When Jethro Tull released Aqualung in March 1971, it was perhaps with more of a sense of relief than pride. Their fourth studio album had endured a difficult gestation period – not only had they abandoned two previous recordings, but band leader Ian Anderson had struggled with line-up issues.
Bassist Glenn Cornick was fired while recording was in its early stages, to be replaced by Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond. Keyboardist John Evan was making his first full-time appearance in the studio. Dee Palmer provided orchestration but was yet to join the band, while drummer Clive Bunker was about to bow out. Manager and producer Terry Ellis had attempted to take a more back-seat position, but Anderson called him back.
In 2011 they reflected on the band’s highly-regarded and best-selling release – which is often erroneously regarded as a concept album.
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“It became the blueprint for a lot that’s happened since”: Martin Barre
“Ian set very high standards for himself and the band. He wanted real quality on the basic tracks, which made it such hard work. Plus we had major equipment problems in the studio. Whereas most bands would spend little time recording, we slaved away for hours and hours. When it was all finished, we were just glad to have gotten away with not killing each other.
Many of the songs mix acoustic and electric moments, in such a way that the album became the blueprint for a lot that’s happened since. Honestly, I don’t listen to it, except for reference. When you’ve played a song like Aqualung for so long live and very loudly, it’s good to go back and remind yourself what it should sound like. These are the definitive versions of the tracks.”
There is a religious theme running through a few of the songs. But to us it was only ever a bunch of songs. Besides, did anyone even know what a concept album was back then?”
“We took off for a break… then I had the dreaded phone call": John Evan
“We recorded the album twice. The first time was extremely difficult. We quickly discovered lots of flaws in our playing. Also we kept changing our parts – it didn’t stack up on hearing the playbacks. The sessions went on longer and longer, with more and more takes – it’s counter-productive after a while.
We got most of it in the can and took off for a break. And then I had the dreaded phone call from Ian: ‘I’ve been listening to the new album and it’s pretty bad – we’re going to have to do the whole thing again.’
I was only vaguely aware that several of the songs concerned themselves with the ‘less fortunate’ inhabitants of London, while others carried Ian’s thoughts on organised religion.
I suppose songs like Hymn 43, Cross-Eyed Mary and Locomotive Breath are immediate; but one of my favourites is Mother Goose. And some of the shorter numbers are really beautiful in a whimsical way.
I just hope people like it – or better still make the effort and learn to like it, which means they’ve discovered something.”
“It was sink or swim… I needed an Aqualung more than most”: Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond
“John Evan, Ian Anderson and I were at school together and played at youth clubs and seedy working men’s clubs. After a couple of years of the transit van life the initial excitement wore off, and I deserted to begin a foundation course in art. I hoped to do a postgraduate one at the Royal Academy Schools, but I wasn’t offered a place – and within a few months Ian offered me a position in Tull, making Aqualung.
“Any musical influence from me would have been obtuse or indirect at best. I was always the lowest common denominator. The Locomotive Breath and Aqualung riffs might be examples of that basic simplicity – occasionally less can be more.
For my part, recording probably felt more difficult than for the others, being thrust in at the deep end, having not played at all at art school; not to mention the wide gulf in musical ability between the rest of the band and myself. And not all the initial recordings were exactly to Ian’s liking.
But it was very special for me. It was sink or swim, and I suppose I needed an Aqualung more than most. I thought it might be my first and last recording, so I did have a sense of relief and achievement.”
“I felt I could still contribute": Glenn Cornick
“I recorded a song for album called Wond’ring Aloud, which was eventually released as Wond’ring Again on the Living In The Past album. I also did the first version of My God. I’m alo on the backing tracks for a couple of other songs, although I can’t be specific as to which.
“At the end of an American tour, our manager told me I was being sacked. Probably Ian felt he wasn’t getting along with me – however I thought our relationship was pretty good. It’s a shame, because I felt I could still contribute.
“We had real problems with the first studio, so we abandoned the idea of recording there. By the time the band went into Island Studios in Basing Street and properly got down to recording, I wasn’t there any more.
I know they had horrendous problems at the new location as well. And I think you can hear that in the album.”
“It flowed from start to finish": Clive Bunker
“The problem was that Ian had turned the corner and was going for something the rest of us didn’t know of. So he wasn’t happy with anything we did.
We knew it was good – but how can you know that anything you’re involved with would become so important? I do remember that even when it was finished, Ian was still unhappy with it all.
I’m proud of what we did. I think with a lot of the band’s albums there are some amazing songs, and a lot of filler. This one just flowed from start to finish.”
“We bacame friends quickly… we've never fallen out": Dee Palmer
“For me the sessions were trouble-free. I know they’d had to record the album at least twice before I was brought in. I got paid the princely sum of £63 for my work arranging and conducting orchestration. It was just me, Ian, [engineer] John Burns and a tape op in the studio, plus the string section. None of the other members of the band were around.
Ian and I became friends very quickly. And such was our rapport that we’ve never fallen out. He’d play me some tapes of what he was working on; I’d go away and work on it and then we’d record. That would be it.
I’ll admit Aqualung is a far from perfect album. But the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Some of the success of it is because it was never contrived. To this day, the songs resonate, even with younger generations. Its impact amazes me.”
“It's my favourite Tull album”: Terry Ellis
“As the relationship between myself and the band grew, I also took on the role of producer. I saw my role as dealing with all the peripheral stuff.
I was setting up the Chrysalis label with Chris Wright, so the band began recording without me. But then Ian called and told me that he was struggling to produce the album on his own, and needed help.
It’s my favourite Tull album. I love the combination of acoustic material and out-and-out rockers. The likes of Mother Goose are very special, underlining why the band meant so much to me.
I don’t recall anyone at the time claiming it was conceptual, and that idea never occurred to me – because I knew it wasn’t.”
“These songs stand the test of time because they’re still relevant”: Ian Anderson
“There was a sense of it being a make-or-break album – that it would either be the first big step up to fame and fortune on an international level, or that it would be the album that took us back to where we started!
Within a year we’d achieved quite a level of awareness and notoriety in some places, because of the elements on Aqualung that were quite disparaging of organised religion, and that upset some people.
I was trying to say that there’s some innate sense of spirituality in us all, and that as musicians we are purveyors of something that communicates with the spirit. Music is caught up in all these things, usually in some ritualised kind of way, which is what a church service tends to be; and so I think I saw the album as a way to put a bit of flesh on the bones of that thought.
“These songs seem to stand the test of time pretty well, because they’re still relevant. The song Locomotive Breath – even back then we were talking about population issues. It’s still not politically correct for the most part to talk about it, but that increase in globalisation, the planetary population, the growth of industry, the commerciality; that was what that song was supposed to be about: this runaway train and a sense of helplessness when you find yourself on something that you can’t stop.
It’s a juggernaut that won’t slow down, and that’s where we are. We’re staring nine billion people in the face in 40 years from now, with no earthly hope of feeding them. We’re making a much more difficult habitat in terms of water and food and the quality of air that we breathe, as people continue to take resources without a longer term plan. Locomotive Breath is the song that deals with those issues.
“Aqualung is a song about homeless people, but more importantly it’s a song about our reaction – those of us that are fortunate enough to have homes, to have a degree of wealth and happiness and family and friends and support. 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, whether it’s the slightly Chaplin-esque tramp figure on the Aqualung album or whether it’s a 17-year-old criminal, drug-addicted or working in the sex trade or whatever it might be.
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
Ian Anderson
Homelessness has shifted in terms of the age and the demographic. It’s changed from how I remember homeless people – tramps, as they were in my day. Tramps were homeless people, but they had a certain dignity about them. These days it’s more of a socially frightening phenomenon and one that we feel more guilt and awkwardness about dealing with, I think.
I’ve seen it so often: 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 Madison Avenue world of affluence, in that business-driven, commercially-driven lifestyle, you can just cease to see them.
That’s what Aqualung means to me after all these years. It’s not about selling 12 million copies of an album or whatever it is. It’s an album of songs, and some of them still touch me when I sing them or talk about them to this day. It’s not hard to get up and sing a song like that and still feel it. The repetition doesn’t blur what’s going on in there.”
