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Post by maddogfagin on Jun 21, 2012 11:30:23 GMT
From The Oxford Student oxfordstudent.comBygones will not be bygonesPosted on 31 May 2012. Ophelia Stimpson speaks to Ian Anderson, lead singer of Jethro Tull and veteran musician… ‘Ian Anderson. Now he’ll be an interesting bloke to talk to.’ So said some of the more mature regulars at the pub when I told them I’d been offered an interview with the charismatic frontman of Jethro Tull. As far as I knew, he was ‘that one’ who successfully managed to incorporate the flute into rock music, with an appearance which wouldn’t look out of place if he were playing some sort of Keith Richard’s-esque cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean. So I gathered that there’d be a fair bit to him, but that was as far as it went. Apparently, though, if you don’t know about Ian Anderson then you ought to; in retrospect of the interview, I can vouch for this. It was in 1972 that Jethro Tull released Thick as a Brick (TAAB) – a concept album based on the fictitious schoolboy Gerald Bostock which humorously records his day-to-day shenanigans in one continuous 44-minute burst of progressive rock. And now, 40 years on, Anderson has returned with his creation of Thick as a Brick 2, which in a nutshell delves back into the concept of Gerald Bostock who would now be aged 50. So what’s changed? The first TAAB instantly became a number one Billboard Chart album; is it really worth trying to recapture Gerald’s fictional life so rooted in its context of 1972? It was at the end of 2010 that Anderson was experiencing a sort of ‘private meltdown’ as regards to the resurrection of Gerald Bostock. Having been asked to create a follow up album on numerous occasions, and having rejected all previous approaches, Anderson finally felt it was time to resurrect the character which generated much of the acclaim still associated with his career today. But how to make it relevant? It perhaps takes less effort than one would think, hints Anderson – imagining how a life has developed over the course of a few decades is perhaps, in fact, perfectly natural. “As we baby-boomers look back on our own lives, we must often feel an occasional ‘what-if’ moment. Might we, like Gerald, have become instead preacher, soldier, down-and-out, shopkeeper or finance tycoon?,” That’s all very well for our parents, I said, because they can map their own ‘what-if’ moments against the release of the original TAAB album. How can we young’uns relate to this sort of thing when we’re yet to know where our paths will take us? ‘Well, it can do you a lot of good, in fact’, says Ian. ‘Kids these days are bombarded with huge decisions at a very young age – all you need do is pick your A-level choices and already you’re sort of narrowing life down. The sooner you start to realise that, the sooner you can keep your options open or establish your preferences.’ This all sounds suspiciously similar to the speech from my 6th form open day. ‘I’m not trying to preach, and I’m not aiming my music at the youth alone. The point of this record is not to feed you a quaint little tale of a fictional person, the point is exactly to make many different people think.’ I said I found Ian’s reference to ‘thinking’ quite interesting; you can argue significant degrees of mental engagement seem like a foreign concept in today’s Top 40, where messages can be, well, insultingly literal. Ian picked up on this; “people don’t deserve to be spoon-fed – we’re an intellectual species, and if we dumb down music or any kind of art we become numb. You’re probably thinking “who is this silly old codger, making us think about stuff”, but someone needs to provide the antidote to all things ‘X factor’. None of us are stupid; I’ve had letters from prisoners in the USA telling me about how a certain nuance in my music has brought about a change in their intellectual outlook. If I can make people boxed into the label of ‘convict’ expand their mental horizons, I must be getting something right.” The conversation then flowed by seamless association to the subject of challenge. Anderson’s career has spanned a generous 40 years thus far and it is by no means waning. “I think the important thing is to keep your mind open and active at any age. I don’t read music but I’ve played my flute with symphony orchestras in my time – I’d never be able to interpret music in the same way as traditionally professional flautists, but likewise they’d struggle to apply an intricate flute solo to a piece of rock music. When I meet such musicians, it is always fascinating to test each other and see what we can get out of it.” I wondered about Ian’s thoughts on those making music from downloadable computer software in our current era of music. “I’m not refuting the fact that it takes talent to produce something good from computers. But the thing is, kids today grow up with computers – you lose that magic of taking the time to explore a new instrument. Computers are good because they creatively involve people, and creativity is always good, but I’m suspicious of music being made by people from software which has been assembled by someone else – it seems to me generic, and not music in real time.” There’s a lot to be said for listening to people like Ian Anderson – it’s easy to remain unaware and consign them to the passages of previous decades when actually their music is a lifetime craft. Anderson is an artisan, quietly and humbly producing a sound where he has paid strong attention to quality. He is not a part of history, but a stalwart of the present day. |
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Post by maddogfagin on Jun 26, 2012 7:24:19 GMT
Published on 25 Jun 2012 by bensommerMusic
Ben Sommer writes
"My interview with Ian Anderson, where we talk about Ian's compositional process, the Aqualung Remix, and his penchant for NOT listening to much music these days"
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Post by maddogfagin on Jun 26, 2012 8:16:21 GMT
moltenmetalreviews.wordpress.com24 June 2012 At 64 years of age and with a career that’s lasted more than 40 years, Ian Anderson isn’t ready to put down the flute and retire in silence. If anything, the legendary musician is more ambitious than ever. Calum Robson has a chat with Anderson to see what he could possibly have in store for us.
Most people at the age of 64 have the thought of a cosy retirement in mind. Not Ian Anderson. The iconic flute-playing Scotsman is in his 44th year of his career and he isn’t planning a retreat into obscurity just yet. His work as the mastermind and soul of Jethro Tull could end tomorrow and it would be revered among the best of progressive rock discographies. But Anderson has big plans to go further. What better way to do so than risk the legacy of a classic Tull album by releasing a sequel and announcing a 19-date UK tour? Never one to take the easy route, Anderson plans to take ‘Thick As A Brick’ and upcoming new record ‘Thick As A Brick 2 – Whatever Happened To Gerald Bostock?’ on the road. 40 years on from the concept album, Anderson has no inhibitions taking on part two.
“I’m not about to apologise for having an intellectual position – that I’m presenting a concept album in the year 2012 and frankly I don’t give a toss whether people like it or not,” he says. “I’m doing it for me not them – just to see if I can do it at age 64. It’s interesting for me to take on a big project while I can because it may not be the case three or four years down the line that I could cope with something like this.”
Anderson is as determined as ever to push his own boundaries in the most challenging of ways. The outrageous task of creating a sequel to ‘Thick As A Brick’ is ambitious enough when you consider the esteemed nature of the ground-breaking record. The original ‘Thick As A Brick’ was conceived in reaction to the heightening pretension of progressive rock. Seeing that the genre was souring, Anderson cleverly took action. After many critics labelled Aqualung a ‘concept’ album, he took one step further, announcing that ‘Thick As A Brick’ would be a concept album with lyrics based on a poem by an eight-year-old schoolboy. Tull’s light-hearted poke at the intentional alienation and obscurity of prog would highlight the band’s humorous side.
“It was a deliberate attempt to create a sort of album that was a little friendly dig at our peers like Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer and early Genesis who were often making music in a very complex way and perhaps sometimes being – to put it politely – a little esoteric in terms of lyrics! I think Jethro Tull had two things that those other bands didn’t have – one was the sense of a more comedic theatricality and the other was the ability to laugh at ourselves in that context.”
The good-natured humour might have kept Tull’s feet firmly on the ground amidst the splurge of pretension that riddled ‘prog’. But that isn’t to say that the very concept of their fictional child poet doesn’t carry a deeper meaning. In ‘Thick As A Brick 2’ Gerald Bostock’s life is now considered. In a sea of opportunity, where would the child poet be now? It all sounds very reflective. But it’s without a rose-tinted vision of a bygone era. Anderson is in no way living in the past.
“It’s an album for today,” Anderson explains. “It’s not going back to some nostalgic view of 1972. It’s a sequel but it doesn’t really involve what happened next. It’s not like Rocky 5 or Bat Out Of Hell 7 – it’s a big leap to 40-years in the future. I suppose Gerald Bostock, the mythical character, serves as a metaphor for the lives of all of us who are looking back on our lives from age 50, 60 or whatever it might be. It’s thinking about all of the possibilities of things that might have befallen us or decisions we made consciously in a life-changing sense – perhaps considering those fortunate or unfortunate chance occurrences that took our lives in different directions. Gerald Bostock is a vehicle to get us from then to now and consider the way life has changed in those 40 years.”
It’s a point of thought that we can all relate to, and Anderson is certainly not exempt from it. In his early years, the Dunfermline-born flutist tried a number of career paths himself – applying for the police force when he left school and later trying out as a local reporter before founding Tull in 1968. Since his childhood his interests have been as varied as his influences. It’s through his love of cats that the conversation moves to a reflection of his own childhood.
“When I was a very small boy – eight or nine years old – I realised I had a preference for cats rather than dogs but I always had a preference for arts and painting,” he says. “I wasn’t particularly interested in football. I suppose I was a natural football player and sports person, but I wasn’t physically gifted in the sense that I was a big tough guy. I didn’t like being there with a bunch of other guys, who were usually a bit boisterous and tended to cheat! I liked music, drawing, pussycats and painting – I liked girly things! If somebody had put a pair of knitting needles in my hand I probably would’ve taken up knitting or embroidery!”
These diverse passions have developed since his effeminate days as a child. Online he’s written a lengthy guide for a curry eater, a page about endangered wildcats and dedicated a special section to Deep Vein Thrombosis, following his battle with it in 1996 that nearly cost him his life. Anderson’s interests stretch indiscriminately across a vast spectrum –much like his musical background. Moving from blues and jazz to classical and world music, the singer seeks out new things to taste a variety of sounds.
“I always try to expose myself to music from a very wide background,” he says. “I wanted to dip a toe into that very broad picture of musical styles rather than getting locked into a certain kind of music. It was the case with some past members of Jethro Tull who clearly had a great preference for a specific kind of music and weren’t really able or willing to cross over into the slightly more eclectic music that forms the broad catalogue of Jethro Tull.”
Over the years, 28 people have walked through the doors of the progressive act. Whether it’s as long as seasoned guitarist Martin Barre – who has played with the group since their first performance in February 1968 at Marquee Club, London – or as brief but sweet as the iconic yet eccentric bassist Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, Tull’s history is rich with characters. But when the opportunity for change comes round, it leaves Anderson with tough decisions to make. The most recent of these decisions is putting the new album under his name and not including Barre. It’s all part of being leader and if anything, his attentive ear for perfection is arguably a trait that accounts for a lot of the band’s success.
“It’s like picking a football team,” he says. “You have to leave some folk out sometimes and the fans may understand that or they may not, but frankly that’s the job of the football manager. I’m the Alex Ferguson of the flute – I have to make some difficult choices sometimes!”
One man who can relate to this is Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, who himself has been at the centre piece of the band for the best part of 30 years. He’s a character that Anderson has had pleasure working with.
“Bruce Dickinson is one of the really nice guys that is just so easy to work with,” Anderson says. “He’s such an easy-going guy. He was one of my guests at Canterbury Cathedral before Christmas and we did a couple of Bruce Dickinson and Iron Maiden things but in a slightly different way, as befitting performance in the most famous cathedral in the Anglican Communion!”
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gongsi
Prentice Jack
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Post by gongsi on Jun 27, 2012 2:11:08 GMT
Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2012 15:06:25 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2012 1:47:57 GMT
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Post by maddogfagin on Jul 18, 2012 18:00:43 GMT
From www.iconfetch.comShow #159 - Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (7/16/12)  Ian Anderson is one of the most-recognizable figures in rock. For over 40 years, the wild-eyed flautist has led Jethro Tull through a string of classic albums, including Aqualung, Songs From the Wood, and Thick as a Brick. Anderson's latest project is a sequel to that last album, Thick as a Brick 2, in which he entertains several possibilities of what happened to main character Gerald Bostock (who was only eight years old in the original album). For the project, Anderson has returned to the progressive rock stylings which were so much a part of the original release. We also talk his band's most-famous album, Aqualung, and the problems they had in the studio. 23 minute audio at www.iconfetch.com/great-music-interviews/2012-shows/545-ian-anderson-upcoming-interview.html |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2012 21:10:29 GMT
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Post by maddogfagin on Jul 23, 2012 7:25:01 GMT
Chuck Corbin interviewing Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull
Published on 21 Jul 2012 by pagodatalent
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2012 13:19:51 GMT
Sorry if this is a repeat, it's in my recent bookmarks. Did I see it here? or maybe I captured it from somewhere else? (In the early morning brain)...lol I don't know... IAN ANDERSON on War, Religion and (why not?) Cat Stevens www.cliffordmeth.com/ianandersononwarreligionan.htmDecember 7, 2004 As Jethro Tull took a breather from the current leg of their European tour, Cliff 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. 2004 Clifford Meth |
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Post by nonrabbit on Jul 25, 2012 22:20:47 GMT
Thats the first time I've heard him talk about Northern Ireland in terms of religious sectarianism. Glenn Cornick on his Q&A answered one of my questions and said that Tull were one of the very few bands who played Belfast during the troubles. ".... We used to play the Ulster Hall in Belfast in 1969 - right in the middle of the troubles - tanks on the streets and all. We were about the only name band who had the guts to go into N. Ireland at the time and we were loved for it and always had a brilliant time. I used to talk to a lot of the kids and the Prods and Catholic kids never had any problems with each other at the shows....." Anderson as well as talking out has never been one to shy away from playing in places that some artists would maybe think twice. jethrotull.com/news/israeldates.html |
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Post by maddogfagin on Aug 20, 2012 7:46:09 GMT
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Post by maddogfagin on Aug 20, 2012 13:24:30 GMT
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Post by steelmonkey on Aug 20, 2012 16:56:56 GMT
Great interview...pity that 80% of the listeners will be dead by the date of the September gig being promoted....just came back from Florida...old folks cutting across three lanes to turn into their almost missed senior citizen enclaves....old guys with their pants pulled up to their chi-chis and all the facelifts, blue hair and walkers you care to see...oh yeah...and 7 concerts this Fall....many a few short miles apart.
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Post by maddogfagin on Aug 20, 2012 18:16:03 GMT
Great interview...pity that 80% of the listeners will be dead by the date of the September gig being promoted....just came back from Florida...old folks cutting across three lanes to turn into their almost missed senior citizen enclaves....old guys with their pants pulled up to their chi-chis and all the facelifts, blue hair and walkers you care to see...oh yeah...and 7 concerts this Fall....many a few short miles apart.  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2012 20:15:46 GMT
Ian Anderson lays some new bricks By DAVID BRINN 08/22/2012 Legendary leader of Jethro Tull performing ‘Thick As a Brick’ and sequel next month. www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Music/Article.aspx?id=282215In the current political environment of cultural boycotts targeting Israel, Ian Anderson is somewhat of an anomaly. The longtime theatrical front man for British classic rockers Jethro Tull has been arriving on our shores with rhythmic regularity for multiple performances, whether with his veteran group or as part of grandiose solo projects. He even donated his personal earnings from last August’s three performances by Tull to three non-profit organizations that work toward Jewish-Arab conciliation – Hand in Hand, Peace Child Israel and Neveh Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, and plans on doing the same with different organizations following his upcoming three shows – Ian Anderson performs Thick As a Brick I and II on September 6 at the Train Station in Jerusalem, September 7 at the Congress Center in Haifa and September 8 at the Ra’anana Amphitheater. “I don’t let those people bully me and tell me where to play, I make my own decisions,” said the 65-year-old Anderson recently from his home in England during a two-week band break between tours. “The fact that I might choose not to benefit financially from my performances and donate my earnings is my own decision as well.” Not one to hide his opinions, and possessed of a sharp wit that hasn’t softened over the years, Anderson acknowledged during a half-hour conversation that stepping into the Middle East maelstrom leaves him open to criticism from all sides. What kind of reactions did you get when you donated your proceeds to those organizations? “You’re walking on coals just by coming to Israel. People in my position will get hate mail from both sides of the fence, and believe me, I do. But you have to be a big boy and stand up for what you believe, quietly do what you have to do and hope you don’t offend too many people. But it’s better than doing nothing at all. “When I’m confronted by those idiots who refer to me as ‘falling into the clutches of feeding the Israeli government machine’ and call on me to boycott, I find it naïve and infantile. Nobody really gives a $h1t whether I show up for work or not – it’s not going to hurt the Israeli government if I don’t come and do a concert or if Elvis Costello [who cancelled booked shows in Caesarea three years ago] doesn’t come and do a concert. “The point is that we should go if we think we have a reason to go, and if we don’t feel confident or sure about that reason, we should stay home. In fact, why not just stay in bed, or stay under the bed for that matter, if you’re so fearful of getting involved. Sometimes there’s a way you can come and do something which is honorable and ultimately have more of an upside than a downside. “But it’s never a clear cut situation, and it’s always going to be complex. I’m in balance a ‘pro’ kind of guy and a positive supporter, but I can see lots of negatives as well, just as I can in my own country. But that doesn’t stop me from living here, and it wouldn’t stop me from living in Israel if I chose to do so... [pause and laugh] somebody else may stop me, though.” You’ll be donating your earnings again from these shows in Israel? I’ll be donating all my profits after paying for the band’s airfare, wages, insurance and things like that. I personally will not be benefiting in any financial way. But I will hopefully benefit in a way which is the reason I get on the stage in the first place – that strange self-indulgent pleasure you get when you offer something to people and they seem pleased to receive it. “Sometimes that’s enough, but I have to learn my living in other places then, so don’t expect me to play for free in New York City [laughs]. Because I’m not on the ground, it’s a little tricky as far as giving money. If it was London and I’m doing shows to restore cathedrals, which I’ve done, it’s very easy to see what the outcome is – you see the roof covered in scaffolding. “It’s not so easy when it’s thousands of miles away, so to some extent I need to take advice. I pretty much know who the recipients of the income from this year’s concerts will be, but I will take a little more advice on it. I’m responsible for making sure the money gets to the right place. Anybody can say to the promoter, ‘just don’t pay me and do something good with the money’ but we all know what happens – money gets squandered. Look at Live Aid.” Thick as a Brick is considered to be one of Jethro Tull’s masterpieces. How did it come about? (Thick as a Brick, Tull’s fifth album, was released in 1972, and includes one 44-minute song that changes mood and style multiple times. The original packaging, designed like a newspaper, claimed the album was a musical adaptation of a poem by eight-year-old Gerald Bostock, though the lyrics were actually written by Anderson.) The album before it, Aqualung, was a collection of songs with two or three of them sharing a theme of organized religion. I always said that it wasn’t a concept album, but the critics kept insisting it was. That’s what bands were doing back then, it was the flavor of the month. Prog rock was not yet called prog rock but it was going in that direction. With Thick As a Brick, it was my intention to write and record an album that would be a lighthearted spoof on, or parody, of the prog rock genre. On the face of it, it is indeed lighthearted, surreal and comedic, but parody is often a comic mask worn by tragedy and serious or dark characters. I think parody is a useful tool in luring people into something that perhaps has more serious undertones lurking behind the humorous side of things. In the case of Thick As a Brick, it was the passage of childhood through puberty into manhood. The claim that the poem was written by an eight-year-old boy was something that half the people caught onto straight away and the other half took time to realize it really wasn’t written by a little boy. Although it has some elements of humor and comedic delivery in terms of its stage performance particularly, it has plenty of dark and somber moods as well. Perhaps that’s a reflection on the way we all look back on our lives, with a mixture of regret, fear and gratitude that we managed to cross a few roads and didn’t get hit by speeding traffic, and looking back you think how lucky you are to be here now. I’m sure I’m not the only person to think that. Why did you decide to tinker with history last year to write and record Thick As a Brick II? I had always said no to the idea of doing a sequel to Aqualung or Thick As a Brick. I couldn’t see a way to go back in some nostalgic way and start stirring the coals of an almost dead fire into a moderately interesting blaze. But at the beginning of last year, I suddenly got this notion, and wrote a little music and some words and suddenly I was off. After two or three weeks, I pretty much had the album written. Later in the year, the band deliberately went into the same process as we did for the original album – we rehearsed for seven days and recorded for 10 days. It was a pretty energized process. Are there similarities or common themes with the first album? One thing we deliberately did was to choose the same sound palette used in the original album – the Fender jazz bass, the Hammond organ with rotating Leslie speakers, the Gibson Les Paul guitar – the same sonic values, but of course, with different musicians. You’ll recognize some deliberately carefully chosen little moments in the lyrics or musical line if you’re paying attention and so inclined – little pop-up flags saying ‘hey, remember me?’ I tried to be deft in touch. I didn’t want to litter the whole album with constant references but I didn’t want there to be none at all. The key element is the little recognizable intro on acoustic guitar and on the chorus, which appears on both albums. You have to be careful not to overdo it. Beethoven was pretty good at choosing what he would slip in in the way of familiar-sounding motifs, but he was quite good at not making it too obvious. For those that recognize them though, it’s ‘ah! I remember that! He did that in the Third Symphony... as well as the 7th and the 9th’ [laughs]. But that’s what being an artist is about. Take Cezanne. How may pictures did he paint of Mont Sainte-Victoire? They’re all different from each other. I think one of the reasons he, as was Monet, [was] so besotted with water lilies is that they realized the same scene could be painted in so many different ways. In music, there’s a restlessness on the part of composers who want to work in the limitations of 12 notes in the musical scale and a finite number of rhythms. You only have a certain number of tools in your kit bag, and it’s up to you what to do with them. What is the difference when it’s ‘Ian Anderson’ being billed as opposed to ‘Jethro Tull’? It’s important to remind people that I’m the guy who wrote the music in the first place. I was the producer, I paid for it, it was my baby – as is the new one. In a way, I’m getting to that point of wanting the recognition. With Frank Zappa, in the beginning it was the Mothers of Invention, then Frank Zappa and the Mothers, and then just Frank. He managed to do that in three or four years. I’ve taken longer pushing my name to the fore. It’s only been the last 10 years or so that I’ve done more tours using my own name, whether they be with an orchestra, an acoustic tour with a string quartet or some kind of religious Christmas-flavored tour. I use my own name because I don’t want the audience coming thinking they’re going to a Jethro Tull show and expecting to hear the best of Tull. That’s what’s suggested if on the ticket it says ‘Jethro Tull.’ That’s fine if that’s what I want to do. But with this project, I don’t really want people coming to the show if they’re expecting to hang out with their drinking buddies and hoot and holler for “Aqualung” in the quiet places. It’s a carefully planned device to keep the riffraff at home [laughs]. I don’t mean to be as disparaging as that sounds, but if you’re doing a show like this – which is more of a theatrical musical event than a rock show – you want the audience to enjoy it, including the spaces and the silences, which are very much part of the performance. It ruins it terribly for all involved if some drunken idiot thinks that that is the moment to shout out something. I would except the same kind of civility that’s afforded a string quartet, symphony orchestra or jazz group, where there’s a little more sophistication present. If it sounds like I’m a little above my station and am expecting too much from rock music fans, so be it – I’m absolutely unapologetic. But I’ve never run into those things in Israel. Israeli audiences are real pussycats, and that’s one of the reasons I like to keep coming back to play there.  Photo: j-tull.com |
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Post by maddogfagin on Sept 22, 2012 8:00:49 GMT
From www.soundspike.comQ&A: Ian AndersonStory by John Voket SoundSpike Contributor Published September 20, 2012 Whatever Happened To Gerald Bostock? It's a fair question, but more than likely one that might be asked by either a hard core prog-rock fan, or at least a casual follower of Jethro Tull. For those who may need a gentle reminder, the popular rock band led by the wild-eyed flautist, singer and songwriter Ian Anderson released its seminal concept album "Thick As A Brick" in 1972. Despite its decidedly complex and lengthy arrangements, "TAAB" became one of Jethro Tull's best selling and popular releases, topping the Billboard Album Chart. The lyrical story arc of "Thick As a Brick," as Anderson relates on his website, was credited at the time to the fictitious child character Gerald Bostock. As the story goes, Bostock entered a poetry competition and was subsequently disqualified from his win following an appearance on BBC-TV, where he uttered a profanity. It was also revealed that his parents had lied about his age. Instead of the eight-year-old his parents claimed him to be, he was actually nine at the time of writing the poem and 10 when he won the competition. But Bostock's poetry was repurposed for song lyrics that, in reality, eventually became the original "Thick As a Brick" album. So, 40 years on, what would Bostock -- aged 50 in 2012 -- be doing? After some prodding and serious lobbying by prog-rock vocalist-turned-record exec Derek Shulman of Gentle Giant fame, Anderson, who initially balked, began to warm to the concept of imagining Bostock in adulthood. The idea began generating creative traction and within just a few weeks, a present day sequel, appropriately titled "Thick As a Brick 2," emerged. Perhaps the greatest joy of listening through "TAAB2" is discovering the subtle and not-so-subtle references to the original work couched in comparably stellar musicianship -- as well as the overlay of ideas and wit that were already well formed in the mind of nine-year-old Bostock (or Anderson) back in '72. "TAAB2," Anderson said, examines the possible different paths that the precocious young schoolboy might have taken later in life, while at the same time, creating alter-ego characters whose song-section identities illustrate the hugely varied potential twists and turns of fate and opportunity. "Not just for Gerald, but to echo how our own lives develop, change direction and ultimately conclude through chance encounters and interventions, however tiny and insignificant they might seem at the time," Anderson states. With "TAAB2" receiving good reviews and overwhelming fan support, and after a well-received tour abroad, Anderson brings the "Thick As a Brick 1 & 2 Tour" to the U.S. The outing kicked off earlier this week in Miami. Plans call for Anderson and his backing band of David Goodier, Scott Hammond, Ryan O'Donnell, John O'Hara and Florian Opahle to perform the entire first and second album back-to-back and in their entirety -- and possibly with a few other select "greatest hits" as an encore -- during the tour. Anderson spoke to SoundSpike ahead of his arrival in the states, discussing the challenges of reproducing the complexities of these two companion "bookend" creations of "Thick As a Brick" that were conceived nearly 40 years apart. SoundSpike: Given the hit-oriented manner in which albums are produced today, it's unusual to sit and listen to an entire album front-to-back that is both cohesive and not apparently constructed around a few numbers sanctioned as hopeful hit singles. Ian Anderson: Well at the time I was writing it in February 2011, I suppose I had some trepidation about taking on a big project of that sort. But within two or three days of starting work on it, I thought the ideas are coming thick and fast, so it's not something that is going to dry up on me halfway through. And indeed the problem became trying to shoehorn in an awful lot of stuff into the physical limitations of making a single project that would just about fit on a vinyl record. In fact, for those who would like the physicality of owning such a thing, I did a special vinyl release of "Thick As a Brick 1 & 2." We cut the thing on copper instead of acetate at Abbey Road studios in London. After so many years of being in a studio and actually cutting a record, I thought it sounded pretty good. Mind you we were using the same equipment and materials used when the Beatles were recording there. The musical and stylistic similarities between parts one and two are amazing. You really seemed to have nailed down the other bookend here 40 years hence. If you're writing something like that, you have to find that middle path really between making it too disassociated in terms of style and content and sound -- and not wanting it to be some sort of nostalgic trip into the past. It's a question of trying to find that good balance. And that balance was, for me, trying to make an album for 2012 in terms of subject and material whilst retaining some of the sonic qualities of the original through the use of the same instruments, and generally the same approach to writing and recording -- which was doing it very much like a live performance. Although this was somewhat more efficient because on the original, I let myself get a little ambitious in the studio adding overdubs, extra voices guitar and flute parts that I actually couldn't play live. Once you start putting on two flutes you're in trouble -- or I'm in trouble, especially if I have to play guitar and flute at the same time, which does occur in many of the passages on the original "Thick As a Brick" album. So how do you manage to replicate the original album live on the current tour? I have an extra hand on stage on this tour to help cover all the lines that otherwise would be missing because they are impossible to perform with only five people. It is an experience to try and bring these two things side-by-side on a live stage, and the fact there is a 40-year gap between them which is quickly crossed over by the vehicle that is the young Gerald Bostock growing up and becoming an adult, and through the various possibilities of life outcomes of a little boy. Those take us quickly into a series of contemporary songs that cover some of the passages along the way -- sometimes with a degree of humor, and sometimes with a degree of bleakness and harshness, but trying to keep things varied in terms of emotion. It's not a barrel of laughs, but it has its comedic moments, too. So how is this fusion of two complicated projects shaking out in concert? The first 15 or 20 shows were a big learning curve for band and crew. But during the latter part of the first tour, I think we began settling in and beginning to enjoy the little moments that come from the improvisational passages. To begin with, it's an enormous amount of stuff to learn and remember. To begin with it was a full-on feat of memory and concentration, but now enough of it is routine in terms of the arrangements that we can settle back a bit and kind of enjoy those flights of fancy moments which make every night a little different than the one before. And it keeps the Alzheimer's at bay by pushing the brain to that degree of concentration -- that's no joke by the way. I'm much happier stretching my mind doing this than I would going off somewhere fishing, or God forbid, taking up golf...(laughing). Is the live show just TAAB 1 & 2, or do you encore with a few more 'greatest hits'? Well the whole (TAAB) takes two hours, but there are occasions where we are forced to play a somewhat irrelevant encore of past material. For the most part we look at it as a theatrical musical presentation, and hope we can get away without playing "Aqualung" or "Locomotive Breath," which is just like finishing an eight-course meal and somebody brings out another chunk of steak and says "eat this." Asking for people's time and concentration as an audience, you'd think most people would want to run screaming for the exit doors by the time we finish part two. But sadly, that's not the case much of the time. So we get caught up in the inevitable encores once in awhile. Before you were prodded into considering this new project, had you spent any substantial amount of time thinking about Gerald Bostock previously -- back when he was 40 or 25? The material of "Thick As a Brick" was never far from my consciousness because we'd play 10 or 15 minutes of the album quite frequently in concert over the years. But to play the whole thing in its entirety was never something I gave any serious consideration to, until about three years ago when it crossed my mind. So I listened to the album and tried to play most of the way through it just to see, out of curiosity really, how difficult it was. And I figured I could learn to play it all again over the period of a few days. But as soon as I started analyzing the arrangements, I knew there would have to be lines of music dropped and lines of vocals dropped. It was only when I started working on "Thick As a Brick 2" that I thought I could find another performer who could play the flute or sing. So I tried out a young actor who worked on Pete Townsend's musical "Quadrophenia." And we booked Ryan O'Donnell to do these upcoming tours. He's sort of an alter-ego for me although he's in his late 20s. As an actor he's able to bring a dramatic interpretation to whatever he might be asked to do -- and it's an interesting dimension to have. We gave him lots of parts to play in both pieces. Much of the electric guitar work is reminiscent of Martin Barre's contributions on the original album and the old-school Jethro Tull material. How much did you work with Florian and the production team to craft the electric guitar contributions? And have you had any reaction from Martin about TAAB2? Well, not directly. But I did have a talk with Martin about this year and the plans I had. And it was determined that this year would be a time for the other [Jethro Tull] musicians to go and do other projects. You know, all of the musicians in the Ian Anderson band except for Ryan have been part of Jethro Tull in recent years. It's probably most difficult for young Florian to have to step into the shoes of someone who has played most of the Jethro Tull shows since 1969 when Martin joined. But Florian understands quite well to what degree he must recreate some of the style of Martin Barre's contributions. And he seems to do it quite well, no disrespect to Martin. Of course on TAAB2 he is doing his own thing -- we actually sat down and made demos of most of the material in March of 2011. But for the original "Thick As a Brick" in concert, the musicians have to take as their starting point the musical notation of those people who did it in 1972, and it was mostly written and arranged by me. A band is a band to some degree -- they are given the parts they are expected to play. I'm not embarrassed to say that Jeffrey Hammond was taught the bass part note-for-note, and he did a great job playing it. But when David, our bass player today, learns those parts, he's learning the parts I gave to Jeffrey back in the day. It's when contemporary band members have to find that improvisational moment, when I think you take a couple of elements from previous performers' inventions. But you have to put your own stamp of nuances and adventure into it. It would be really silly to copy things note-for-note, but you can pay homage to your predecessors -- create something based on the previous model. September 2012 18 - Miami Beach, FL - The Fillmore Miami Beach at The Jackie Gleason Theater 19 - West Palm Beach, FL - Kravis Center for the Performing Arts - Dreyfoos Hall 21 - St Augustine, FL - St. Augustine Amphitheatre 22 - Orlando, FL - Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre 23 - Clearwater, FL - Ruth Eckerd Hall 24 - Fort Myers. FL - Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall 25 - Fort Pierce, FL - Sunrise Theatre 27 - Atlanta, GA - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre 28 - Asheville, NC - Thomas Wolfe Auditorium 29 - Durham, NC - Durham Performing Arts Center 30 - Richmond, VA - Richmond CenterStage � Carpenter Theatre October 2012 1 - Newport News, VA - Ferguson Center For the Arts 3 - Lynn, MA - Lynn Auditorium 4 - Uncasville, CT - Mohegan Sun Arena 5 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre 6 - Atlantic City, NJ - Caesar's Circus Maximus 7 - Newark, NJ - NJ Performing Arts Center-Prudential Hall 17 - San Diego, CA - Balboa Theatre 18 - Santa Ynez, CA - Chumash Casino 19 - Rancho Mirage, CA - Agua Caliente Casino - The Show 20 - Long Beach, CA - Terrance Theater, Long Beach Performing Arts center 22 - Salt Lake City, UT - Abravanel Hall 23 - Denver, CO - Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre 25 - Catoosa, OK - Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa - The Joint 26 - Grand Praire, TX - Verizon Theatre 27 - Houston, TX - Bayou Music Center 28 - Austin, TX - Paramount Theatre 30 - Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium November 2012 1 - Milwaukee, WI - Pabst Theater 2 - Chicago, IL - Chicago Theatre 3 - Detroit, MI - Fox Theatre 4 - Akron, OH - Akron Civic Theatre 5 - Newark, OH - Midland Theatre |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2012 14:43:10 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2012 22:29:22 GMT
TThis post as tthanks to the Jethro Tull Forum  Thanks to all of you! CHEERS! Ian Anderson: Jethro Tull’s “Ordinary” Rock & Roll Legend An Interview June 2011 by Marc Shapiro www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2011/06/28/jethr-tull-ian-anderson-jethro-tulls-ordinary-rock-roll-legend/Jethro Tull front man Ian Anderson is quick to let the numbers do the talking. His band is going on 43 years, more than most marriages last. The landmark album, Aqualung, the prime distillation of the band’s rock/jazz/folk/baroque musical approach as well as a classic rock staple, is 40 years old this year. Anderson on stage is still a flute-packing joy to behold. Anderson was in a reflective/talkative mood prior to setting sail on his umpteenth Jethro Tull U.S. tour and he was quick to jump on the fact that, despite his often demonic presence on stage, off stage he was quite normal. Rock Cellar Magazine: How come we never see you in the scandal sheets and gossip rags? Ian Anderson: Quite frankly, the reason you don’t see me in the tabloids is that I’m not that interesting. The reality is that I’m a boring middle class person. I’m not the person whose lifestyle appeals to the readers of the gossip rags. I’m not newsworthy because I don’t get involved in bad stuff. It would be nice to think that somewhere within me lurks a Charlie Sheen. But sadly it doesn’t. My demons only come out when I’m on stage. I don’t take them back to the Holiday Inn with me. RCM: You’re into conservation and farming, you don’t drive fancy cars, you’re in a stable marriage and you have normal children. Does having that ‘normal’ side help you as a performer? IA: Having that other side helps me as a person but it is not a source of inspiration. It does not help me in making music. For me, it’s just the rounding off of a personality and a life. From 1979-2000 Anderson owned and co-managed Strathaird Salmon (Fish Farms & Processing Plant) in Scotland. Footage from 1987. RCM: The ’70s were a pretty wild time for rock and roll. Because of the more intellectual/progressive nature of your music, it seems you were pretty much above all the concert craziness. IA: You would think so but that was not the case at all. When Jethro Tull toured in the early 70s it was about police, crowd control, drugs and violence. We would often be involved in things that were regrettable and scary. When things got out of control at shows I would tell the audience to not taunt the police and I would tell the police to not take electric cattle prods to the audience. I tried to be the mediator in what was sometimes a very tense concert situation. RCM: But on at least one occasion you were reportedly responsible for a major arena saying “no more rock and roll.” IA: You’re talking about the Red Rocks Arena in 1971. If you believe the news reports, Jethro Tull was responsible for closing the arena to rock and roll for five years. I remember that incident with vivid clarity and I recall that it was only our efforts in getting up there and calming both the audience and the police that kept the whole incident from turning into something worse. Happily those days are now in the past for us. RCM: Jethro Tull has been around for 43 years. IA: Yes. Of course there have been lineup changes over the years. But Jethro Tull has been recording and touring without a break the entire time. RCM: What about the longevity of Jethro Tull surprises you? IA: Not so much today. There are many of our peers in the music business that are still around. The Rolling Stones are a perfect example. I suppose there are a lot of us who should be surprised that we’re still around. In the case of Jethro Tull I think that once we had been around for a few years we probably had the feeling that, unless we did something really stupid, we would be around for a long time. RCM: So you really felt in your gut that you’d still be around and rocking 4 decades later? IA: I think that there was enough clear vision back then to think that one day I might be one of those old guys who are still carrying on in a respectable manner. When I was first starting out, it was harder to think that, with a physically demanding music like rock and roll, I would be able to keep it up into my 50′s and 60′s. But having gotten to the point, I find it not to be that difficult. I think the first two or three years I didn’t expect it to last. But then, as a 20 year old, I looked around and saw all of these blues and classical musicians still performing well into their 80s; I thought why not? RCM: What were your feelings when you went into the studio to record em>Aqualung? IA: I certainly hoped that it would be something special because, at the time, it was a make or break album for us. Jethro Tull had modest success with its first three albums and we were beginning to achieve some level of success as live performers. But we really needed an album that was going to nail it or it could have marked the beginning of a slippery slope to oblivion. For me it was an important album and it was also a pretty difficult album to make. RCM: How do you mean difficult? IA: We were recording in a brand new and unproven studio. The acoustics were difficult and there were numerous technical issues to deal with. I felt pretty comfortable with the songs but some of them were quite difficult to record. The two prime tracks, Aqualung and Locomotive Breath were pretty strong songs in different ways. The song My God was also quite strong. But I wasn’t quite sure if, sonically, they were working out. I felt the songs were good, the arrangements were good and the performances were okay. It just was not proving to be a very easy album to make. I was quite nervous until the album was released and the response from critics and fans was largely positive. RCM: So Aqualung was finally an instant success to your way of thinking? IA: It was anything but. The album was not an instant success straight out of the box. It sold modestly over a period of many years. But sales grew because we were constantly touring and we played many of the songs in the album from our set. At the end of the day, Aqualung has had its life as a record but more importantly, it was the strength of the songs. RCM: You’ve been called a true musical innovator. Do you agree with that assessment? IA: That’s not for me to say. I’d like to think that in a lot of the music I’ve written over the years, there are musical and lyrical lines that are my property and that you don’t really find in the work of other people. Most of the time I try to find ways of expressing ideas and very often visual references using words and phrases that are not a part of the pop vocabulary. There are other people who I felt had that claim to originality; people like Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. When you get to bands like Bon Jovi and Foreigner, then you tend to get a nice soft blanket – that comfort zone of pop lyricism. RCM: What do you listen to in your private moments? IA: The sound of rain falling and the wind in the trees. There’s very little in the way of music I listen to. I stopped being a music listener when I became a professional musician. I don’t want to hear something that is going to filter into my subconscious and into my music. But also because I’m playing music just about every day of my life. It’s so much of my life because of what I do that listening to music as a recreation is not a real important part of my life. I spend so many hours with my own stuff that it’s nice to just have a bit of silence. RCM: Do you think you’re slowing down and getting old? IA: There are things you find harder to do as you get older. You have to expect that there will be increasing limitations. It hasn’t really impacted on my ability to play instruments. But as a singer I’ve found that things change. When I reached my forties, I began to notice that I was losing a note or two at the top of my range. Fortunately I’m not an opera singer. Watching Pavarotti’s singing ability decline as he grew older was heartbreaking. I’m a rock singer so I can get away with things a bit longer. Some things get harder but experience and finesse tends to cover up for that. There are days when I have jet lag or a cold and those are the days you know are not going to be easy. RCM: Will you know when it’s time to pack it in and just ride gloriously off into the sunset? IA: I’m not sure that I will! Most of us want to die with our boots on and I think most of us will end up carrying on longer than we should. I play and sing everyday. It’s important that I know that I’m still okay. Photographer: Martin Webb is the assistant editor/writer/photographer for the Jethro Tull fanzine A New Day.   |
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Post by nonrabbit on Oct 2, 2012 8:20:17 GMT
Great post and pics thanks !!
RCM: You’ve been called a true musical innovator. Do you agree with that assessment?
IA: That’s not for me to say. I’d like to think that in a lot of the music I’ve written over the years, there are musical and lyrical lines that are my property and that you don’t really find in the work of other people. Most of the time I try to find ways of expressing ideas and very often visual references using words and phrases that are not a part of the pop vocabulary.
There are other people who I felt had that claim to originality; people like Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. When you get to bands like Bon Jovi and Foreigner, then you tend to get a nice soft blanket – that comfort zone of pop lyricism.
He could never be accused of being big-headed about his amazing career.
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Post by nonrabbit on Oct 6, 2012 8:57:39 GMT
Interview via the official site from the New Jersey News site;“A concept album in 2012?” asks Ian Anderson, rhetorically. “If I was giving myself good advice, I’d tell myself never to attempt it. “However, I am not a right-thinking person.” He’s kidding, at least a little. Anderson, the stork-legged frontman and flutist of Jethro Tull, is one of the most thoughtful classic rockers, writing with wit and insight about the vanity of propriety, the lure of organized religion and the senselessness of war. He also possesses a wicked sense of humor — one that prompted him to cut “Thick As a Brick,” a set he describes as a send-up of the then-fashionable full-length statement albums of bands such as Yes and Pink Floyd, in 1972. Forty years later, “Thick As a Brick 2,” released as an Anderson solo disc rather than a Tull album, is no satire. It’s an attempt to follow up on Gerald Bostock, the narrator of the original LP, and ask, in all seriousness, what might have become of him. That’s the sort of idea that would occur to few other rockers, but when Anderson has an idea, he’s never afraid to follow it through to its conclusion. “At age 65, I felt I could do it,” says Anderson, who will perform both the new album and its predecessor in New York on Friday, in Atlantic City on Saturday and in Newark on Sunday. “At 70, maybe I won’t have the same energy. I decided to do it for me, because I can.” Not all Tull fans heard “Thick as a Brick” as a satire; consequently, it’s entered the canon of ’70s concept albums, alongside the artists Anderson was poking fun at. To revisit “Thick” meant re-engaging with prog-rock, a style he’d pointedly left behind on his recent solo discs. “I had to use all of the classic prog-rock instruments: Fender jazz bass, the glockenspiel, the overdriven Hammond B-3 organ. And I didn’t want to be conspicuously using modern technology. I needed that sonic continuity to frame the songs and the lyrics. Sonically, there are little reminder moments that are reprises of elements in the original ‘Thick as a Brick’ — enough to get noticed, but not enough to get on your nerves.” Returning to “Thick as a Brick” meant picking up the story of Bostock, who, on the original album, is the 8-year-old author of a prize-winning epic poem that takes on the British class system. “I wrote a few scenarios and tried to look at their outcomes, and imagined the life Gerald might have led over the last 40 years,” says Anderson. “I wanted to pinpoint some of the differences between life then and life now, which meant technology and communications. So this one became rueful, because it’s about adulthood. It’s a little cynical, and maybe a little downbeat, too.” The futures Anderson imagines for Bostock are troubling ones, reflecting his disenchantment with the state of English society. There’s Bostock the white-collar swindler, Bostock the hypocritical clergyman, Bostock the small-town shopkeeper, Bostock the homeless gay man adrift in the city and, most dispiritingly, Bostock the soldier sent to Afghanistan. Some of these variations resonate with earlier Tull characters: the vagrant Aqualung, the pious vultures of “My God,” the victims of strife on the “War Child” album and ennui on “Passion Play.” All five versions end with Bostock in suburbia and virtually friendless. Anderson calls this an acknowledgment of the human psyche’s need to believe in fate, but whatever star has guided Gerald is a dim one indeed. Even a gifted child, he seems to be saying, has nothing to meet him but a dead end. Yet the album isn’t dreary. Anderson’s use of language means the set is thoroughly poetic; “Thick as a Brick 2” is the rare rock album that reads as well as it plays. If it’s out of step with contemporary pop, the iconoclastic Anderson wouldn’t have it any other way. “When I was young, records were bite-sized portions, McDonald’s chicken nuggets. Then, in the ’60s, technology caught up with the music that pre-existed it. The long player meant you could hear a Beethoven symphony on record. The concept album was born. “Some of it was pretentious and precocious, but I think Jethro Tull did what it did with a sense of parody and real British humor. “Now, with downloading and iTunes, we’re back to chicken nuggets.”He really has a great way with words  hope we don't find out that he has employed a speech writer all the time
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Post by nonrabbit on Oct 6, 2012 15:15:20 GMT
sorry TT ..if that is you |
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Post by steelmonkey on Oct 6, 2012 15:25:05 GMT
grab your ankles Non-rabbit....
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Post by nonrabbit on Oct 6, 2012 18:07:23 GMT
grab your ankles Non-rabbit.... shocking and speaking of shocking here's a preview Bernieboy of the warm up act at your forthcoming concert - I can just see you in that audience................... the boy is good the boy is good  ![]() i48.images obliterated by tinypic/1znn6kz.jpg[/IMG] uncanny |
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tullist
Master Craftsman
Posts: 478
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Post by tullist on Oct 6, 2012 19:09:06 GMT
Patti, perfect entry music for the grand musical explorations of Bernie, aka Steel Monkey, to be had at about the 2.20 mark. Seeing the happiness it brings to those, even older than us people, makes me spare it the stick. Yeah I actually DID have it on that long as it saw me in the kitchen making coffee, when the great revilree at 2.20 began.
From certain angles the gentleman looks a little distressingly like Jon Noyce.
Love your new signature Patti.
Btw, that guy will go down a storm at a place near Bernie, like, Berkeley, be a hard act for our man to follow.
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Post by steelmonkey on Oct 6, 2012 19:50:10 GMT
Can't wait to get home from work and watch the damn thing...maybe I can provoke a mentally ill person to slug me so i can leave early....nah...what if they put me in a coma thru my Brick gig date? Just 12 days away but who's counting ?
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Post by steelmonkey on Oct 7, 2012 3:18:09 GMT
NOT FUNNY....got my first ever senior discount last weekend...told the waitress i was indeed turning 55 this month and she let me order off the senior menu. Scary how just around the corner that kind of venue and that kind of entertainment looms....see you there...we'll go big dipping daily...
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Post by nonrabbit on Oct 7, 2012 8:14:37 GMT
NOT FUNNY....got my first ever senior discount last weekend... told the waitress i was indeed turning 55 this month and she let me order off the senior menu. Scary how just around the corner that kind of venue and that kind of entertainment looms....see you there...we'll go big dipping daily... Your kidding me - what'd you do that for?!! We're exactly the same age and now your making me feel old ...barsteward!! Your making the scenario of shuffling to the Dayroom of the old folks home called Autumn Days or some other patronising name seem real! Listening to some bloke called Dave playing Tull/Led/Genesis on his Yamaha and asking if we remember this one as we try to tap our arthritic feet to the beat. Shoot me now!! |
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Post by nonrabbit on Oct 7, 2012 8:17:57 GMT
Patti, perfect entry music for the grand musical explorations of Bernie, aka Steel Monkey, to be had at about the 2.20 mark. Seeing the happiness it brings to those, even older than us people, makes me spare it the stick. Yeah I actually DID have it on that long as it saw me in the kitchen making coffee, when the great revilree at 2.20 began. From certain angles the gentleman looks a little distressingly like Jon Noyce. Love your new signature Patti. Btw, that guy will go down a storm at a place near Bernie, like, Berkeley, be a hard act for our man to follow. Are you sharing a secret there Ray - Does Bernie have a penchant for Dave and his yamaha? |
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Post by maddogfagin on Oct 7, 2012 8:32:55 GMT
NOT FUNNY....got my first ever senior discount last weekend... told the waitress i was indeed turning 55 this month and she let me order off the senior menu. Scary how just around the corner that kind of venue and that kind of entertainment looms....see you there...we'll go big dipping daily... Your kidding me - what'd you do that for?!! We're exactly the same age and now your making me feel old ...barsteward!! Your making the scenario of shuffling to the Dayroom of the old folks home called Autumn Days or some other patronising name seem real! Listening to some bloke called Dave playing Tull/Led/Genesis on his Yamaha and asking if we remember this one as we try to tap our arthritic feet to the beat. Shoot me now!! OMG - I'm getting this all the time now. Discount haircuts (only on a Friday), free bus pass, old age pension claim form waiting to be filled out, my team leader at work saying to others "but Graham's 64 and he can do it, so why can't you?", ad infinitum. Perhaps IA will think about reduced concert admission prices for those of us of a certain age now that he's 65. No, probably not. |
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/ surfing through Google Canadian pages: Rock Island, surf's up!
But probably best in Humor, Games and Fun Thanks for sharing.
