Aqualung 50th Anniversary: An Absolute Masterpiece Concept Album

Jethro Tull Locomotive Breath (from Bursting Out, 1978)

 

Jethro Tull My God (from Nothing Is Easy: Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970 DVD, 2005)

 

Jethro Tull Cross Eyed Mary (live at the Capital Centre, Landover, Maryland, 1977)

 

Jethro Tull Mother Goose (live at Cardiff, Wales, 1996)

 

Progressive Rock??? For me it's Pure British Folk Rock ,In there with Steeleye Span, Pentangle and Fairport Conversation etc, Yes there's a concept but that surely doesn't make it Progressive Rock, and it and Living in the Past and my only Jethro Tull Albums for the very British Folkiness of them, My two bobs worth Cheers.

 

Nope. Although by its nature Progressive rock mixes everything, even Folk music, regarding Jethro Tull, fully realized Folk-Rock starts with Songs from the Wood the album. And even then Jethro Tull remains somewhat "progressive", so it is precisely because of Songs from the Wood that the term "Progressive folk-rock" (or "Prog Folk") was coined at the Internet forums as an afterthought (it shouldn't be confused with Acid-Folk from the late Sixties / early Seventies).


Jethro Tull The Whistler (from Songs from the Wood, 1977)

 

Jethro Tull Wind Up (live in Rochester, New York, 1973)

 

Jethro Tull Up to Me (live at Lugano Estival Jazz, Switzerland, 2005)

 

Thank you for your kind and informative response @tvstrategies

 

Jethro Tull Hymn 43 (live at the London Hippodrome, 1977)

 

Concept albums are themed albums.
Albums that tell stories, like "Tommy" and "The Wall", are rock operas.

Not all concept albums are rock operas.

"Time Out" by The Dave Brubeck Quartet and "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane are concept albums.

 

It is not a rock opera.
But it is a concept album.

 

Too Old Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! the album has elements of rock opera as well.

 

Really, not too sure why you’re trying to school me on a bunch of concepts I am well aware of.

As stated - I don’t really know the album, but am interested in a fanbase who seem to universally adore it, while few agree on what it *is*.

I have made concept records AND themed albums. Haven’t spent decades with Aqualung, so I cant simply understand the perspective on even my first ten listens in comparison to big fans of this album (when they happen).

Sorry I asked, and I won’t make the same mistake here.

 

?

 

Call it what you want, it is Jethro Tull's masterpiece. Ian Anderson's songwriting is at its best and the way he inserted little acoustic nuggets is absolutely brilliant. The band is tight even with a new bass player and Martin Barre's lead guitar lines are as good as they'll get. Most of all, it showcases Anderson's acoustic guitar mastery, melodic flute playing, his mellow to angry vocal range and all presented in a flawless sequence of tunes.
Stand Up and Benefit are close, but nothing that followed Aqualung is anywhere near the brilliance of this album.

 

I'd say "Aqualung" is indeed a concept album, or a "concept-side" album. And that it is a prog-rock album given its relatively heavy emphasis on classical influence: piano introduction to "Locomotive Breath", fake choirs in "My God" and parts of the flute solo, and probably mostly, the theme motif of the title track, which Anderson himself has likened, in spirit, to the motif from Beethoven's 5th symphony. ...And some other elements too (classical guitar influences in some of the acoustic guitar tracks). Not much jazz in it I guess, but the classical component is strong enough to qualify the album IMO.

 

My bad. Sorry.

 

It’s just the nail in the coffin for me here. Just looking around to delete my whole account.

Consider that crud like that ensures I ain’t gonna bother with Tull, too.

Lesson learned. I’m gone.

 

Associates - Sulk

 

Big fan of the album, except for the stupid, interminable My God, which I always skip.

 

Good observation.

It's a concept-opera!

 

Aqualung By Ben Gerson
Rolling Stone July 22, 1971
Dating from at least the Electric Prunes’ Mass In D Minor, rock and religion have evinced an unlikely affinity for each other. Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, Peter Townshend, John Lennon, George Harrison (and let us not forget the Reverend Richard Penniman) have all at some point dedicated themselves and their music to God in his myriad varieties. On the heels of Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson joins this heady list.

Tull is one of our most serious and intelligent groups, and Anderson’s choice of subject for Aqualung — the distinction between religion and God — is witness to that. Further, Tull has a musical sophistication to match its thematic ambitions. Where This Was, their first album, was aimless and disorganized, Stand Up, with its dabbling in ethnic and classical forms, was eclectic in the best sense. Out of that experimentation was forged in Benefit a sound which finally provided the band with a concrete identity.

Once a group has arrived at a coherent style, the next logical step is a concept album, and it is on the shoals of concepts that many a band runs aground. Often such albums lack the hint of self-irony, which is basic to great rock and roll, and therefore come off sounding pompous. Ultimately an album like Tommy, for example, must stand or fall on its quality as a collection of songs; the thematic gloss is absolutely secondary.

Aqualung is the album’s lead character, and is so named for his rheumy cough. Side one consists of a series of seedy vignettes drawn from modern secular English life, while the printed lyrics are cast in Gothic lettering to emphasize the album’s liturgical basis. The title song depicts the beggar in all his shabbiness and lechery. “Aqualung” is actually three songs; as the different moods of the narrator unfold, the music changes accordingly. The initial melodic statement sung in a harsh, surly voice is ugly and plodding; it then shades into something milder and more sympathetic, then into something which rocks a little more.

Another of society’s dregs, cross-eyed Mary the slut, of the song of the same name, is the object of Aqualung’s attentions. Anderson sounds equally disapproving here. “Mother Goose” is the kind of song that Anderson writes best. As in “Sossity” on Benefit, he uncannily captures the feel of a real Elizabethan madrigal (a consort of recorders here helps it get across). It’s a song about a Hampstead fair, and is filled with descriptive detail which is at once archaic and up to date. Lyrics and melody mutually accomplish the same purpose, for both express the continuity of English life.

Side two, subtitled “My God,” deals more explicitly with religion. The nub of the issue is Christian hypocrisy, how people manipulate notions of God for their own ends. There is some rather obvious talk of plastic crucifixes, Blakean allusions to locking “Him in His golden cage,” and invective; “The bloody Church of England/In chains of history/Requests your earthy presence at/The vicarage for tea.” Beneath the accusatory tone is a moving musical theme. Again, the structure is constantly shifting. There are stately hymnal changes, a jazzy flute break, a pomp-and-circumstantial motive which, when inverted, assumes a more chromatic, modern queasiness. The gamut of religious experience is encompassed in this song.

“Wind Up” winds up the album and embodies most of the album’s difficulties. While Anderson is adept at conceiving a musical approximation of an idea, his lyrics are overly intentional, ponderous, and didactic. It would be possible to ignore the lyrics, as lyrics can usually be ignored, except that Anderson sings them so melodramatically. Nor is his theatricality appropriate to the ideas or words. The over-enthusiastic delivery is probably meant to compensate for his inherent vocal limitations, but the original problem is Anderson’s choice of subject. At a time when the more arcane varities of religious experiences are trumpeted far and wide, and atheism and agnosticism still more than hold their own, it is difficult for the modern temper to get worked up over good old-fashioned Christian hypocrisy. When Anderson sufferingly sings —
So I asked this God a question and by way of firm reply,
He said “I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.”
So to my old headmaster (and to anyone who cares);
Before I’m through I’d like to say my prayers —
“I don’t believe you: you got the whole damn thing all wrong —
He’s not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.”

— there is something depressingly anti-climactic about it all. There is a lot of misplaced emotion on this record.

Thus, despite the fine musicianship and often brilliant structural organization of songs, this album is not elevated, but undermined by its seriousness.

 

A classic, and probably Tull's best LP - though any votes for Thick as a Brick surely count. Ian has said many times that Aqualung isn't a concept LP so those who continue to argue otherwise are fighting a losing battle. Thick as a Brick was written to show the critics exactly what a 'concept LP' should sound like and was received as such. A Passion Play is one too. Aqualung merely has a few songs about religion, but all the songs aren't linked in any way.

And I never got why Songs from the Wood is considered the band's first 'folk rock' album either, as it offers nothing new musically which Tull hadn't explored before. That acoustic, pastoral vibe had been there since at least Stand Up.

And in terms of is Aqualung progressive rock or not - that's tricky. There's certainly elements of prog there but it's hard to pinpoint exactly what they are. The progressive rock came more to the fore with the next record.

 

Regardless of what Ian Anderson says (now), the album art suggests otherwise. Perhaps the term "concept" is the sticking point and "thematic" is a better choice.