É ste es el cortometraje (producido por Jethro Tull) que el grupo integraba a sus presentaciones en vivo en la gira de A Passion Play (1973)
A continuación Ian Anderson explica cómo surgió este corto:
What happened with Passion Play when we came back to England was ... to quickly get something together, I had some sort of conception of a piece, and what the whole thing was about was the notion of what might happen to you when you die, and the idea that rather than just sort of be allotted a place in a notional heaven or hell one still had to make a choice, still had to work on towards other levels of post-death options, you know — you were still able to make choices and do one thing or the other in a post-death experience ... a bit sort of Buddhist in philosophy, I suppose. Anyway, that's what it was about, but deliberately couched in fairly abstract terms and a lot of verbal imagery that I wanted there because I didn't ... I wanted people to listen to it and form their own conclusions about what I was saying ... or what I might be saying.
It's ironic that the countries in which that album was most accepted are non-English speaking countries, and they like it not because they don't know what it was about, but because they've had to take that much more trouble to decipher the English, you know, to actually translate it, and having made that bit more effort they seem to have got more out of it, whereas a lot of English-speaking countries, particularly ... I'm thinking of America ... they tended to think, "Well, this is much too difficult for us. It's in the English language but we just don't really understand it, man," you know. When it came to staging the show, a great deal of care was taken over presentation.
On the record there was a piece of totally programmed synthesiser music which faded out one side and brought in the second side, and when it came to doing that live on stage it was a bit soft, just having a two-minute gap of totally electronic music which we can't play on stage, so we might use a pre-recorded tape or something, but we stand there like dummies while it plays: that's not very good. If we mime to it that's cheating, and if we try to play it live it'll be a disaster because it's impossible to play live. And yet we can't just leave it out because then we wouldn't be playing the 'whole thing' on stage, which we very much wanted to do.
So we came up with the idea of putting something in as a visual thing as an accompaniment to that synthesised piece of music and which would be an interesting little break in the middle of the show. And we decided to put it on film, which meant that we could all go off stage for a glass of beer and a cigarette while this thing showed.
So what we did was to make a film: we wrote a little thing around Jeffrey's 'Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles' and the synthesiser music which was front and back of 'The Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles', and filmed that at enormous expense. Even back then it was a lot of money: a day's shooting with three camera crew, 35 mm, the real thing; catering trucks, unions, 6 o'clock calls, mobile dressing rooms ... it was about £12,000 it cost for a one-day shoot.
The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles
This is the story of the hare who lost his spectacles.
Owl loved to rest quietly whilst no one was watching. / Sitting on a fence one day,
he was surprised when suddenly / a kangaroo ran close by. / Now this may not seem strange, / but when Owl overheard Kangaroo whisper to no one in particular, / "The hare has lost his spectacles," well, he began to wonder. / Presently, the moon appeared from behind a cloud / and there, lying on the grass was hare. / In the stream that flowed by the grass a newt. / And sitting astride a twig of a bush a bee.
Ostensibly motionless, the hare was trembling with excitement, / for without his spectacles he was completely helpless. / Where were his spectacles? Could someone have stolen them? / Had he mislaid them? What was he to do? / Bee wanted to help, and thinking he had the answer began: /"You probably ate them thinking they were a carrot." / "No!" interrupted Owl, who was wise. / "I have good eye-sight, insight, and foresight. / How could an intelligent hare make such a silly mistake?" / But all this time, Owl had been sitting on the fence, scowling! / Kangaroo were hopping mad at this sort of talk. / She thought herself far superior in intelligence to the others. / She was their leader, their guru. / She had the answer: / "Hare, you must go in search of the optician." / But then she realized that Hare was completely helpless without his spectacles. / And so, Kangaroo loudly proclaimed, "I can't send Hare in search of anything!" / "You can guru, you can!" shouted Newt. /"You can send him with Owl." / But Owl had gone to sleep. / Newt knew too much to be stopped by so small a problem / "You can take him in your pouch." / But alas, Hare was much too big to fit into Kangaroo's pouch. / All this time, it had been quite plain to hare that the others /knew nothing about spectacles.
[Sung:] As for all their tempting ideas, well Hare didn't care. / The lost spectacles were
his own affair. / And after all, Hare did have a spare a-pair. / A-pair.
Versión al español por Javier de Juan Hernández
Ésta es la Historia de la Liebre que perdió sus gafas.
El Búho quería descansar tranquilamente mientras nadie estaba mirando. / Un día que estaba sentado en una valla se sorprendió cuando repentinamente / una Canguro pasó por su lado. / Esto puede que ahora no resulte extraño, / pero cuando el Búho escuchó a la Canguro
susurrar canturreando a nadie en particular / "La Liebre ha perdido sus gafas", entonces empezó a especular. / En ese momento aparece la luna detrás de una nube / y ahí, tumbada en la hierba estaba la Liebre. / En el riachuelo que corría junto a la hierba - un Tritón. /
Y sentada a horcajadas en la rama de un arbusto - una Abeja.
Ostensiblemente inmóvil, la Liebre tiritaba con excitación, /porque sin sus gafas estaba completamente desvalida. / ¿Dónde estaban sus gafas? ¿Se las había robado alguien? / ¿Las había perdido? ¿Qué había hecho? / La Abeja quería ayudar, y pensando que tenía la respuesta empezó: / "Probablemente te las has comido pensando que eran una zanahoria". / !No!" interrumpió el Búho, que era sabio. / "Tengo buena vista, percepción y perspicacia. / ¿Cómo una Liebre inteligente puede cometer un error tan tonto?". / Durante todo este tiempo el Búho había estado sentado en la valla ¡enfadado! / La Canguro saltaba furiosa con toda esta cháchara. / Se veía a sí misma bastante superior en inteligencia a los demás. / Era su propia líder, su gurú. Tenía la respuesta: / "Liebre, tienes que ir en busca del oculista". / Pero entonces se dio cuenta que la Liebre estaba /completamente desamparada sin sus gafas. / Por lo tanto, la Canguro proclamó con arrogancia: / "¡No puedo mandar a la Liebre en busca de nada!". /"¡Tu puedes, gurú, tu puedes!", gritó el Tritón. / "Puedes mandarle con el Búho". / Pero el Búho se había ido a dormir. / El Tritón sabía demasiado para detenerse ante un problema tan pequeño - / "Puedes llevarla en tu bolsa". / Pero ¡ay! La Liebre era demasiado grande para meterla en la bolsa de la Canguro. / En todo éste tiempo a la Liebre le había quedado / claro que los demás no sabían nada de sus gafas.
Y a pesar de todas sus tentadoras ideas, la Liebre pasó de ellas. / Las gafas perdidas eran su problema. / Y después de todo, la Liebre tenía otras de repuesto. / Un-par.