track

Aqualung - Steven Wilson Stereo Remix

1971Released
6:35

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Aqualung - Steven Wilson Stereo Remix. By Songfacts®.

This song deals with our reaction to the homeless population. Jethro Tull vocalist and flute player Ian Anderson wrote the song and called it "a guilt-ridden song of confusion about how you deal with beggars, the homeless." Elaborating in the 40th anniversary reissue of the album, he said, "It's about our reaction, of guilt, distaste, awkwardness and confusion, all these things that we feel when we're confronted with the reality of the homeless. You see someone who's clearly in desperate need of some help, whether it's a few coins or the contents of your wallet, and you blank them out. The more you live in that business-driven, commercially-driven lifestyle, you can just cease to see them.

In this song, Aqualung is a homeless man with poor hygiene. Ian Anderson wrote it about a character he made up based on actual photographs of transient men. Ian's wife at the time, Jennie, was an amateur photographer and had brought the pictures for Ian to look at. Many of the lyrics are Ian describing the men in the pictures. Jennie also wrote a few lyrics to go with the pictures, which earned her a songwriting credit, so she receives half the royalties from the song. She and Anderson divorced in 1974.

This is Jethro Tull's most famous song, but it was not released as a single. Ian Anderson told us why: "Because it was too long, it was too episodic, it starts off with a loud guitar riff and then goes into rather more laid back acoustic stuff. Led Zeppelin at the time, you know, they didn't release any singles. It was album tracks. And radio sharply divided between AM radio, which played the 3-minute pop hits, and FM radio where they played what they called deep cuts. You would go into a album and play the obscure, the longer, the more convoluted songs in that period of more developmental rock music. But that day is not really with us anymore, whether it be classic rock stations that do play some of that music, but they are thin on the ground, and they too know that they've got to keep it short and sharp and cheerful, and provide the blue blanket of familiar sounding music and get onto the next set of commercial breaks, because that's what pays the radio station costs of being on the air. So pragmatic rules apply."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Aqualung - Steven Wilson Stereo Remix.
GKey
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
123BPM

Album

The album Aqualung - Steven Wilson Stereo Remix is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Aqualung - Steven Wilson Stereo Remix.
Parlophone UK
© 2011 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company
℗ 2011 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company

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