Post by maddogfagin on Dec 28, 2011 19:18:33 GMT
IAN ANDERSON on War, Religion and (why not?) Cat Stevens
December 7, 2004
As Jethro Tull took a breather from the current leg of their European tour, Clifford Meth spoke with Ian Anderson for quite some time regarding music, politics and the art of war. It was their first conversation in many years (Cliff once tracked the band regularly for such publications as Hit Parader, The East Coast Rocker, and Rock & Roll Disc). Feature stories by Cliff are forthcoming in THE AQUARIAN and www.Shotgunreviews.com, but here's the exclusive, uncut Q&A:
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When Jethro Tull, the pioneers of Intellectual Metal, cut their teach on the seminal Aqualung, they were the last blokes we expected to trip the yule fantastic. Now, 33 years later, the band who sang, “If Jesus saves, then he better save himself” has gone-a-caroling. But far be it from me to stuff coal in their stockings, so allow me to remove tongue from cheek. Allow that The Jethro Tull Christmas Album is a seriously good spin--far better than that over-hyped (ad-nauseam) How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb from the erstwhile born-again Irish lads. Really, gang: Tull remains unique, and always a superior listen. Martin Barre is still the Clark Kent of lead guitarists and the rest of the assemblage is superb. And Ian Anderson is, well, Ian Anderson.
Meth: The last time we spoke was backstage at The Meadowlands in New Jersey as we watched the Berlin Wall coming down on a monitor.
Anderson: I remember it well. Our German Tour manager broke down and cried when he heard the news and saw it on Television. Over here [in Germany] Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on a TV show that I also did a few months back and he got a standing ovation for five minutes on prime-time Saturday night TV. They don't let the audience applaud that long unless it's someone somewhere a little upscale from the Pope in people's love and admiration. He set in motion all these things and it was a momentous day. And now here I am in Germany on tour with a somewhat beleaguered economy as a result of paying for the old Eastern German integration into the German economy, but even now people still have a very big... Anyone over the age of 15 will remember those breaking news captions.
Meth: While we're on geo-politics, most pop musicians have come out strongly against the U.S. and U.K.'s War in Iraq. What's your position on the subject?
Anderson: I don't know. It's difficult to have an opinion that is clear cut about an issue as complex as this. I was having a discussion with a German friend in Germany two nights before the U.K. and U.S. attacked Iraq, and I was saying that if they go through with this, this will be years and years to come of a commitment from the U.K., U.S., and whoever else is foolish to go along with it. This is taking the lid off of a very dangerous country. And whether you like it or not, the evil Sadam Husein is the guy who kept that lid on and kept Iraq essentially free from being what it is now, which is a state that is fostering the most violent terrorism currently on the planet--at least most frequently violent in the sense that the number of deaths of American soldiers is over 1,000; the number of on-going casualties this week was 50 people. And that's just another day in Bhagdad. This is not something that will get a quick fix on January 30 any more than when Afghanistan voted in, this morning, the man in the green cloak, who seems a perfectly reasonable chap, but there is no way he is in control of Afghanistan, let alone the enormous increase in opium and therefore heroin production that has occurred since Afghanistan was so-called "liberated."
It's all good and well playing with the ideas of democracy, but life ain't that simple. Whereas I don't think I can be one of those people who is saying I think the U.S. should pull out of Iraq--or the U.K. or any of the so-called coalition, which amounts to a few hundred other people (laughs). Far and away the U.S. is bearing the brunt of this and will do for years to come. I'm talking about the poor, old people who will have to fund the tens of billions that this will continue to cost the U.S.
Meth: Although Tull arose during the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, and you've always been outspoken on all subjects, your music has never addressed anything political.
Anderson: My music is not going to address issues in a direct political way. You wouldn't find me on stage in the last run at the election joining Bruce Springsteen and calling for the mobilization of civilian troops, as it were, to place their vote in the box next to the name Kerry. I wouldn't be up in the stage doing that. But you would get me on the stage campaigning very simply with the word VOTE. That I'm very much dedicated towards. I wouldn't be partisan. I would certainly encourage people to vote and in my small way I did try to do that when I was last doing concerts before I went on tour because I do think it's very important from a moral point of view, as well as a political one, to take advantage of that democracy that I'm afraid so many Americans and British take for granted.
Politically, I’m an angry man. But the answer isn’t “pull the troops out.” We’re stuck with this now. We can’t abandon these people. We’ve brought notions of democracy to a country where they’ve been used to, at best, a patriarchal and tribal leadership. In Iraq, they were used to the tyrant dictator, but nonetheless, it was a stable country, for the most part throughout most its very complicated length and breadth, with all of its tribal and religious divisions. And when you go blundering in there as a Western Democracy with tanks and guns, you’re taking the lid off the hornet’s nest. And that’s unfortunately what seems to have escaped both Bush and Blair and their rather dodgy crew of advisors.
It just seemed so patently obvious from the word go that this was just going to result in a lot of tears that it’s beyond me that they could have done it. I mean, it just seems so incredibly naïve, if you give them the benefit of the doubt, to have gone in their guns blazing thinking all you do is take out the government, replace it with a friendly military force for a few months, then get them all to go to elections. How could they ever believe that given the complexities that existed in Iraq? And this was pointed out in countless articles by countless learned journalists from all over the world reporting from Iraq for the last ten years. It was pointed out time and again that the result of removing Sadam Husein would not be a simple one. That is what is so extraordinary! However, we don’t want to waste the entire interview talking about that, but yes, I’ve got my opinion, and the answer is that it’s far too late to pull out—far too late for people like me to be putting in music or in song any clear cut political message.
The job I do as a musician is to travel— not to Iraq, thus far, but to certain other places where we have seen the suicide bombers and the tragedy of war in the last 30 or 40 years. I go to places like Israel; I go to Turkey, to India, to places where people do blow each other up. But as a musician, I’m allowed to cross those boundaries in the worlds of art and entertainment; I cross boundaries that politicians can’t--even if they want to. So I think I’m rather happy to keep my message a generally uplifting one of music and song. If there’s a political or religious comment being made, I do so with a degree of, I hope, subtlety and artistry, which I hope does not make me appear partisan and does not allow for misunderstanding, although I’ve been at the end of misunderstanding before, choosing words in my lyrics perhaps not so carefully as I might have done back in 1971.
Meth: You told me years ago that you felt Linda McCartney’s stance on animal rights was naive and uninformed. How did you regard Paul McCartney’s leadership role in The Concert for New York?
Anderson: I’ve never been a McCartney fan, but it just seems like he’s trying to lay the ghost of Linda and I just don’t understand why he’s going near any of that stuff. His new wife is into the landmine stuff and that seems to me so… I mean, I got an invitation to go to that and I tore it up. I was really quite reviled by being asked to go and do something that is actually all about just giving money to the McCartneys to make them look good. One might almost think that if they manage to change the laws and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] gets to be president that maybe Paul McCartney is going to shoot for Governor of California. I don’t know. Must be some ulterior motive.
Meth: Cat Stevens is a contemporary of yours.
Anderson: Ah yes! Well, you see Cat Stevens would be a much better Governor of California. We actually met, funny enough, just before the opening of the Olympic Games--I bumped into Cat Stevens in Athens. He and I were both doing a TV show for German television. I hadn’t seen him for years and I went over and we chatted for ten minutes on a variety of subjects. He seemed very pleasant, very nice, and I got the inkling that music was becoming a meaningful part of his life again. A musical performance was definitely in the cards. So I was quite pleased with that and he had to go to make-up because he was being interviewed on this TV show—not performing music, just interviewed--so I went my way. Well, after I’d done my performance, his son came rushing over and said, “Oh, did my dad find you?” And I said, “Nope. I didn’t know he was looking for me.” He said, “He’s searching everywhere for you--he’s so embarrassed that he wants to apologize because he didn’t recognize you.” And I said, “Wow! That’s amazing! You tell your dad that raises him even higher in my esteem, that he would be so nice and pleasant and give ten minutes of interesting and pleasing conversation to someone who he must have regarded as a complete stranger.” (laughs)
One feels a little sorry for him having endured perhaps a degree of vilification, and certainly humiliation when he was denied entrance to the U.S. because we were told that the authorities had confused his name with another person who was on the terrorist list. I rather suspect there was more to it than that. My feeling is because of his pronunciations some years ago against Salmon Rushdie, when pressed on the issue, concurring with a fatwah put him in a pretty bad light, although Cat Stevens has always been a peaceful and inspiring person in regards to peace and tolerance and so-on. He is the benign face of Islam that unfortunately has been tainted by some assumption that he is aligned with the extremists. I really don’t believe for one second that he is or ever has been. I think we need more people like Yusef Islam who are going to stand up and show us the kind and caring and responsible and very human face of Islam. We need a lot more Yusef Islams, whether they call themselves that or Cat Stevens.
Meth: A naïve notion of your religious viewpoint might be based solely on the flipside of the Aqualung album. In light of what you just said about Cat Stevens, how did you react to Bob Dylan’s “Born Again” phase, or Van Morrison’s spiritual material, or George Harrison’s Hare Krishna music?
Anderson: I’ve never been anti-Christian. I wouldn’t call myself a Christian because I’m not an active, practicing one, but I believe in most of the tenets of Christianity. It’s very easy to go along with most of that as it’s equally easy to go along with most of Islam. It’s actually easy to go along with quite a lot of Hinduism, once you get over that big hurdle of slightly demystifying the pantheon of deities that litter the life of a Hindu (laughs). Hinduism is a tricky one, but you have to look at it more like you’re watching a Bollywood movie, or a sort of Walt Disney cartoon. It’s larger than life. It appears colorful and somewhat two-dimensional in the way that the many gods of Hinduism seem to operate. It is rather cartoon-like—however, behind it, it is essentially a monotheistic religion, and not a difficult one for us to go along with. Difficult probably for most westerners to think of practicing, but for me it would be difficult to be a practicing Christian because I can’t quite get my head around one or two things about Christianity that are fundamental, particularly regarding the degree to which Christ has become deified as a prophet and a symbol. So I have a problem with Christianity, but in terms of most of its teachings—most of it is practical and sensible moralities and codes for good living. I’m not anti-Christian; I’m actually quite pro-Christian, but I’m equally pro-Islam, as long as we don’t get into the car bombs. For the vast majority of practicing Muslims, the step from Islam to terrorism is a giant chasm they could not conceive of crossing. It’s just for some people, as always—Christianity and Islam alike—religion has been a means of whipping up hatred, bigotry, intolerance.
Just look at the simple polarities in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and that deep, undying hatred between Catholics and Protestants. It’s so hard for us to understand why those people still want to kill each other, and indeed on a Saturday night still do. Whether it’s a bottle fight down the road in Belfast or something more insidious, the hatred has not gone away. At the moment, the guns and the bombs are silent, but the deep divisions are still there with very little sign of being mended by the current and future generations.
Meth: Almost like an English football game.
Anderson: Unfortunately it mirrors some of the violence that we do see elsewhere in society, whether it’s at a football match or on the streets of London, if you’re careless enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Meth: When I first saw Liverpool versus Manchester United, and it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. All of the sport was in the audience, I thought.
Anderson: Things get whipped up and unfortunately people rather enjoy having a simple cause to, if not die for, at least get their heads broken for. It is remarkable how, generally speaking, from an audience point of view anyway, sports in the USA seems mercifully free of that kind of violence from spectators. It’s something that's not only British, of course—it happens elsewhere in Europe. But I guess given the choice, I’d rather seen the violence contained within the walls of a soccer stadium than spreading onto the streets of a foreign country. Maybe, in some weird way, we are containing that outlet for violence by allowing it to happen and focus on something as silly as a football match.
Meth: Have you seen Bob Dylan’s Chronicles?
Anderson: I’ve been given a copy of it, actually, but I’ve yet to read it.
Meth: It's outstanding. A superior book. Have you kept chronicles and diaries like this that you would ever consider publishing?
Anderson: I’ve never kept anything, perhaps on the grounds of some belief that if I can’t remember it, it’s not worth writing down and expecting someone else to find it amusing. But also, doubtless, because of some degree of laziness. I know that a very early member of Jethro Tull, Glen Cornick, did actually keep diaries and memorabilia—things, photographs, bits of paper, stuff. And I rather regret now not having kept stuff. But ultimately I think I’m not really a stuff sort of person. I have a Grammy Award somewhere—I haven’t the faintest idea where it could be. It’s probably in the house somewhere. I live in a big house and I’m not going to spend the afternoon looking for the damn thing. It’s not that it’s not important to me—it is kind of important; I know that 6000 peers in the musical creative world took part in a voting system and preferred Jethro Tull as the winners of a Grammy. I’m not unimpressed by that, I’m really humbled by it, and very grateful to them for their show of approval at Jethro Tull’s activities over the years—not at being the best metal act or whatever the award was actually for; they were just giving us the-best-band-that-hasn’t-won-a-Grammy-before award–that was the spirit of people voting for us. So I’m not unimpressed by that, but I just don’t need the object itself to remind me. I’m not one of those people who needs something hanging on the wall to remind me that I’ve sold a million copies of an album or that I’m a clever chap. Especially because as a performing musician on stage every night, you are confronting real people in real time—it’s not just memories or symbols; you actually get the real deal when you’re a performing artist. So I’ve never really felt the need for stuff and reminders and whatever.
And I don’t think I’d be much of a biography writer in the sense that I’m a little too sensitive about hurting other people’s feelings. If I got carried away, I would say some things that are possibly quite funny and deeply cutting and maybe cynical—overall I would have rather amusing and perceptive things to say about people that I’ve known, however many of them would be deeply hurt by it and for that reason I wouldn’t do it, even though it might amuse the hell out of me and maybe some other people. I know it would be hurtful to have that confidence betrayed by a public unveiling of events or character assassinations (laughs). So I don’t think I’m going to do that somehow.
Meth: If Oliver Stone were going to make The Jethro Tull film, the way he did The Doors, who would play Ian Anderson?
Anderson: I haven’t seen The Doors film—it would be a difficult one for me to relate to, but the first reaction would be don’t because whenever people do try to do movies about the rock music industry, everything I’ve ever seen has been... The one sterling exception is “Spinal Tap,” which was pretty spot-on, really, for a bunch of guys who were not part of it. I think you can do it if you’re very clever and you’re actually making fun of it. In a satirical way, you can do it. But if you’re actually trying to dramatize events... I mean, God help us if there was to be a film about The Beatles or John Lennon. It would be dreadful in the same way as the fools who try to make movies about Princess Diana. It’s just awful when people go that route because they never really touch upon the reality in the way that people close to it know it to be.
I haven’t seen Oliver Stone’s movie about The Doors. But if I did, I’d be very surprised if it was something that made me feel that it was an accurate portrayal of something—not that I knew him or anything really about The Doors... Any poor fool who has to play me would probably have to take some serious lessons in standing on one leg. And it would have to go straight to video. And they’d release the soundtrack to the movie as a ring tone.
Meth: You’ve clearly labored to keep your music fresh, but there has to be certain benefits to the nostalgic aspects of the band’s history and longevity.
Anderson: That’s an interesting one because just before I came back from America, I actually went into XM Studios with the guys from Jethro Tull and we re-recorded the entire Aqualung album for a series on their radio where people go in and record their seminal albums as a live performance before a small, invited audience. I suppose in some ways just to prove they can actually remember all the chords. But also, perhaps, with a view to performing music not as a literal remake, but as a reinterpretation according to the times, technology, flirting with different arrangements. Or in the case with Jethro Tull, with three different band members.
It was kind of interesting to do because not only were we recording some pieces of music from the Aqualung album which we still periodically play live on stage, but there were also three songs from the album we had never, ever played since the day they were recorded, at the end of 1970. That was kind of interesting, and a little weird, to touch upon these songs that, for whatever reason, had never been attempted before. And they were actually three really enjoyable songs to do.
Meth: Which songs?
Anderson: “Hymm 43,” “Slipstream,” and “Up To Me.” And we started playing them—knowing that we’d be doing them for XM—live on the tour.
Meth: I’m surprised that you never did “Hymm 43” – that one was getting airplay for many years.
Anderson: Yeah, I think it was one of those songs that was, back in the days of A&R radio, would be frequently played as an example of Jethro Tull’s work. I would think it’s unlikely you’d be hearing it very often in today’s very, very restricted classic-rock radio programming. It’s never been one of my favorite songs. We did change the arrangement substantially, although we went back to the final verse in the original style. But it was interesting to play it and do it in a different way.
But going back to the idea of sort of keeping things fresh, it is something that’s not very difficult to do with most of the material because there’s always another interpretation of it. It’s not like being a classical musician and having to play the exactly what Mozart or Beethoven wrote, the only interpretation being, perhaps, in the tempo or dynamics or phrasing that a conductor will draw from the orchestra. It’s 1% of the outcome. 99% of it is what was written by the composer. It’s on paper—it’s definitive—there is no room to change any of the notes or parts or relationships between them.
But in the world of rock music, jazz, blues and some folk music, there is the room to not only interpret the song but to actually change things—to improvise. And beyond improvisation, to sit and deliberately, consciously reappraise something. There’s no one to stop you. So if you’re the author of that work—or even if you’re not—you can seek permission to vary an artist’s work. And if the artist has been dead long enough (laughs) then you can take pieces of traditional music, as I do, and do what the hell you want with them.
Meth: When will we hear the XM Aqualung?
Anderson: I believe it’s scheduled for a March broadcast. It will be rough and ready, but it’s okay. I think I sang three wrong words in a verse, which I fixed right afterwards, but apart from everything else, it’s as it is. There’s a few bad moments, and a few less than perfect bits of performance, but what you’ll hear is us live in a small studio with a bunch of people. It’s not a high level of technical and musical excellence. It’s kind of funky.
Clifford Meth www.cliffordmeth.com
December 7, 2004
As Jethro Tull took a breather from the current leg of their European tour, Clifford Meth spoke with Ian Anderson for quite some time regarding music, politics and the art of war. It was their first conversation in many years (Cliff once tracked the band regularly for such publications as Hit Parader, The East Coast Rocker, and Rock & Roll Disc). Feature stories by Cliff are forthcoming in THE AQUARIAN and www.Shotgunreviews.com, but here's the exclusive, uncut Q&A:
---------------------------
When Jethro Tull, the pioneers of Intellectual Metal, cut their teach on the seminal Aqualung, they were the last blokes we expected to trip the yule fantastic. Now, 33 years later, the band who sang, “If Jesus saves, then he better save himself” has gone-a-caroling. But far be it from me to stuff coal in their stockings, so allow me to remove tongue from cheek. Allow that The Jethro Tull Christmas Album is a seriously good spin--far better than that over-hyped (ad-nauseam) How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb from the erstwhile born-again Irish lads. Really, gang: Tull remains unique, and always a superior listen. Martin Barre is still the Clark Kent of lead guitarists and the rest of the assemblage is superb. And Ian Anderson is, well, Ian Anderson.
Meth: The last time we spoke was backstage at The Meadowlands in New Jersey as we watched the Berlin Wall coming down on a monitor.
Anderson: I remember it well. Our German Tour manager broke down and cried when he heard the news and saw it on Television. Over here [in Germany] Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on a TV show that I also did a few months back and he got a standing ovation for five minutes on prime-time Saturday night TV. They don't let the audience applaud that long unless it's someone somewhere a little upscale from the Pope in people's love and admiration. He set in motion all these things and it was a momentous day. And now here I am in Germany on tour with a somewhat beleaguered economy as a result of paying for the old Eastern German integration into the German economy, but even now people still have a very big... Anyone over the age of 15 will remember those breaking news captions.
Meth: While we're on geo-politics, most pop musicians have come out strongly against the U.S. and U.K.'s War in Iraq. What's your position on the subject?
Anderson: I don't know. It's difficult to have an opinion that is clear cut about an issue as complex as this. I was having a discussion with a German friend in Germany two nights before the U.K. and U.S. attacked Iraq, and I was saying that if they go through with this, this will be years and years to come of a commitment from the U.K., U.S., and whoever else is foolish to go along with it. This is taking the lid off of a very dangerous country. And whether you like it or not, the evil Sadam Husein is the guy who kept that lid on and kept Iraq essentially free from being what it is now, which is a state that is fostering the most violent terrorism currently on the planet--at least most frequently violent in the sense that the number of deaths of American soldiers is over 1,000; the number of on-going casualties this week was 50 people. And that's just another day in Bhagdad. This is not something that will get a quick fix on January 30 any more than when Afghanistan voted in, this morning, the man in the green cloak, who seems a perfectly reasonable chap, but there is no way he is in control of Afghanistan, let alone the enormous increase in opium and therefore heroin production that has occurred since Afghanistan was so-called "liberated."
It's all good and well playing with the ideas of democracy, but life ain't that simple. Whereas I don't think I can be one of those people who is saying I think the U.S. should pull out of Iraq--or the U.K. or any of the so-called coalition, which amounts to a few hundred other people (laughs). Far and away the U.S. is bearing the brunt of this and will do for years to come. I'm talking about the poor, old people who will have to fund the tens of billions that this will continue to cost the U.S.
Meth: Although Tull arose during the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, and you've always been outspoken on all subjects, your music has never addressed anything political.
Anderson: My music is not going to address issues in a direct political way. You wouldn't find me on stage in the last run at the election joining Bruce Springsteen and calling for the mobilization of civilian troops, as it were, to place their vote in the box next to the name Kerry. I wouldn't be up in the stage doing that. But you would get me on the stage campaigning very simply with the word VOTE. That I'm very much dedicated towards. I wouldn't be partisan. I would certainly encourage people to vote and in my small way I did try to do that when I was last doing concerts before I went on tour because I do think it's very important from a moral point of view, as well as a political one, to take advantage of that democracy that I'm afraid so many Americans and British take for granted.
Politically, I’m an angry man. But the answer isn’t “pull the troops out.” We’re stuck with this now. We can’t abandon these people. We’ve brought notions of democracy to a country where they’ve been used to, at best, a patriarchal and tribal leadership. In Iraq, they were used to the tyrant dictator, but nonetheless, it was a stable country, for the most part throughout most its very complicated length and breadth, with all of its tribal and religious divisions. And when you go blundering in there as a Western Democracy with tanks and guns, you’re taking the lid off the hornet’s nest. And that’s unfortunately what seems to have escaped both Bush and Blair and their rather dodgy crew of advisors.
It just seemed so patently obvious from the word go that this was just going to result in a lot of tears that it’s beyond me that they could have done it. I mean, it just seems so incredibly naïve, if you give them the benefit of the doubt, to have gone in their guns blazing thinking all you do is take out the government, replace it with a friendly military force for a few months, then get them all to go to elections. How could they ever believe that given the complexities that existed in Iraq? And this was pointed out in countless articles by countless learned journalists from all over the world reporting from Iraq for the last ten years. It was pointed out time and again that the result of removing Sadam Husein would not be a simple one. That is what is so extraordinary! However, we don’t want to waste the entire interview talking about that, but yes, I’ve got my opinion, and the answer is that it’s far too late to pull out—far too late for people like me to be putting in music or in song any clear cut political message.
The job I do as a musician is to travel— not to Iraq, thus far, but to certain other places where we have seen the suicide bombers and the tragedy of war in the last 30 or 40 years. I go to places like Israel; I go to Turkey, to India, to places where people do blow each other up. But as a musician, I’m allowed to cross those boundaries in the worlds of art and entertainment; I cross boundaries that politicians can’t--even if they want to. So I think I’m rather happy to keep my message a generally uplifting one of music and song. If there’s a political or religious comment being made, I do so with a degree of, I hope, subtlety and artistry, which I hope does not make me appear partisan and does not allow for misunderstanding, although I’ve been at the end of misunderstanding before, choosing words in my lyrics perhaps not so carefully as I might have done back in 1971.
Meth: You told me years ago that you felt Linda McCartney’s stance on animal rights was naive and uninformed. How did you regard Paul McCartney’s leadership role in The Concert for New York?
Anderson: I’ve never been a McCartney fan, but it just seems like he’s trying to lay the ghost of Linda and I just don’t understand why he’s going near any of that stuff. His new wife is into the landmine stuff and that seems to me so… I mean, I got an invitation to go to that and I tore it up. I was really quite reviled by being asked to go and do something that is actually all about just giving money to the McCartneys to make them look good. One might almost think that if they manage to change the laws and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] gets to be president that maybe Paul McCartney is going to shoot for Governor of California. I don’t know. Must be some ulterior motive.
Meth: Cat Stevens is a contemporary of yours.
Anderson: Ah yes! Well, you see Cat Stevens would be a much better Governor of California. We actually met, funny enough, just before the opening of the Olympic Games--I bumped into Cat Stevens in Athens. He and I were both doing a TV show for German television. I hadn’t seen him for years and I went over and we chatted for ten minutes on a variety of subjects. He seemed very pleasant, very nice, and I got the inkling that music was becoming a meaningful part of his life again. A musical performance was definitely in the cards. So I was quite pleased with that and he had to go to make-up because he was being interviewed on this TV show—not performing music, just interviewed--so I went my way. Well, after I’d done my performance, his son came rushing over and said, “Oh, did my dad find you?” And I said, “Nope. I didn’t know he was looking for me.” He said, “He’s searching everywhere for you--he’s so embarrassed that he wants to apologize because he didn’t recognize you.” And I said, “Wow! That’s amazing! You tell your dad that raises him even higher in my esteem, that he would be so nice and pleasant and give ten minutes of interesting and pleasing conversation to someone who he must have regarded as a complete stranger.” (laughs)
One feels a little sorry for him having endured perhaps a degree of vilification, and certainly humiliation when he was denied entrance to the U.S. because we were told that the authorities had confused his name with another person who was on the terrorist list. I rather suspect there was more to it than that. My feeling is because of his pronunciations some years ago against Salmon Rushdie, when pressed on the issue, concurring with a fatwah put him in a pretty bad light, although Cat Stevens has always been a peaceful and inspiring person in regards to peace and tolerance and so-on. He is the benign face of Islam that unfortunately has been tainted by some assumption that he is aligned with the extremists. I really don’t believe for one second that he is or ever has been. I think we need more people like Yusef Islam who are going to stand up and show us the kind and caring and responsible and very human face of Islam. We need a lot more Yusef Islams, whether they call themselves that or Cat Stevens.
Meth: A naïve notion of your religious viewpoint might be based solely on the flipside of the Aqualung album. In light of what you just said about Cat Stevens, how did you react to Bob Dylan’s “Born Again” phase, or Van Morrison’s spiritual material, or George Harrison’s Hare Krishna music?
Anderson: I’ve never been anti-Christian. I wouldn’t call myself a Christian because I’m not an active, practicing one, but I believe in most of the tenets of Christianity. It’s very easy to go along with most of that as it’s equally easy to go along with most of Islam. It’s actually easy to go along with quite a lot of Hinduism, once you get over that big hurdle of slightly demystifying the pantheon of deities that litter the life of a Hindu (laughs). Hinduism is a tricky one, but you have to look at it more like you’re watching a Bollywood movie, or a sort of Walt Disney cartoon. It’s larger than life. It appears colorful and somewhat two-dimensional in the way that the many gods of Hinduism seem to operate. It is rather cartoon-like—however, behind it, it is essentially a monotheistic religion, and not a difficult one for us to go along with. Difficult probably for most westerners to think of practicing, but for me it would be difficult to be a practicing Christian because I can’t quite get my head around one or two things about Christianity that are fundamental, particularly regarding the degree to which Christ has become deified as a prophet and a symbol. So I have a problem with Christianity, but in terms of most of its teachings—most of it is practical and sensible moralities and codes for good living. I’m not anti-Christian; I’m actually quite pro-Christian, but I’m equally pro-Islam, as long as we don’t get into the car bombs. For the vast majority of practicing Muslims, the step from Islam to terrorism is a giant chasm they could not conceive of crossing. It’s just for some people, as always—Christianity and Islam alike—religion has been a means of whipping up hatred, bigotry, intolerance.
Just look at the simple polarities in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and that deep, undying hatred between Catholics and Protestants. It’s so hard for us to understand why those people still want to kill each other, and indeed on a Saturday night still do. Whether it’s a bottle fight down the road in Belfast or something more insidious, the hatred has not gone away. At the moment, the guns and the bombs are silent, but the deep divisions are still there with very little sign of being mended by the current and future generations.
Meth: Almost like an English football game.
Anderson: Unfortunately it mirrors some of the violence that we do see elsewhere in society, whether it’s at a football match or on the streets of London, if you’re careless enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Meth: When I first saw Liverpool versus Manchester United, and it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. All of the sport was in the audience, I thought.
Anderson: Things get whipped up and unfortunately people rather enjoy having a simple cause to, if not die for, at least get their heads broken for. It is remarkable how, generally speaking, from an audience point of view anyway, sports in the USA seems mercifully free of that kind of violence from spectators. It’s something that's not only British, of course—it happens elsewhere in Europe. But I guess given the choice, I’d rather seen the violence contained within the walls of a soccer stadium than spreading onto the streets of a foreign country. Maybe, in some weird way, we are containing that outlet for violence by allowing it to happen and focus on something as silly as a football match.
Meth: Have you seen Bob Dylan’s Chronicles?
Anderson: I’ve been given a copy of it, actually, but I’ve yet to read it.
Meth: It's outstanding. A superior book. Have you kept chronicles and diaries like this that you would ever consider publishing?
Anderson: I’ve never kept anything, perhaps on the grounds of some belief that if I can’t remember it, it’s not worth writing down and expecting someone else to find it amusing. But also, doubtless, because of some degree of laziness. I know that a very early member of Jethro Tull, Glen Cornick, did actually keep diaries and memorabilia—things, photographs, bits of paper, stuff. And I rather regret now not having kept stuff. But ultimately I think I’m not really a stuff sort of person. I have a Grammy Award somewhere—I haven’t the faintest idea where it could be. It’s probably in the house somewhere. I live in a big house and I’m not going to spend the afternoon looking for the damn thing. It’s not that it’s not important to me—it is kind of important; I know that 6000 peers in the musical creative world took part in a voting system and preferred Jethro Tull as the winners of a Grammy. I’m not unimpressed by that, I’m really humbled by it, and very grateful to them for their show of approval at Jethro Tull’s activities over the years—not at being the best metal act or whatever the award was actually for; they were just giving us the-best-band-that-hasn’t-won-a-Grammy-before award–that was the spirit of people voting for us. So I’m not unimpressed by that, but I just don’t need the object itself to remind me. I’m not one of those people who needs something hanging on the wall to remind me that I’ve sold a million copies of an album or that I’m a clever chap. Especially because as a performing musician on stage every night, you are confronting real people in real time—it’s not just memories or symbols; you actually get the real deal when you’re a performing artist. So I’ve never really felt the need for stuff and reminders and whatever.
And I don’t think I’d be much of a biography writer in the sense that I’m a little too sensitive about hurting other people’s feelings. If I got carried away, I would say some things that are possibly quite funny and deeply cutting and maybe cynical—overall I would have rather amusing and perceptive things to say about people that I’ve known, however many of them would be deeply hurt by it and for that reason I wouldn’t do it, even though it might amuse the hell out of me and maybe some other people. I know it would be hurtful to have that confidence betrayed by a public unveiling of events or character assassinations (laughs). So I don’t think I’m going to do that somehow.
Meth: If Oliver Stone were going to make The Jethro Tull film, the way he did The Doors, who would play Ian Anderson?
Anderson: I haven’t seen The Doors film—it would be a difficult one for me to relate to, but the first reaction would be don’t because whenever people do try to do movies about the rock music industry, everything I’ve ever seen has been... The one sterling exception is “Spinal Tap,” which was pretty spot-on, really, for a bunch of guys who were not part of it. I think you can do it if you’re very clever and you’re actually making fun of it. In a satirical way, you can do it. But if you’re actually trying to dramatize events... I mean, God help us if there was to be a film about The Beatles or John Lennon. It would be dreadful in the same way as the fools who try to make movies about Princess Diana. It’s just awful when people go that route because they never really touch upon the reality in the way that people close to it know it to be.
I haven’t seen Oliver Stone’s movie about The Doors. But if I did, I’d be very surprised if it was something that made me feel that it was an accurate portrayal of something—not that I knew him or anything really about The Doors... Any poor fool who has to play me would probably have to take some serious lessons in standing on one leg. And it would have to go straight to video. And they’d release the soundtrack to the movie as a ring tone.
Meth: You’ve clearly labored to keep your music fresh, but there has to be certain benefits to the nostalgic aspects of the band’s history and longevity.
Anderson: That’s an interesting one because just before I came back from America, I actually went into XM Studios with the guys from Jethro Tull and we re-recorded the entire Aqualung album for a series on their radio where people go in and record their seminal albums as a live performance before a small, invited audience. I suppose in some ways just to prove they can actually remember all the chords. But also, perhaps, with a view to performing music not as a literal remake, but as a reinterpretation according to the times, technology, flirting with different arrangements. Or in the case with Jethro Tull, with three different band members.
It was kind of interesting to do because not only were we recording some pieces of music from the Aqualung album which we still periodically play live on stage, but there were also three songs from the album we had never, ever played since the day they were recorded, at the end of 1970. That was kind of interesting, and a little weird, to touch upon these songs that, for whatever reason, had never been attempted before. And they were actually three really enjoyable songs to do.
Meth: Which songs?
Anderson: “Hymm 43,” “Slipstream,” and “Up To Me.” And we started playing them—knowing that we’d be doing them for XM—live on the tour.
Meth: I’m surprised that you never did “Hymm 43” – that one was getting airplay for many years.
Anderson: Yeah, I think it was one of those songs that was, back in the days of A&R radio, would be frequently played as an example of Jethro Tull’s work. I would think it’s unlikely you’d be hearing it very often in today’s very, very restricted classic-rock radio programming. It’s never been one of my favorite songs. We did change the arrangement substantially, although we went back to the final verse in the original style. But it was interesting to play it and do it in a different way.
But going back to the idea of sort of keeping things fresh, it is something that’s not very difficult to do with most of the material because there’s always another interpretation of it. It’s not like being a classical musician and having to play the exactly what Mozart or Beethoven wrote, the only interpretation being, perhaps, in the tempo or dynamics or phrasing that a conductor will draw from the orchestra. It’s 1% of the outcome. 99% of it is what was written by the composer. It’s on paper—it’s definitive—there is no room to change any of the notes or parts or relationships between them.
But in the world of rock music, jazz, blues and some folk music, there is the room to not only interpret the song but to actually change things—to improvise. And beyond improvisation, to sit and deliberately, consciously reappraise something. There’s no one to stop you. So if you’re the author of that work—or even if you’re not—you can seek permission to vary an artist’s work. And if the artist has been dead long enough (laughs) then you can take pieces of traditional music, as I do, and do what the hell you want with them.
Meth: When will we hear the XM Aqualung?
Anderson: I believe it’s scheduled for a March broadcast. It will be rough and ready, but it’s okay. I think I sang three wrong words in a verse, which I fixed right afterwards, but apart from everything else, it’s as it is. There’s a few bad moments, and a few less than perfect bits of performance, but what you’ll hear is us live in a small studio with a bunch of people. It’s not a high level of technical and musical excellence. It’s kind of funky.
Clifford Meth www.cliffordmeth.com