North American syndicated Rock radio show and website In The Studio with Redbeard: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands celebrates the 45th anniversary of Jethro Tull’s album Thick As A Brick with singer, songwriter and flautist Ian Anderson.

When more than one rock critic in 1971 declared that Jethro Tull’s international hit album Aqualung was a concept album, band leader and songwriter Ian Anderson, the 24 year old singer and famously one legged flute player of Jethro Tull set out to purposely confound those pundits with the band’s next album.

Unquestionably and uniquely in a category all its own, Jethro Tull’s 1972 epic Thick As A Brick is the only album in history to attain # 1 sales on Billboard containing only one song, albeit 43 minutes long!  For composer, singer, flautist Ian Anderson, Thick As A Brick’s ultimate irony here is that the album was conceived by Anderson as a total spoof of music critics purporting to ascribe imaginary meaning to the band’s preceding Aqualung album as well as a send up of rock’s progressive darlings at the time. Ian Anderson explains in an interview with In The Studio host Redbeard.

"The saving grace of Thick As A Brick is that sense of humor stays sufficiently close to the surface that you don’t get pissed off at the album for being too arty, too clever, too bombastic or at least hopefully you don’t if you moderately like Jethro Tull. That sense of humor is always there.”  -  Ian Anderson

Stream the episode here .