Aqualung (song)

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Jethro Tull's fourth album, Aqualung

"Aqualung" is a song by English progressive rock band Jethro Tull, featured as the first track on their 1971 album Aqualung, and written by the bands' frontman Ian Anderson and his then-wife Jennie Franks. The original recording runs for 6 minutes and 32 seconds. It has a famous guitar riff at the beginning and later parts. Like many of Jethro Tull's songs, "Aqualung" tells a story —in this case, the story of a homeless man. The opening lyrics are "Sitting on a park bench - eyeing up little girls with bad intent".

The song is Jethro Tull's first U.S. Top 10 success, hitting #7 in June of 1971. .^[1]

Ian Anderson's September 1999 Guitar World interview he says:

Aqualung wasn't a concept album, although a lot of people thought so. The idea came about from a photograph my wife at the time took of a tramp in London. I had feelings of guilt about the homeless, as well as fear and insecurity with people like that who seem a little scary. And I suppose all of that was combined with a slightly romanticized picture of the person who is homeless but yet a free spirit, who either won't or can't join in society's prescribed formats.

So from that photograph and those sentiments, I began writing the words to 'Aqualung.' I can remember sitting in a hotel room in L.A., working out the chord structure for the verses. It's quite a tortured tangle of chords, but it was meant to really drag you here and there and then set you down into the more gentle acoustic section of the song.^[2]

1 Trivia
2 Recorded appearances
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Trivia

The song (and Ian Anderson) was briefly parodied by Will Ferrell playing jazz flute in the comedy film Anchorman.
Aqualung is mentioned in the Jethro Tull song "Cross-Eyed Mary."
The up-tempo guitar solo, played by guitarist Martin Barre, ranked 46th in digitaldreamdoors.com's '100 Greatest Rock Guitar Solos' list. This means Aqualung's guitar solo is ranked higher than the solos in legendary rock songs Like a Hurricane by Neil Young and Child in Time by Deep Purple.