Jethro Tull’s Aqualung (33 1/3)

Formed in 1968, Jethro Tull are one of rock’s most enduring bands. Their 1971 album Aqualung, with its provocative lyrical content and continuous music shifts, is Tull’s most successful and most misunderstood record. Here, music professor and fan Allan Moore tackles the album on a track-by-track basis, looking at Ian Anderson’s lyrics and studying the complex structures and arrangements of these classic songs.EXCERPTIt was buying your first great-coat that did it. That image of a crazy, probably dangerous individual with unkempt hair, strangely wandering eyes and an inability to keep both feet on the floor at the same time, as seen on Top of the Pops when Jethro Tull and his anonymous backing musicians performed ‘Witch’s Promise’ in 1970, remains to this day one of the most striking I can recall. And when the great-coat appeared in all its glory clothing Jethro’s alter ego on the cover of Aqualung, it was clear to us that we were insiders, that we lived in exactly the same crazy world, that we ‘knew what it was all about’, even if we actually hadn’t a clue.