It’s hard to exaggerate just how big Jethro Tull were in America in 1974. They’d just come off the back of two Number One albums – Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play - and a stage show that milked their English eccentricity for all it was worth put them alongside The Who, ELP, Yes and the Moody Blues, behind the twin behemoths of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.
So nobody batted an eyelid when Ian Anderson announced that their next album would accompany a movie. A producer and director were already in place and the album was shaping up as a double. But the movie money moguls got cold feet over the storyline that revolved around the “afterlife” of a young girl killed in an accident. Delays ensued, the film was abandoned along with the plot, the songs were reconfigured and when War Child was released in October 1974 it was a single album. But it made Number 2 in the US so all was not lost.
