Sitting on a park bench
Eyeing little girls with bad intent
Snot running down his nose
[NOTE: Last but certainly not least in this year's class of 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME inductees is the least savory song of that group by far. What follows is a lightly-edited version of my original 2010 post about Jethro Tull's "Aqualung."]
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"Aqualung" is the first song on the album of the same name – which was Jethro Tull's best-selling album by far. (It has sold over seven million copies worldwide.)
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Aqualung is often characterized as a concept album, although Ian Anderson (the band's leader) has said that it was "just an album of varied songs of varied instrumentation and intensity."
The first two tracks of the album are companion pieces that tell the story of two unsavory individuals whose paths occasionally cross.
"Cross-Eyed Mary" is about a schoolgirl prostitute who prefers the company of old men to that of the "little boys" she goes to school with. She's the "Robin Hood of Highgate" – an expensive London suburb – who makes her rich patrons pay handsomely, but is willing to give herself gratis to poorer men.
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"Aqualung" is a song about a homeless man who is old, infirm, filthy, and more than a little crazy – not to mention a perv who hangs around the school playground hoping to catch a glimpse of the girls' "frilly panties" as they play.
In other words, Aqualung is perhaps the most repulsive character in any rock song ever recorded. But it's hard not to feel sorry for this wreck of a man.
The last lines of the song describe of Aqualung's demise – the freezing weather that landed him in the hospital, where he can breathe only with the help of a machine until he can breathe no more:
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze?
When the ice that clings on to your beard
Is screaming agony
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
With deep-sea-diver sounds
And the flowers bloom like madness in the spring.
Aqualung misses out on the flowers, of course – he's six feet under when they "bloom like madness in the spring."
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Aqualung was a very popular record when I was in college. Ian Anderson's crazy flute playing made it unique and instantly recognizable. Jethro Tull released over a dozen albums in the decade that began in 1968 and ended in 1978, but this is the only one know I know well.
If "Jethro Tull albums" was a category on "Family Feud," Aqualung would undoubtedly be the number one answer by a wide margin.
Click here to listen to the song.
Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:
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