Yes, a song about an indigent soul has made a rock legend. In fact the singer(who's FIRST wife who wrote the song) felt he had to instill even more meaning to it's simple theme of "a bum who dies" by portraying himself, Ian Anderson as the bum on stage or video. On stage he'd say things like "you poor ol sod you see it's only, a me......" A powerful image of the poor destitute homeless man woven throughout many of the bands commercial offerings. But you see, his FIRST wife made the song work to the teenage adolescent types with "snot is running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes...." At that time, snot was as bad as Slip Knot today. ga
@ganthony1 I once witnessed a compassionate Christian colleague (who I went to lunch with one afternoon) buy a pizza for an elderly begging homeless guy in an olive green army surplus jacket. This unfortunate chap stood in line at the counter with yellow-green snot oozing out all over his bushy gray mustache when ordering his food, and I felt the deepest regret for my inability to right this collective wrong.
@ganthony1 I once witnessed a compassionate Christian colleague (who I went to lunch with one afternoon) buy a pizza for an elderly begging homeless guy in an olive green army surplus jacket. This unfortunate chap stood in line at the counter with yellow-green snot oozing out all over his bushy gray mustache when ordering his food, and I felt the deepest regret for my inability to right this collective wrong.
Homeless people are typically exposed to the elements, disheveled, dirty, smelly, and often visibly ill and/or lame, sometimes using mobility props or wheelchair-bound, covered in degenerative diabetic wounds or contagious/infectious/insect sores etc. from medical neglect.
The depiction of Aqualung in the song is brutally accurate and has nothing to do with appealing to thrill-seeking teens. Anderson wrote raw lyrics that strike deep into the soul with penetrating honesty, and his target audience for marvelously broad-minded baroque-loving classical jazz rock folk fusion synthesis is artistic intellectuals like himself that bore easily and want to suck the marrow of life to become one with the universe while revealing all of its dirty secrets to/about everyone regardless if they understand or appreciate his efforts to mix it all up and paint it on like plaster.
Anderson was capturing the sense of disgust at the sight of homeless people that is triggered in right-wing germophobic OCD people of means who lack empathy. It snot about marketing albums to kids lol but it could have that effect in thrill-seeking kids who aren’t educated or sophisticated enough to appreciate the deeper meaning. For example, when I first heard this song and eventually bought the album as a teen, I had zero experience with homeless people, and I had to muster some imaginative effort to relate and understand the lyrics. It wasn’t vulgar fascination but it wasn’t penetrating insight that I exhibited either. I had just about zero experience with popular rock music and even less with intellectual poetic fusion that was making the rounds. My fascination was with the rawness and complexity of it, not the disgust it evoked.
Yes, a song about an indigent soul has made a rock legend. In fact the singer(who's FIRST wife who wrote the song) felt he had to instill even more meaning to it's simple theme of "a bum who dies" by portraying himself, Ian Anderson as the bum on stage or video. On stage he'd say things like "you poor ol sod you see it's only, a me......" A powerful image of the poor destitute homeless man woven throughout many of the bands commercial offerings. But you see, his FIRST wife made the song work to the teenage adolescent types with "snot is running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes...." At that time, snot was as bad as Slip Knot today. ga
@ganthony1 I once witnessed a compassionate Christian colleague (who I went to lunch with one afternoon) buy a pizza for an elderly begging homeless guy in an olive green army surplus jacket. This unfortunate chap stood in line at the counter with yellow-green snot oozing out all over his bushy gray mustache when ordering his food, and I felt the deepest regret for my inability to right this collective wrong.
@ganthony1 I once witnessed a compassionate Christian colleague (who I went to lunch with one afternoon) buy a pizza for an elderly begging homeless guy in an olive green army surplus jacket. This unfortunate chap stood in line at the counter with yellow-green snot oozing out all over his bushy gray mustache when ordering his food, and I felt the deepest regret for my inability to right this collective wrong.
Homeless people are typically exposed to the elements, disheveled, dirty, smelly, and often visibly ill and/or lame, sometimes using mobility props or wheelchair-bound, covered in degenerative diabetic wounds or contagious/infectious/insect sores etc. from medical neglect.
The depiction of Aqualung in the song is brutally accurate and has nothing to do with appealing to thrill-seeking teens. Anderson wrote raw lyrics that strike deep into the soul with penetrating honesty, and his target audience for marvelously broad-minded baroque-loving classical jazz rock folk fusion synthesis is artistic intellectuals like himself that bore easily and want to suck the marrow of life to become one with the universe while revealing all of its dirty secrets to/about everyone regardless if they understand or appreciate his efforts to mix it all up and paint it on like plaster.
Anderson was capturing the sense of disgust at the sight of homeless people that is triggered in right-wing germophobic OCD people of means who lack empathy. It snot about marketing albums to kids lol but it could have that effect in thrill-seeking kids who aren’t educated or sophisticated enough to appreciate the deeper meaning. For example, when I first heard this song and eventually bought the album as a teen, I had zero experience with homeless people, and I had to muster some imaginative effort to relate and understand the lyrics. It wasn’t vulgar fascination but it wasn’t penetrating insight that I exhibited either. I had just about zero experience with popular rock music and even less with intellectual poetic fusion that was making the rounds. My fascination was with the rawness and complexity of it, not the disgust it evoked.