Jethro Tull-Aqualung- Classic, Good, or????

[Progatron]

the album left overs such as Life is a long song, Up the pool, Dr bogenbroom, For later, Wondring again are just as great as Side 1 of the album.

These were not actually Aqualung leftovers, they were recorded after the fact, by the 'new' lineup (Barlow replacing Bunker), and released as an E.P. that acted as something of a bridge between Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. I *love* "Dr. Bogenbroom", that's a great track!

It does contain my fave Tull closing track in "Wind-Up". Although essentially a very basic and repetitive hard-rock tune, I'm still impressed by the atmosphere of sheer skinless bluntness in the lyrics and music both.

Love the song also... I particularly like after it switches from the quiet intro to the rocking section, where Ian repeats the opening lines. For some reason, I'm always a sucker for lyrics that repeat, but that are sung in a different manner, and this is a prime example of that.

[the winter tree]

STONE COLD CLASSIC.

[grego]

STONE COLD CLASSIC.

QFT

[Vic2012]

My favorite track is "Cross Eyed Mary." Which should be no surprise. .....

[Trane]

In my opinion it's in my top five but it's not a Tull album i play very often,and as much as i enjoy the rock songs on the album,i actually prefer the acoustic songs like Cheap Day Return,and Wondering Aloud ,though I have to admit My God is superb!

Definitely one of my top 5 Tull (and even top three, after Stand UP & TAAB), I adore the A-side (Mother Goose is so much fun, despite a big glitch halfway through), and the flipside is excellent, though ending the album with Wind Up was not their best idea

Overexposed. But very good.

Fixed that for you

Never liked it very much and still don't. And this is spoken as a big fan of early Tull. It's the only one from the run from This Was to A Passion Play I don't own.

YMMV.

My e-mail name is aquageezer. Is it possible that I'm somehow associated with the song, if not the album?

eyeing all girls (not just the little ones) with bad intent, Steve??

Cross-eyed Mary probably had many rock fansdaydreaming.

=====================

In terms of Anderson finding his lyrics excellence and pertinence, I'd say that Aqualung was the first step (he found perfection with TAAB) and went overboard with APP (especially with that dumb Python-like Hare piece)

[JJ88]

I've always struggled with 'A Passion Play' as well- I appreciate what Ian Anderson was trying to do and you can't fault the ambition, but it badly over-reaches IMHO. I'm still most fond of that 1968-72 run from them. I also really enjoy 'Songs From The Wood' (a return to more dynamic songcraft) and 'Roots To Branches' is a remarkably strong album for a late-career release.

I like the fact that the remixed 'Aqualung' added those five EP tracks. Indeed they were one progressive band who placed a lot of importance on singles at the time.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Jerry Sinfield?

[grego]

Perfect album. Still their calling card. Remembering those major acts of the past, they( well, most of them) always have one undisputable absolute classic in catalogue. it could be not considered their best among fans, but in a sense of popularity a top thing. Paranoid, Zoso, Machine Head, Tarkus, Dark Side of the Moon, etc..

[Trane]

A1 Aqualung 6:35 - a bit tired of it (overexposition), but still a classic
A2 Cross-Eyed Mary 4:10 - I can never tire of this one, no matter how much it is played
A3 Cheap Day Return - 1:25 Cool and short (the second quality is just as important)
A4 Mother Goose 3:55 - My fave with X-E M (not to be confised with X-L S )
A5 Wond'ring Aloud 1:57 - cool and short (ditto)
A6 Up to Me 3:16 - love this one, really under-rated

B1 My God 7:14 - Ok, the middle section is not for every day, but otherwise...
B2 Hymn 43 3:21 - a good forerunner to Locomotive
B3 Slipstream 1:15 - cool but short (ditto)
B4 Locomotive Breath 4:38 - over-played but another classic
B5 Wind-Up 6:07 - (just listened to it, and it could be half its length and to include an unrealeased LITP track (up the poool, Witch's promise or Trying to be)

[Jeremy Bender]

I think both Anderson's and Lake's editorializing on religion are adolescent and petulant, but how old were they at the time? Rather adolescent, I'd say. I doubt their views are identically the same today, IMHO.

ELP recorded Tarkus in January 1971, Lake was born in November 1947 so let's say he was 24 (the lyrics for The Only Way might have been around before that). Aqualung was recorded December 1970-February 1971, Ian Anderson was born in August 1947, so he was around 24 too.

Sure, the lyrics on religion might be "adolescent and petulant" but to this teenager they were absolutely crucial. I rejected my parents' Roman Catholicism in 1972 as a twelve-year old, simply because I didn't believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful being looking over us and dictating how we should live to a bunch of a people that was then compiled in a book 2000 or more years ago. I didn't --and still don't-- care if others "believed" or found comfort in religion, just not for me. Of course, me telling my parents I would never go to church again (except for funerals and weddings, I haven't) and that I thought the whole God thing was silly caused a big problem in my family. I got in to ELP in the fall of 1974, Tull a little later (I was a Zep/Who/Sabbath/Beatles/Stones guy at the time), to hear someone express in a song that they didn't believe or were skeptical was a huge thing for me.

Sure, Lake's lyrics on The Only Way aren't a deep, considered, scholarly treatise on the existence of God, but then I didn't/don't expect that from a 4-minute pop song. This

Can you believe
God makes you breath?
Why did he lose
Six million Jews?

gets at the nub of the gist as Monty Python would say. Is it on the level of St. Thomas of Aquinas? Of course not, nor should it be expected to be.

I really like the Aqualung album, my Tull fandom lasts from Stand Up > A Passion Play, I don't like the first two albums and I lost interest after APP except for a few songs here and there. My favorite on the album is Up to Me, agree with Trane that it's underrated.. For years I couldn't figure out the line "Take you to the cinema/and leave you in a Wimpy Bar" as being an American in those *gasp* pre-Internet days *gasp* I thought "Why would you call a bar wimpy, how can a bar be wimpy?" not knowing it's a UK-based hamburger/chicken fast-food chain.

[JJ88]

^Yes, that Lake line is a little gauche, but it is effective IMHO. I've always liked the ironic juxtaposition of those bitter lyrics with the church organ.

There was obviously something in the air at the time- during the early 70s you had 'My God', 'The Only Way', John Lennon's 'God', Randy Newman's 'God's Song', Peter Hammill's 'The Lie'...

[polmico]

Sure, the lyrics on religion might be "adolescent and petulant"

Youth does not necessarily preclude one from depth (which is not necessarily what you suggested, by the way). Consider American poet William Cullen Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis" when he was 17. Nevertheless . . .

but to this teenager they were absolutely crucial.

Tarkus was the first prog album I bought when I was 13 or 14, and the lyrics made a similar impact on me.

As for the subject at hand, I first heard Aqualung in its entirety last year. Thus the over-exposure prevalent for many of you has not affected me. I think it's a wonderful album particularly the short acoustic numbers.

[Jeremy Bender]

John Lennon's 'God'

There's a radio show called Breakfast with The Beatles that's hosted by the former Dramarama bass player Chris Carter that I listen to every Sunday and he played that recently. The opening lines

God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
I'll say it again
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain

Love 'em. I like John's list of things that he doesn't believe in anymore too, though not believing in Elvis and Zimmerman (Dylan) is blasphemy for which he should have been stoned to death in the public square for.

Plus, he had a good summation of the prog rock scene: the dream is over.

[bob_32_116]

For years I couldn't figure out the line "Take you to the cinema/and leave you in a Wimpy Bar" as being an American in those *gasp* pre-Internet days *gasp* I thought "Why would you call a bar wimpy, how can a bar be wimpy?" not knowing it's a UK-based hamburger/chicken fast-food chain.

In that case I imagine some of the double meanings and puns in Selling England By the pound were over your head as well?

[PeterG]

For me as an old school folky rocker it is in my top three, along with songs from the wood and Benefit.

[Jeremy Bender]

In that case I imagine some of the double meanings and puns in Selling England By the pound were over your head as well?

Sure, it wasn't very easy in those pre-Internet days to find out stuff like that but I guarantee you, a lot of Brits totally misconstrued lyrics by American bands too, it went both ways. "Football" and "fags" meant/mean different things in the US and the UK, as the saying goes "England and America, peoples separated by a common language".

[trurl]

Ian's "I just lit a fag" line always made me go, "Wait... WHAT??!!" as a kid until I found out what it actually meant over there

[A. Scherze]

"Good old ERNIE, he coughed up a tenner on a Premium Bond win."

[Sputnik]

Well, just gave this one a fresh spin. As a teenager, this was my "go to" Tull album, but it sort of dropped off the radar as I got into TaaB, APP and later albums like Heavy Horses and SftW. Plus, I tended to avoid it because of Aqualung and LB being so overplayed.

But a nice break has done this one good for me, and I even enjoyed hearing those overplayed songs. I think this is a super strong album that has some elements that aren't present in the almost equally awesome Stand Up and Benefit. I think the stronger presence of keys helps a lot. I also think the writing here is a click up, just a bit tighter and better realized than the previous works. Mileage on this will vary, but they hit on something here that resonated with a much wider audience and produced three, almost four, staple rock classics.

The one that really got me, though, was My God. For some reason the middle section really sat well with me this listening, where in the past I felt it was a little self indulgent and unfocused. It's tracks like this. Mother Goose, Hymn 43, and the never gets old Cross Eyed Mary that elevate this one to classic status for me.

I'm so glad this thread popped up and forced me to re-explore. It was a re-discovery of an album that I've always loved.

Bill

[Jeremy Bender]

Good old ERNIE, he coughed up a tenner on a Premium Bond win

Good example. I first saw Monty Python's Flying Circus when I was 15, about 1975, they might as well have been from the Crab Nebula in terms of me understanding a lot of it: Where the hell is North Minehead? What's a by-election or a fortnight? etc. My parents had a beautiful set of Encyclopedia Britannica, I'd write down the stuff I didn't get and look it up after. It's gotten to the point where I speak pretty fluent London British. Geordie, however, IS from the Crab Nebula.

I was going to post a Youtube clip of Iron Maiden's version of Cross-Eyed Mary, but it wasn't as good as I'd remembered it.

[cannygoodlike]

Geordie, however, IS from the Crab Nebula.

Hadaway an' shite man. Ah divvunt knaa what yee are taalkin' aboot.

[Vic2012]

Favoritos Tull records:

This Was
Benefit
Aqualung
War Child
APP
Minstrel
Songs
A
CREST
Dot.com

[A. Scherze]

Yeah, I thought ERNIE was just a person the soldier was referring to. Then, a few years ago, I learned that it was an electronic device to generate random numbers.

Now, how did sandwich become "sarnie"?

[bob_32_116]

Hadaway an' shite man. Ah divvunt knaa what yee are taalkin' aboot.

Proof positive. Definitely Crab Nebula.

[Harbottle]

Yeah, I thought ERNIE was just a person the soldier was referring to. Then, a few years ago, I learned that it was an electronic device to generate random numbers.

Now, how did sandwich become "sarnie"?

Sarnie? Who knows, probably lazy northerners who couldn't be bothered to say the word so they just shortened it.

There's also 'buttie' as well, as in a Bacon buttie. Maybe linked to butter?

Don't even start on 'bread rolls'. They tend to be different all over the country, apart from where I live where they're known as a 'batch'. Cobs, Barmcakes, teacakes, baps, rolls, etc...