Post by maddogfagin on Mar 2, 2010 10:20:46 GMT
For reasons that, at present, Nonrabbit & I don't fully understand, Col has deleted the Record Collector thread which had the recent Q&A with Ian Anderson.
For the record, I spent some time getting the permission of Alan Lewis at Record Collector to reprint the text and then to transcribe it to the board.
So, without further ado, I am reposting the Q&A as it is as valid to post it here as it is valid to post anything about Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson.
Jethro Tull's Stand Up 2-CD is issued by EMI in April, and RC asked front-
man lan Anderson about the band's upcoming tour (see Gig Guide).
"We'll do some obscure, older stuff we don't normally do and some new
songs. A studio album is not something in the works, but we'll play them before
they're finalised".
Will there be any guests?
Not this time. I've been offered lots of collaborations in the last 18 months, but life is too
short. Six weeks to do somebody else's music? I'd rather concentrate on things closer to home
than packing and unpacking my suitcase for a rock opera in Germany.
Do you have any tapes of you playing before Tull?
No. I first picked up flute a few months prior, but I'd only been playing for eight months
when we recorded our first album in July 1968.
Did you have a favourite record shop then?
A hole-in-the-wall in Blackpool. Jeffrey Hammond, John Evans and I used to go
there and the guy behind the counter was helpful. He let us play music and it
was an important entree to the world of more eclectic music than on the radio
and TV. American jazz and blues, Alexis Korner, folk, like David Lewin and
Bert Jansch, and we took those influences and did something the Americans didn't.
Do you remember any albums you bought then?
Mose Allison's Swinging Machine - great improvisation and songs. Graham Bond
The Sound Of 66. It sounds crap today. But Eric Clapton and John Mayall and
Fleetwood Mac stand up. Hendrix, Stones, Beatles. But a lot of music from
then sounds really crap. An aberration. I'm not a collector. My music's digital. I
never liked CDs, and I'm not an obsessive magpie, though I know an actor,
Richard Coyle (from Coupling), with a London lockup with thousands of
albums, including Jethro Tull. How sad! I hate people asking me to sign albums
then put them on eBay. No chance! Sod off! I f**king detest autograph-hunters
wasting my time. Get a life! (laughs)
What would you have asked your musical hero?
Jimmy Boyd. I saw him at the Free Trade Hall when I was 17, and I'd have
asked him to explain how it felt to be black in America in 1965?
Because black didn't mean anything to me as a Scot living near Manchester.
You just accepted everyone. I was horrified there were race riots there
Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?
Something with the spoken-word. Poetry. Maybe a book. But not rap - it's so
repetitious and sterile. All those hand signs - I don't feel comfortable with it. Why are
people enslaved to American street culture? Why can't they be interested in
housing estate clog-dancing or morris dancing?
You should get in the pulpit.
I did at Christmas and read poetry. I had a kind of strange power the priest didn't
have. My uncle and a cousin were vicars, and I can see how it becomes an
addiction. You're delivering someone else's message and I find that really
interesting, challenging, and quite dangerous. I'd also like to make a flute
album, because I play like no one else on the planet, and I don't want to be
remembered as the bloke who stands on one leg with a flute.
For the record, I spent some time getting the permission of Alan Lewis at Record Collector to reprint the text and then to transcribe it to the board.
So, without further ado, I am reposting the Q&A as it is as valid to post it here as it is valid to post anything about Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson.
Jethro Tull's Stand Up 2-CD is issued by EMI in April, and RC asked front-
man lan Anderson about the band's upcoming tour (see Gig Guide).
"We'll do some obscure, older stuff we don't normally do and some new
songs. A studio album is not something in the works, but we'll play them before
they're finalised".
Will there be any guests?
Not this time. I've been offered lots of collaborations in the last 18 months, but life is too
short. Six weeks to do somebody else's music? I'd rather concentrate on things closer to home
than packing and unpacking my suitcase for a rock opera in Germany.
Do you have any tapes of you playing before Tull?
No. I first picked up flute a few months prior, but I'd only been playing for eight months
when we recorded our first album in July 1968.
Did you have a favourite record shop then?
A hole-in-the-wall in Blackpool. Jeffrey Hammond, John Evans and I used to go
there and the guy behind the counter was helpful. He let us play music and it
was an important entree to the world of more eclectic music than on the radio
and TV. American jazz and blues, Alexis Korner, folk, like David Lewin and
Bert Jansch, and we took those influences and did something the Americans didn't.
Do you remember any albums you bought then?
Mose Allison's Swinging Machine - great improvisation and songs. Graham Bond
The Sound Of 66. It sounds crap today. But Eric Clapton and John Mayall and
Fleetwood Mac stand up. Hendrix, Stones, Beatles. But a lot of music from
then sounds really crap. An aberration. I'm not a collector. My music's digital. I
never liked CDs, and I'm not an obsessive magpie, though I know an actor,
Richard Coyle (from Coupling), with a London lockup with thousands of
albums, including Jethro Tull. How sad! I hate people asking me to sign albums
then put them on eBay. No chance! Sod off! I f**king detest autograph-hunters
wasting my time. Get a life! (laughs)
What would you have asked your musical hero?
Jimmy Boyd. I saw him at the Free Trade Hall when I was 17, and I'd have
asked him to explain how it felt to be black in America in 1965?
Because black didn't mean anything to me as a Scot living near Manchester.
You just accepted everyone. I was horrified there were race riots there
Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?
Something with the spoken-word. Poetry. Maybe a book. But not rap - it's so
repetitious and sterile. All those hand signs - I don't feel comfortable with it. Why are
people enslaved to American street culture? Why can't they be interested in
housing estate clog-dancing or morris dancing?
You should get in the pulpit.
I did at Christmas and read poetry. I had a kind of strange power the priest didn't
have. My uncle and a cousin were vicars, and I can see how it becomes an
addiction. You're delivering someone else's message and I find that really
interesting, challenging, and quite dangerous. I'd also like to make a flute
album, because I play like no one else on the planet, and I don't want to be
remembered as the bloke who stands on one leg with a flute.