1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 209. Jethro Tull – Aqualung (1971)

I do like a bit of the old Tull, another band that I saw in concert long ago, and I can confirm that Ian Anderson does indeed (or did, thirty years ago) play the flute while standing on one leg. Oddly, though, considering that many of their other albums were doing the rounds among my friends, I haven’t heard this one before. The tracks Aqualung and Locomotive Breath, yes, but not the album as a whole. 

Although they’re kind of folk-rock, Jethro Tull can be a lot harder and riff-based than, say, Fairport Convention. In fact the track Hymn 43 sounds almost like Black Sabbath in places, with its ominous sequence of chords providing the backdrop to the song. Other times they go much more acoustic overall, on this album usually in the shorter linking tracks. The defining characteristic of Tull has to be Anderson’s flute – I once saw a video of a classically trained flautist who explained how the (self-taught) Anderson does things that really ought to be utterly wrong and terrible technique, but if he didn’t he wouldn’t sound like he does (such as voicing his playing to get the distinctive “vrroooop!” sound). The text on the thumbnail for that video says something like "How does the flute survive this?"

The track Aqualung is a good example of how Anderson and Co. combine the two musical styles in a somewhat prog-rock fashion. It opens with hard riffs, the bit that I’ve always assumed is the cynical viewpoint that sees the homeless man “Aqualung” in the worst possible way, “eyeing little girls with bad intent”. The track then drops to the softer, more acoustic viewpoint that is more sympathetic to Aqualung, before picking up into a poppier version of itself, eventually returning to the hard rock cynical version. Unlike Yes, the changes between the “movements” feel more organic, or perhaps it’s because it’s a track I know very well. 

There are broad themes of homelessness and religion, Anderson’s lyrics are quite dense sometimes and it’d probably take a few listens to really lift out some of the better meanings, but meanwhile the tunes are good.