“Aqualung” by Jethro Tull

"Aqualung" is the title track of Jethro Tull's 1971 album, and it started with a photograph: Ian Anderson's then-wife Jennie Franks snapped a homeless man in London, and the two of them wrote the song from it. Anderson has said the words came out of guilt about the homeless, a little fear of them, and a romantic picture of a free spirit who won't, or can't, fall in line with society.

That tangle of feelings is right there in the music, six and a half minutes of progressive rock that lurches from Martin Barre's grinding electric guitar and a thunderous riff to Anderson's hushed acoustic passages, with John Evan's keys, Jeffrey Hammond Hammond's bass and Clive Bunker's drums shoving it along. Anderson produced with Terry Ellis. It was never a single, yet only "Locomotive Breath" has been played live by the band more often.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.