and rewarded when a mysterious necromancer revives him, giving him a second chance at life: “Roll the stone away from the dark into ever-day. / There was a rush / along the Fulham Road / into the Ever-passion Play.” Ultimately, it is the strength of Ronnie’s will that results in his resurrection.

Contrary to the critics’ analysis of the instrumentals as something separate from the lyrics, the music in fact is written to accompany them perfectly, even at the level of the individual line. “Melodies decaying in sweet dissonance” is accompanied by a strong, waltz-like energy, fading into an unresolved, yearning cadence. Ronnie’s resurrection is heralded by a ragged, powerful electric blues guitar riff hearkening back to the earliest Tull albums. After the ending words, the record fades into the dissonant saxophone riffs heard distantly at the beginning as Ronnie returns to the chaos of life.

In short, the critics’ accusations fall flat. While the lyrics are a far cry from the simple-minded “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” of the early Beatles, they are far from impenetrable, and indeed, clearly convey a compelling story with serious existential overtones. The narrative is peppered with allusions to Milton, Dante, Virgil, and Epicurus, but the lack of a detailed knowledge of these authors does not impede understanding of the action. This is not the empty pretension of Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, but a saga for the common man, about an unremarkable person who has to come to terms with his place in a vast, powerful, and uncaring universe. The music is a perfectly tailored setting for the text—dark, dissonant, and ultimately triumphant. Far from being a work worthy of contempt, “A Passion Play” is a piece about the most vital things to humanity, and as a result, one most worthy of passion.