The song was written by the band's frontman, Ian Anderson, and his then-wife Jennie Franks.
In an interview with singer Ian Anderson in the September 1999 Guitar World, he said:[6] Aqualung wasn't a concept album, although a lot of people thought so.
It's quite a tortured tangle of chords, but it was meant to really drag you here and there and then set you down into the more gentle acoustic section of the song.The Aqualung character is also mentioned in "Cross-Eyed Mary", the next song on the album.
As Ian Anderson explained during an interview with Songfacts:[8] Because it was too long, it was too episodic, it starts off with a loud guitar riff and then goes into rather more laid back acoustic stuff.
You would go into an album and play the obscure, the longer, the more convoluted songs in that period of more developmental rock music.
But that day is not really with us anymore, whether it be classic rock stations that do play some of that music, but they are thin on the ground, and they too know that they've got to keep it short and sharp and cheerful, and provide the blue blanket of familiar sounding music and get onto the next set of commercial breaks, because that's what pays the radio station costs of being on the air.