Jethro Tull-War Child (1974)

After two conceptual works, Jethro Tull returns with this album to a traditional song format. The album contains very elaborate orchestral arrangements by David Palmer. The music is less dark than the one developed in "Thick as A Brick" or "A Passion Play." The album focuses on widespread criticism of the established society (eg, "Queen and Country", "Bungle in the Jungle", a religion (eg "Two Fingers") or critics (eg, "Only Solitaire").

Three songs, "Only Solitaire", "Bungle in the Jungle" and "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day", were discarded from the recording sessions between 1972-1973, for which it would be the continuation of the album "Thick As a Brick", "Chateau D'isaster" (aborted work), and were not used for the album "A Passion Play".

"Two Fingers" is a readjustment of "Lick Your Fingers Clean", a song that was initially discarded in the recording sessions of the Aqualung album.

"Warchild" is composed almost certainly before "A Passion Play." Some of the music is written in the second part of the “A Passion Play” tour. The album reached second place on the Billboard pop album sales list.

The original idea of "Warchild" was to accompany a film project and was planned as double lp. The script, vaguely reminds of "A Passion Play", tells the experiences of a girl in a tone of black comedy who loses her life in an accident of The project was aborted before leaving the continent, since no studio was found that wanted to produce the film and was converted into a single disc of 10 songs.

Some tracks intended to accompany the film, such as "Quartet" or "WarChild Waltz", were published much later, in the album "20 Years of Jethro Tull", in 1988, in other compilations, and, finally, in this remastering.

Anderson on this album releases his new image of Juglar "Minstrel", quite criticized, (since he himself represents a society in general corrupt in a sarcastic way, ridiculing Shakespeare's texts and things like that). The silver banner that he carries in his hand is inspired by a literary work.
It is in the "Warchild Tour" where the components of Jethro most disguised themselves; Anderson as a minstrel, Hammond with his black and white striped suit, Evan looked like an ice cream vendor with his white suit, Barlow dressed as a lightweight boxer, and Barre with his “floral” dress. A great album of songs, with great arrangements. Great interpretation.