Writer: Ian Anderson and Jennie Anderson
Producer: Ian Anderson and Terry Lewis
Recorded: 1971 at Island Studios, London
| Players: | Ian Anderson – vocals, flute, acoustic guitar Martin Barre – guitar Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond – bass John Evan – keyboards Clive Bunker – drums |
| Album: | Aqualung (Reprise, 1971) |
Considered by many fans the quintessential Jethro Tull track, “Aqualung” is the lead-off song and theme-setter for the group's most successful album, a loose conceptual piece about organized religion. Tull leader Ian Anderson says that a photograph of a tramp living in London inspired the song.
Anderson's first wife, Jennie, provided some of the song's lyrics.
Anderson says that after he started writing the song, he needed to come up with a name for the character. “When you're dealing with a person, it's difficult to sing a song that people are going to find interesting unless you can give a name to the person. I thought ‘What do you call a guy like this? Tom? Old Tom the tramp? Harry the hobo?’ You've got to have something a bit more interesting.”
Anderson says that he figured the character would be wheezing and in bad health, and that gave him the idea for using “Aqualung” as a name. “I kinda had in my eyes he would be a wheezing, sort of bronchial kind of chap. I was reminded of the sound that was made by Lloyd Bridges playing Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt, which adorned our TV screens in the late 60s. Lloyd Bridges, in his Mike Nelson aquatic or sub-aquatic character, there was a lot of audio track where he was breathing underwater, very characteristic sort of scuba diving sound. I thought, ‘Well, we'll call this guy Aqualung ’cause he's got a sort of bronchial wheeze.'”
Shortly after the song was released, Tull discovered that Aqualung was a brand name rather than a generic term. “They tried to sue the hell out of us, the Aqualung Corporation of North America. We apologized profusely and said, ‘Sorry, we didn't know. We thought ALL underwater breathing apparatus were called Aqualungs because it's so famous the world over.' It was an honest mistake. I think they were flattered by the fact that we were so, thought they were just the one and only kind of company doing that stuff. They decided not to sue us after all. Thank goodness I didn't call the character Hoover ’cause they might not have been so pleasant.”
It was during the Aqualung tour that Tull lost original drummer Clive Bunker, who returned to England to get married. Barriemore Barlow, of the band Requiem, replaced him.
