Well, it certainly seems to be about the struggles of a group of young musicians, barely able to pay the rent on flea-bitten apartments (or flats to use the British term), who finally achieved success. "Every morning's shilling spent/made no sense to leave the bed" I would guess refers to feeding coins into the slot to keep the radiator heat going, a typical thing in old London apartments (and in other British cities) back in the day, wit penny-pinching landlords doling out heat in a very miserly, Dickensian way to the impoverished tenants.
I'm also guessing the last verse ("Each to his own way/I'll go mine...") is Anderson addressing band co-founder/guitarist Mick Abrahams. The two men founded Jethro Tull and struggled for success before finally breaking through in 1968 with the release of the band's debut album, "This Was." Then Anderson and Abrahams had a major falling-out: Abrahams wanted to continue in the bluesy, jazz-inflected mode of early JT, while Anderson, the main songwriter/lyricist, wanted to take the band in a more experimental or "prog-rock" direction (result: "Aqualung," "Thick as a Brick," and several albums following). Abrahams quit just as the band was beginning to put together their second album, "Stand Up," which includes this song.
After quitting Tull, Abrahams founded the blues-rock-with-jazz-overtones band Blodwyn Pig, which released two albums over 1969-70 before splitting up. His replacement on guitar in Jethro Tull initially was Tony Iommi, fall 1968, who appeared with the band when they lip-synched their performance for the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus in the late autumn. But Iommi was already in the process of forming Black Sabbath and quit after a few weeks to be replaced by Martin Barre, who became the permanent lead guitarist.
Well, it certainly seems to be about the struggles of a group of young musicians, barely able to pay the rent on flea-bitten apartments (or flats to use the British term), who finally achieved success. "Every morning's shilling spent/made no sense to leave the bed" I would guess refers to feeding coins into the slot to keep the radiator heat going, a typical thing in old London apartments (and in other British cities) back in the day, wit penny-pinching landlords doling out heat in a very miserly, Dickensian way to the impoverished tenants.
I'm also guessing the last verse ("Each to his own way/I'll go mine...") is Anderson addressing band co-founder/guitarist Mick Abrahams. The two men founded Jethro Tull and struggled for success before finally breaking through in 1968 with the release of the band's debut album, "This Was." Then Anderson and Abrahams had a major falling-out: Abrahams wanted to continue in the bluesy, jazz-inflected mode of early JT, while Anderson, the main songwriter/lyricist, wanted to take the band in a more experimental or "prog-rock" direction (result: "Aqualung," "Thick as a Brick," and several albums following). Abrahams quit just as the band was beginning to put together their second album, "Stand Up," which includes this song.
After quitting Tull, Abrahams founded the blues-rock-with-jazz-overtones band Blodwyn Pig, which released two albums over 1969-70 before splitting up. His replacement on guitar in Jethro Tull initially was Tony Iommi, fall 1968, who appeared with the band when they lip-synched their performance for the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus in the late autumn. But Iommi was already in the process of forming Black Sabbath and quit after a few weeks to be replaced by Martin Barre, who became the permanent lead guitarist.