Aqualung (song)

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"Aqualung"

Song by Jethro Tull
from the album Aqualung
Released	March 19, 1971
Recorded	December 1970 - February 1971 at Island Studios, London
Genre	Progressive Rock
Length	6:31
Label	Reprise(original US) Chrysalis/Capitol (US re-issue)
Writer(s)	Ian Anderson/Jennie Anderson
Producer(s)	Ian Anderson and Terry Ellis
Aqualung track listing
None	"Aqualung" (1)	"Cross-Eyed Mary" (2)

"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. The song has a famous guitar riff replicated by many other bands at the beginning and later parts^{[citation needed]}. 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 little girls with bad intent".

The song is the title track from Jethro Tull's first U.S. Top 10 album, which reached #7 in June of 1971.^[1]

In an interview with Ian Anderson in the 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) were 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.
Steven Colbert said on The Colbert Report that he gets out of jury duty by dressing up as a wizard and demanding to be sworn in on a copy of Aqualung by Jethro Tull.
The song is used in an episode of King of the Hill