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Sitting on a park bench
Eying little girls
With bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
Spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Sun streaking cold
An old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
The only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
As he bends to pick a dog end
Goes down to a bog to
Warm his feet.
Feeling alone
The army's up the rode
Salvation a la mode and
A cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend
Don't start away uneasy
You poor old sod
You see it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
When the ice that
Clings on to your beard is
Screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
With deep-sea diver sounds,
And the flowers bloom like
Madness in the spring.
Eying little girls
With bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
Spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Sun streaking cold
An old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
The only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
As he bends to pick a dog end
Goes down to a bog to
Warm his feet.
Feeling alone
The army's up the rode
Salvation a la mode and
A cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend
Don't start away uneasy
You poor old sod
You see it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
When the ice that
Clings on to your beard is
Screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
With deep-sea diver sounds,
And the flowers bloom like
Madness in the spring.
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Weird, but i happened on an interview on the radio show Coast to Coast about a week ago with Ian Anderson as one of the guests.
He was asked about Aqualung and how he came to write it and he explained that his first wife used to go taking photographs in London and her theme for one day happened to be tramps.
he then asked his wife what she was thinking about the subject when she took each photo. He made alist of her thoughts and made a song from it.
Check the show out on Youtube "Heyday of Rock - 10-13-2012", as i said it comes from coast to coast radio show.
Ian Anderson comes forward as a very intelligent and aware person who is very socially aware.
You have made one of the most beautiful and thoughtful songs I ever heard. I work among marginalized people, not with, I say, and it has made me realize one thing.
These people have thought finished and can not be bothered with a sick society simply.
It saw you long ago and wrote beautiful music for it.
Thank you!
Second, and seriously important for anyone who has any respect for Ian Anderson, he has made it absolutely clear multitudes of times that Aqualung is NOT a concept album. It is, in his words, "...a bunch of songs". Period. "A Cheap Day Return" was about a trip to visit his ill father. "Mother Goose" is about a bunch of odd people he came across on that trip. Some songs are about God-Man-type issues, but only in a handful of songs. What makes the album seem like a concept album is its seamless production. Songs that are similar in style somehow blend beautifully with other styles present, creating the impression that the songs must be all about a heavy concept, man.
But they're not. In the early seventies, Anderson got tired of people telling him it was a concept album. (How should he know? He's no critic, he's the writer.) His response was, "Okay, you want a concept album? I'll give you a concept album. In fact, I'll give you the mother of all concept albums!" The result was "Thick as a Brick," which I am convinced is meaningless and intentionally so.
Ever since a child, when the song was new, I always thought the opening riff was...how do I say? So close to bad that it was quite possibly the coolest riff in history! I love it, but it always seemed weird, like it shouldn't sound good, but does. Does that make sense?
As for religion, Anderson avoids the topic usually, but I recall he has said he believes in a God, and believes religion is in itself a good thing. His beef is with those who pervert faith with their empty hearts (my words, not his). Check out his Christmas album (Tull). He gives his position (sort of) there.
Tull is a long-time favorite of mine. I missed them nineteen times before finally seeing them in Seattle about fourteen years ago. There was a time while serving in Germany when I had to drive through Mannheim on my way to a war exercise. Tull was playing there that day, and I could see people's campers (hippie-style!) parked outside the football arena. They were having fun; I had to go and shoot guns.
Well, the guns helped. I felt much better afterwards.
Aqualung is what you might call a concept or thematic album, quite a big thing of the pretentious early seventies I believe. The song Aqualung on the album Aqualung is a prolouge or an introduction to the rest of the songs to set the pace and inflict a certain mode. The travesty of the christian faith and devotion oath is the wrapper of it all, and the album Aqualung should probably be best enjoyd and interpetrated as a concept.
If you don't have the patience for doing that, there is a freedom of choice: like whatever you like and just pick out the bits and pieces you agree with and never mind the rest of the BX. Don't let anyone tell you what you should or should not do or think.
religion can not cause any problems as someone suggested. It is how people choose to practice the religion that may or may not cause problems. If there were no religion at all I'm pretty sure people would invent other means and reasons like politics, sports, money or guns just so they can F things up and hurt each other like hell.
Don't you agree?
About the lyrics/music (they go together, you know):
The song is lyrically and musically diveded in to different parts. The first part is framed by an aggresive and for that time and age rather heavy guitar riff as the lyrics are quite condemning and judgmental. I hope you burn in hell, you dirty old pervert! This part is repeated at the end to close the thematic circle (or whatever).
The second part is based on a soft and almost folk music acoustic guitarr structure, and the lyrics are more forgiving and understanding. You poor old sod, you really had some bad luck in your life and it did not turned out the way you thought i would.
These two clearly different sections represents the duality of our own reflections on the matter. On one hand we feel sorry for the less fortunate poor old man, a homeless bum starving and freezing to death right in front of us. On the other hand, we don't want to get to close. We wouldn't invite him to our home, we don't want him sleeping on our doorstep and we certainly dont want him stalking around our childrens playground no matter what his intentions might be, good or bad.
There is a doubble standard here, and as much as christianity compells us (yes, christianity is the base for the moral concept of western societies weither you ar a christian or not) to help the poor and misfortuned we would never dream of include them in our lifes. We can drop a penny in the pot for the old guy at christmas time, but if the poor old guy is hanging around the kindergarten we asume that he is a pervert and call the police.
You might think that those of faith in God and Christ would be more forgiving and understanding than others, but in my oppinion they surprisingly often appear to be A LOT more condemning and coldhearted than those who don't. You think it would be the other way around but it's not. Again: There is usually nothing wrong with the religion itself, just the way people choose to put it in practice.
Nveretheless, this is our diversified and hypocritical legacy of christianity in practice, causing an inner struggle between the right thing to do and what might be in the best of interests, thus inflicting us with guilt over the choices we make. This inner conflict is something that we all can find in ourselves from time to time, and I think this might be an important part of the sentence of the two-parted structure of the music/lyrics.
One other thing is that the lyrics is written in the early seventies. Lyrics at the time were usually more cryptical and poetical than today (Woah woah woah woah woah I'm in love with Juda-as, Juda-as Woah woah woah woah woah I'm in love with Juda-as, Juda-as), and there were a certain trend of making the point - if there ever was one that is - not to obviuos. Like a metafor, a hidden meaning, a riddle or a poetic re-description of something that is actually quite clear.
I think it is all there in the lyrics, and if you listen to the changes in the music you might get it. I know I didn't...
You are 100% correct. We (AgualungLocomotiveBreathandCrossEyedMary) wanted it to be about a child molester. Just thinking about sitting on the bench near a playground watching the little girls hanging upside down with their dresses inside out, exposing their little panty covered backsides turns us on to no end.