Jethro Tull: Aqualung [CHRYSALIS]

Why you'll love it

This 180g Chrysalis edition carries Steven Wilson's acclaimed 2011 stereo remix in a gatefold jacket with a 24-page LP-sized booklet. Aqualung is Jethro Tull's best-selling album, with more than seven million copies sold worldwide.

This edition

• Steven Wilson stereo remix
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• 24-page LP-sized booklet
• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU
• Lyrics included

About the album

Aqualung started with some photographs Ian Anderson's wife Jennie took of homeless men on the Thames Embankment. One face stuck with the couple, and together they wrote the title song, a character sketch that, thanks to Martin Barre's lead guitar riff, became one of the band's best-known songs.

The band cut it at Island's brand-new Basing Street studios in London in late 1970, with Led Zeppelin working in the smaller room down the hall. It was keyboardist John Evan's first album as a full member and bassist Jeffrey Hammond's first, with Dee Palmer arranging the orchestral parts. The first side sketches characters like "Cross-Eyed Mary" between acoustic interludes such as "Cheap Day Return" and "Wond'ring Aloud"; the second muses on faith through "My God," "Hymn 43" and "Wind-Up" before "Locomotive Breath" comes thundering down the line. Anderson named Roy Harper and Bert Jansch as his main inspirations.

It turned Jethro Tull into an FM radio staple and an arena band, and the record has shown up on best-of lists ever since. Critics called it a concept album; the band has politely declined the title for more than fifty years, which shows real commitment to a point of order.

Also at Kops: more Jethro Tull on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Chrysalis (cat# AQUA 1), a reissue of the 1971 album.