Back to "Thick as a brick"

Posted by Shuggie on December 27, 2001

In Reply to: Back to "Thick as a brick" posted by Sylvie Tougas on December 27, 2001

: This as a reply to a topic discussed a year ago!
: As a french-speaking fan of Jethro Tull since their beginnings, my lyrics interpretation is necessarily blended with my french consciousness. But I think it allows sometimes to avoid being caught in one own's langage structure! So I developed my own interpretation of the title 'Thick as a brick' for this album of unsurpassed genius. From the start, it made me think of Baudelaire magnificent poem 'L'albatros', the king bird of the skies, but crippled by his own majestic wings when caught on the ground. It inspired me the thought of the eternal duel between strenght and sensibility, body and soul, dreams and reality.
: A duality leaving some beings -- artists poets and thinkers, guided by soul, vision and inspiration -- with no real power to act upon reality, while the concrete and solid world is ruled by dumb, short-sighted and greedy 'builders of a burning castle'. So maybe the thought in Anderson's mind was to claim this power for the artist and the strenght to fulfill and live it on a real level, driven by a conviction 'as thick as a brick'. I also read in the Webster an interesting meaning for 'thick' as 'a good-hearted person.': a brick made of gold so solid that no castle made of it can never be destroyed.
: 26 décembre 2001

The waccy baccy is still freely available in France then. Maybe in his use of the phrase 'thick as a brick' Anderson meant 'thick as a brick'?

Hugh Dunmar Braenin
Outer Myskull
Scotland