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Aqualung by Jethro Tull

By: User

Some albums are good, some rock, and a select few take names and kick asses. This is one of those albums.

The album wastes no time on bullshit, diving into the shallow end headfirst with "Aqualung" a hard rocking song about an feeble impoverished pederast with the same name, pictured on the album's cover. It moves onto a song, "Cross Eyed Mary" celebrating the exploits of a a schoolgirl turning tricks near the playground where Aqualung lurks (Wonder why she is cross eyed? Yup). Face melting guitar sizzles through this song as on the title track, joined in later numbers by frantic, furious flute played by front man Ian Anderson.

Dissatisfied with only ripping on society, the second half of the album sets musical cross hairs on organized religion and the use of God as a crutch to justify, well... just about anything. The blasphemously tasty Hymn 43 just about sums it up:

"If Jesus saves -- well, He'd better save Himself
from the gory glory seekers who use His name in death.
Oh Jesus save me!"

The whole album really explores the way we treat others like crap and created God to do our bidding, to comfort us for listen to our whining as we endlessly beg him for forgiveness for all the things we are unwilling to take responsibility for. It's pretty damn Nietzschian.

The back of the album has a great parody of the creation story summing up its message:


1 In the beginning Man created God;
and in the image of Man
created him.
2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of
names,that he might be Lord of all
the earth when it was suited to Man.
3 And on the seven millionth
day Man rested and did lean
heavily on his God and saw that
it was good.
4 And Man formed Aqualung of
the dust of the ground, and a
host of others likened unto his kind.
5 And these lesser men were cast into the
void; And some were burned, and some were
put apart from their kind.
6 And Man became the God that he had
created and with his miracles did
rule over all the earth.
7 But as all these things
came to pass, the Spirit that did
cause man to create his God
lived on within all men: even
within Aqualung.

8 And man saw it not.

9 But for Christ's sake he'd
better start looking.

Not too shabby for a band named after a 17th century British agrarian.

(Author's Note: This album will mysteriously move between the J and T portions of any alphabetized collection if you recreate in certain ways. Plan for it.)