Ian Anderson brings solo act to Lowell Memorial Auditoriumwww.wickedlocal.com/acton/fun/entertainment/x1892560402/Ian-Anderson-brings-solo-act-to-Lowell-Memorial-AuditoriumBy Margaret Smith
GateHouse News Service
Posted Nov 18, 2010
Lowell — With a music career spanning more than 40 years, Ian Anderson is looking up.
To space, that is, where he has sent a flute to the International Space Station, to be played by astronaut Col.Catherine Coleman.
And they say that in space, there is no sound.
Anderson -- a performer in his own right as well as the front man of Jethro Tull – is bringing elements of both his solo career and his legendary band to the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.
He recently shared his thoughts on music, technology, and his passion for saving the endangered species of wild cats.
Q. Please tell me what you have planned for the show.
A. Well, I’m at that point in the calendar, actually, where I’m doing solo shows, and I suppose it’s marked by the deeper and further and wider look into the Jethro Tull catalog – including some of the more obscure, less often heard songs than the ones that are in classical rock rotations.
It’s just a deeper and more esoteric look into my song-writing over the years, but bringing it up to date.
One piece of music was written 24 hours before we went on the tour…it doesn’t have a title yet, because it is part of a longer term project.
So giving it a title would limit in my mind. Q. The released list says you are playing “Bungle in The Jungle” [from the 1974 Jethro Tull album, “War Child.] I understand you haven’t played this song in concert in many years.
A. It was on the set list, but it is not anymore. It’s just not a song I connect with. It was a commercial attempt at music and I thought, “Let’s give it another go” – but it’s so too evidently self-conscious in the approach to writing.
Q. In your long career you’ve seen a lot of changes, especially the effect of technology on the music industry. What has this meant for you?
A. I suppose I have had a musical career that has spanned everything from the earliest days of vinyl recording, stereo recording, and the digital age….the crucial difference now is that with new artists, the chances of getting paid is less and less all the time. We are going to see some real impact on musicians who have fewer outlets than the previous generation did….I meet them all the time, and my son is a young musician. The only chance they have of selling anything is a few CDs.
Also, with copyright, the basic attitude seems to be, “Sue me.” The offenders either just evaporate, or they are so well funded that they can afford it.
Q. What for you is the motivation to keep going, especially with live performance?
A. The simple answer is that I can afford it. I get paid very handsomely for performing live, because I have passed the threshold where I alone or as Jethro Tull can get paid for live gigs. At least in the old days, you got paid 50 bucks for a club gig. But in the big cities these days, if you are a young musician, you get paid nothing and that’s the end of it. Luckily, I can continue my work. In 15, 20, 30 years from now, it’s going to be a different story with musicians.
Q. Are there challenges to performing now – physically, artistically or otherwise?
A. I don’t really think there is a great deal of difference. With technology, things have come out, and there are a lot of improvements, and more effective ways of presenting music to the public…there are opportunities to develop new skills. As you get older, you can continue to evolve as a musician, into your 60s and 70s.
But clearly, you can’t expect the same amount of stamina as in your 20s, and you have to allow for that. You have to expand your horizons and not just settle into a comfortable routine.
Q. You mention that there is opportunity to develop new skills. What new skills have you developed, or how do you feel you have improved?
A. They are skills developed from actual practice and rehearsal. There is no substitute for playing and practicing every day – the music you have played before, but also new directions. There are so many musicians who don’t think they have to play every day. They just go out and play – and that’s rubbish. I have had to part company with musicians with this attitude – who without becoming aware of it are becoming stultified. Instead of expanding, they become stultified and contracted.
You can become self-delusional. The answer is practice, practice, practice.
Q. How much time do you put into practicing?
A. I guess I’m lucky, because a lot of my practice, if you like, is before an audience. You can clock up lots of hours of practice if you are on the road. At home, it’s sort of two swords – it’s any time of day, picking up instruments, 10 minutes or an hour, or just for the fun it. I play a little bit every day.
Q. Is there any aspect of what you do now as a musician that you are especially proud of?
A. I have suffered a few physical injuries. I broke a finger, which set me back a long way playing the guitar – not so much the flute, because I could put a splint on it [Anderson broke his finger shortly before departing with Jethro Tull to Minsk, Belarus, trying to put a reticent cat outside.]
I damaged my voice back in 1984 – but now I am better vocally than I was, and a better flute player than in the past years of my life, because I constantly reevaluate my playing. Also, from a breathing point of view, and pushing the limits of breath control, which surprisingly, is not proving to be problematic, but so far, so good.
There is a naivete and energy that you do lose as you get older, but hopefully you make up for it with skillful and nuanced approaches to your music.
Q. Do you think there is still the same appreciation for live performance? I went through a concert recently where a young woman was texting through the entire thing. Do you think audiences relate to shows differently now?
A. That doesn’t happen so often at the concerts that I do, where people pay good money. People don’t pay good money to come in and text their boyfriends. I do, on the other hand, witness some bewildering sights. Some places, you are not sure if you are at a rock concert, or a Nazi rally – they seem like they are giving you a Nazi salute, and then you see that they are holding up their cell phones and want to transmit the concert back home to their brother in-law or whatever. I have often been tempted to make comments at this. Hopefully, their batteries run out.
Q. I understand you get some of your flutes from one of our local companies [Powell Flutes of Maynard, Mass.] What do you choose your flutes and what to you is the mark of a quality instrument?
A. I have some Powell flutes, and I enjoy playing them. I think you have to consider, first of all…the craftsmanship…when you handle a well-made instrument, and see the attention to detail. A lot of people just want to have that 20-karat gold flute. I play a platinum flute, a gold flute, and silver plated flute, and listen back to them, and there is very, very little difference. I think they feel more different to the player than to the listener.
It’s important that the player gets to know his instrument. A good player should be able to pick up a flute that is in working order. James Galway said to me that he is always coming up against young students who complain that the flute isn’t any good. He picks up their flute and plays some difficult cadenza and puts it in perspective.
I sent a flute on a Soyuz rocket a few weeks ago – a silver-plated, good quality Japanese flute. I sent it into space, where it is going to be played by [Col. Catherine Coleman, at the International Space Station]. She is going to be playing my flute in space.
Q. Why was that important for you to do – to send a flute into space?
A. As a child of the Space Age, born just after the war, growing up as teenager with the development of space research, my formative years were when Sputnik went into space – and John Glenn, and Alan Shepard, and then of course the more advanced American attempts to culminate in the lunar landings in 1969. So I feel a real affinity for that.
I can’t go, but my flute can go, and as it parachutes and lends somewhere in Kazakhstan, perhaps, hopefully I can get it back…and this is an entertaining thought. My flute can go where I cannot go. Even if I could go, I wouldn’t have the guts. These are very real, emotional experiences I suppose the American public has become blasé about – but very brave men and women continue to expand the boundaries of space exploration.
Q. You’re a cat person – please tell me about your efforts to help cats.
A. I’ve been drawn to cats since I was a small boy. I think I began to recognize early on that they have this strange independence. I have just been drawn naturally to cats – I think they are closer to the wild.
I have had feral kittens brought up on neighboring farms. It takes several weeks to make them acceptable as pets for other people.
I’m involved with a number of conservation projects and probably will be again in the future. It is all connected with the small wildcat species. One of my favorites is the Andean wild cat. There are 26 species of small wild cats, and they don’t get much support, because they are not big and sexy and scary, like tigers and lions and snow leopards.
Q. One final question. Would you like your and Jethro Tull’s legacy to be?
A. We have made al living making music that is varied, and adventurous. We can do stuff that isn’t just other people’s notions of musical stereotypes. You can sometimes be successful doing what you wand to do if you follow your nose. I think Jethro Tull is one of the bands that has done that.
If you go
Ian Anderson in concert
WHEN Saturday, Nov. 20, 8 p.m.
WHERE Lowell Memorial Auditorium, 50 East Merrimack St., Lowell
TICKETS $39.75-$59.75
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.lowellauditorium.com.
So follow me. Trail along