1981 and Delhi College of Engineering first year – and I got Tulled !! Aqualung was released in 1971, ten years before that and somehow my parents managed to hide this album from me for 10 years ??. I had actually heard this on “A Date With You” a few times but admittedly, it didn’t register with me till then…

And then about 10 years later something magical happened – on 20th February 1994, Jethro Tull came to Chennai (WTF?). Nandan and Deepa do you remember? My boss ( my friend and an amazing human being) Sanjay Kao was the Head of Sales based in Madras and I was one of his four RSMs, based in Delhi. Sanjay very sweetly set up a sales meeting for the day of the concert, bought tickets for us and we all flew down to watch Ian Anderson and his magical flute….They played all the favourites – Mother Goose, Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Songs from the Woods, Too Old to Rock and Roll and Too Young to Die….lots of Old Monk was consumed for sure….good times !

In case you’ve ever wondered what the song was really, about, according to Ian Anderson, it’s about the population explosion. And the unstoppable train is a metaphor for the unstoppable population expansion on planet Earth. Who would have thunk that? For us it was just an amazing piece of rock, who’s speed and beat evoked a sense of speed and left you feeling breathless with the manic energy of the song ! And the performance is very much so. Here’s Aqualung as well..