Jethro Tull's Aqualung by Allan Moore

Author:Allan Moore [Moore, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Popular Culture, Music, Genres & Styles, Pop Vocal
ISBN: 9780826416193
Google: gxjeV3ffSCwC
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2004-08-10T04:32:36+00:00

5.

A new version of the CD was released by Chrysalis in 1998. In most respects, it represents a lost opportunity. The additional space beyond the original album is filled by three live recordings: ‘Song for Jeffrey’, ‘Fat Man’, and ‘Bouree’ (which in their studio versions had appeared not even on the previous album, Benefit, but on the one before that, Stand Up); an excerpt from a 1996 interview with Mojo magazine; a quad version of ‘Wind Up’; and the song ‘Lick Your Fingers Clean’. It would certainly have made more sense to have included live recordings of the album’s perennial favourites. One problem with doing this, of course, is that most of the material has already been made available elsewhere. It would have been interesting to have had some of the at least 52 (according to various websites) existent bootleg recordings of ‘Aqualung’, but I guess that is not the name of the game. So what we get instead is an attempt by Chrysalis to get more mileage out of their back catalogue—Tull’s last original Chrysalis recording dates from 1995. The song ‘Wind Up’ I shall write about later. This quad version is pretty horrible—it’s the same song, but re-mixed for quad reproduction. That system by-passed me at the time, but if this is an example of the way it was done, it’s no wonder it didn’t catch on. What comes to mind when listening to it is actually the image on the front of Benefit—four musicians clearly separated on a stage. In this particular mix, every instrument is clear, and well-positioned in the mix, and as a result doesn’t connect in any way with anything else. Just compare it with the ‘original’, two tracks earlier on the album. The quad version simply has no heart.

‘Lick Your Fingers Clean’ is the only sensible addition to the album. Originally conceived along with the other tracks that made it onto Aqualung, it was reworked into ‘Two Fingers’, appearing on War Child. However, by the time this 1998 Aqualung came out, ‘Lick Your Fingers Clean’ was already familiar to completists from its appearance on Flawed Gems and the Other Side of Tull, part of the 20th anniversary release. I can’t say it forms a sad omission from the original recording—in this form it’s a slightly turgid song, switching between two riffs (‘I’ll see you at the weighing-in …’ at 8” and ‘Take your mind off …’ at 42”) that are probably too similar in outline—they differ mainly in their key. This similarity belies what could have been an interesting song, musically. An eight-line verse sets us off on familiar territory, before the intrusion of four lines in that different key. We then get a second eight-line verse, finishing with a refrain ‘lick your fingers clean …’, except that the first four lines are replaced by a short flute solo. Four more lines in the second key, and then a final verse, and that’s the song. Instrumentally it is tight, perhaps unnecessarily so—nothing sticks in the mind, there is none of the individuality present in every other song on the album.

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