Ian Anderson interviews

[maddogfagin]

meaww.com/ian-anderson-jethro-tull-frontman-calls-donald-tump-bolsonaro-scott-morrison-criminals

EXCLUSIVE | 'Jethro Tull' frontman Ian Anderson slams Trump, Bolsonaro over climate change: 'These people are criminals'
'They should be tried for crimes against humanity for their ignorance and their appalling dismissal of the facts regarding climate change,' the rock legend told MEAWW

By Remus Noronha
Updated On : 21:18 PST, Dec 12, 2019



'Jethro Tull' singer and flutist Ian Anderson has built quite a career for himself in the music industry. He may be a rock legend but what truly concerns him nowadays isn't what's on the charts or what's playing on the radio; not in the dark and troubling times that we live in.

In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide, Anderson spoke about his concerns with regard to climate change, something that has been on his mind since 1973.

"There are a lot of people who think of climate change as only something they've learned about in the last few months," Anderson said. "And of course a lot of people who haven't learned about it at all, like President Trump or Bolsonaro in Brazil or the loathsome Scott Morrison in Australia. I mean, these people are criminals. They should be tried for crimes against humanity for their ignorance and their appalling dismissal of the facts regarding climate change and what is now being quite correctly described as the climate emergency."

"But these buffoons are either men of little intellect or men of unbelievable arrogance and desperation to secure their own positions of power through denial of very real issues in order to win votes from the fossil fuel industry, coal miners, and so on in the heartlands of America; or loggers and farmers in Brazil, or indeed, the fossil fuel industry in Australia," he explained. "I mean, Australia is a great example of getting its comeuppance right now, when you look at the smog over Australia from burning of fires in the bush and Scott Morrison's attitude towards climate change, you will see that this is havoc being wrought upon an insidious prime minister who refuses to face facts."

"In Australia, in the USA, even in my own country, you can pretty much divide 50-50 those who are arrogant, selfish, concerned only with today and those that care about the future of their children and their grandchildren," Anderson continued. "We are living increasingly in dramatically divided societies. And back in the times of 'Aqualung', when I wrote 'Locomotive Breath', it was a song based on globalization, population growth, the issues of being on a runaway train out of control. It was a metaphor for humanity being on this crazy out-of-control engine that has no way to slow down. And that's the world we live in today. And it's not particularly prophetic, I wasn't the only person saying these things, but people didn't listen. And people don't listen today. I would imagine that 99% of the people who've ever listened to the song 'Locomotive Breath' don't actually stop and think, 'What's this about? What's he getting at here?' And unfortunately, that's the message. It's very, very difficult as a songwriter to get these messages across and all you can do is try and hope that a few people will understand what you're singing about and perhaps make their own dedicated effort to try and understand these issues and come to their own conclusions."

[jethrotull]

Ian and his righteous indignation. I am very aware of the reality of Climate Change, but I certainly didn't learn about it from listening to Locomotive Breath. Back in the early 70s Tull played this song to millions of us stoned-out teenagers, did he really expect us to understand what he was singing about? If it was so important to him to get the message out he would have made the meaning more clear. He has always stated that he expected his listeners to come up with their own interpretations of his lyrics. It's really only in recent years - as Climate Change has grown so serious - that he has explained that was the intended message of Locomotive Breath. I do share his attitude about national leaders who downplay the dangers in order to stay in power. The bible says that God will put to ruin those ruining the earth. It seems that in the race to chase the mighty dollar there is no way to slow down.

[maddogfagin]

www.theaquarian.com/2019/03/06/aq-interview-ian-anderson-of-jethro-tull/





AQ Interview: Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull

Clifford Meth March 6, 2019 Buzz

Marking half a century since first touring North America, Jethro Tull returns to New Jersey on March 9 at the Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, and March 12 at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown. Fronted by founder and master flautist Ian Anderson, Tull remains one of the biggest selling progressive rock artists of all time. Their anniversary concerts will feature a broad mix of material, much of it from the band’s formative period. Recently, AQ spoke with Anderson about the group’s long and storied career.

The recent theatre shows are a far cry from the extravaganzas of the 1970s. I recall seeing Jethro Tull at Shea Stadium in 1976, where the screens were as large as the stages you’re now appearing on.

Jethro Tull has always been a theatre band. We started off in the clubs, playing in rather dark, smelly, windowless places with all of the claustrophobic conditions that that imposed backstage as well as onstage. You call them “performing arts centers”—we just call them theatres. But that’s always been my preferred place to perform. I like a proper backstage with a working toilet; I like the theatrical entrance of walking onto a stage and being able to run away again when I feel so inclined. It’s much more enjoyable. In places like Madison Square Garden, you feel cornered. There’s never a moment of contemplation during a concert. I remember watching Led Zeppelin—we were supporting them at Madison Square Garden, and I was standing in the back watching these tiny little matchstick men. They were just so far away. People remember it fondly because that was the stage of the art of the day—not very good sound systems, not really impressive lights, and apart from glitzy stage costumes, you really couldn’t make out anything. I don’t really enjoy doing that. It’s not really theatrical. I was so disenchanted by the end of 1972, when the Thick As A Brick tour was over, that I said to our manager when I got back to England, “I’m done. I just don’t want to do this anymore. It’s not music. It’s just a spectacle.” I came close to quitting. But, of course, we continued to get booked in the bigger venues for years to come.

You once said, “Jethro Tull is a concert band and the albums are just souvenirs.” Maybe you were just being glib. But now the entire way of delivering music has changed.

I had the first MP3 player that was produced, and I thought it was definitely a step up from cassettes. It was certainly a whole lot better than the world that we had in the ‘70s when people were listening to music largely on cassettes or vinyl. Music came into its own in the digital age. But Spotify and Apple Music and the like have really spelled the death knell for the major record companies who are holding on by a thread, as well as for most musicians today who might hope to make a living from recording. There’s always going to be somebody who becomes an enormous success and for whom the cumulative effect of hundreds of millions of downloads around the world will grace his or her bank balance, but I rather think that the rank and file of artists are lucky to sell a few thousand records these days. Things don’t favor the young recording artist in these last 10 years or so. It’s a tough, tough job. You’re better off studying to be a check-out person at a supermarket, I think.

Authors have been profoundly impacted by similar changes in publishing. The once vaunted mid-list has all but disappeared and it’s no longer feasible for publishers to take a chance on new writers.

Even worse for music writers, I imagine. Anyone can now be a music critic because everyone has a blog. I get these requests from people all the time—people claiming to be this and that—just people trying to bluff their way into an interview. Perhaps they have a website and post it, but how many people actually read it? The rock magazines of the ‘70s had colossal readerships. In fact, I’m working with one of the writers from that era on a Jethro Tull book. There are still people around doing it—people with that passion for music—but most don’t have the vehicles anymore to be able to publish their work.

We lived in an era where we were blessed with an economy that placed value on creativity. You paid money to buy a movie ticket and to go to concerts and to buy records and to buy books. But entertainment now has become relatively cheap. In 1976, a copy of Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die was retailing for $6.98. If you go online today, it’s $6.95—almost exactly the same figure, but after inflation of perhaps 400% or 500%. Not only that, Amazon will deliver it to your door. So, for a lot of people, this is good news—music and entertainment are cheaper than they’ve ever been… unless you want to go to actually see your favorite musicians perform. You’re paying hundreds now for a ticket, and not necessarily a very good ticket. But you can’t actually do a show cheaper. I think if bands could sell a $10 or $20 ticket, a lot of us would do that. We agree that tickets are way too expensive. In the UK, the cost is about the equivalent of $45 for a top ticket, but that’s less than half of what it will cost in the USA, where people are used to paying more. Why? Because we have to work with commercial promoters, agents… everybody wants their piece of the action, and we pay much more in the way of costs than when we control the economics by producing our own concert tours in the UK. But I can’t do that in the USA. The unions would kill me.

[adospencer]

Aug 4, 2021 0:43:19 GMT jethrotull said:

Ian and his righteous indignation. I am very aware of the reality of Climate Change, but I certainly didn't learn about it from listening to Locomotive Breath. Back in the early 70s Tull played this song to millions of us stoned-out teenagers, did he really expect us to understand what he was singing about? If it was so important to him to get the message out he would have made the meaning more clear. He has always stated that he expected his listeners to come up with their own interpretations of his lyrics. It's really only in recent years - as Climate Change has grown so serious - that he has explained that was the intended message of Locomotive Breath. I do share his attitude about national leaders who downplay the dangers in order to stay in power. The bible says that God will put to ruin those ruining the earth. It seems that in the race to chase the mighty dollar there is no way to slow down.

I too am tired of his "Ian knows best" old man rants and lectures. In my youth I hung on his every word but no more.  He puts  his own slant on things  (like for example blaming smoke machines instead of his heavy smoking habit in the seventies for his unfortunate health problems, the firing of Martin, the refusal to acknowledge that he just cant sing anymore ), and justifies all by rambling on at length. The "official" Tull book with its selective history leaves questions unanswered too. Combine this with his onstage tantrums even occasionally picking on someone in the audience to rant at for "making too much noise" or whatever, and its not an impressive picture .
I used to have huge respect for him. I still do in terms of  his achievements over the years, and he will always be my musical hero,  but please Ian stop talking, or at least keep it about the music!

[JTull 007]

Ian Anderson on Martin Barre’s Departure, Homo Erraticus AUDIO ONLY

                           Ron Placone interviews Jethro Tull frontman, Ian Anderson.
       Ian offers a few thoughts on the new album, “Homo Erraticus” as well as the
           departure of long-time guitarist, Martin Barre. This interview is audio only
          and originally aired on the Indie Bohemians Morning Show in Nashville, TN

[maddogfagin]

From 2019

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull bites the bullet for 50th anniversary tour
BY GEORGE VARGA JUNE 30, 2019 5:01 AM PT

It’s no surprise that the few rock stars still actively touring and recording 50 or more years after launching their careers are happy to take a nostalgia-fueled victory lap or two. Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson is most assuredly not one of them.

“I don’t enjoy nostalgia and I’m not one for anniversaries or celebrations,” affirmed the flute-playing guitarist and singer-songwriter, who brings his “Ian Anderson’s 50 Years of Jethro Tull” tour to the San Diego Civic Theatre next Sunday, July 7. (See below for ticket information and a bonus Q&A with Anderson.)

This is actually the second year of that 50th anniversary tour, which began in 2018 and was quickly extended. It will now run until at least late October, book-ended by two “Jethro Tull Performed by Ian Anderson” tour legs and five “Ian Anderson Christmas Shows” concerts in Germany and the U.K. in December

Anderson, who will turn 72 in August, launched the pioneering English band in late 1967. The jazzy blues-rock group scored its first hit, “Living in the Past,” in 1969, the same year it toured the U.S. for the first time.

By 1971, Anderson was the sole original member still on board and his band was at the forefront of the budding progressive-rock movement, thanks to such increasingly bold and ambitious concept albums as “Aqualung,” “Thick as a Brick” and “Passion Play.”

All told, Anderson led several dozen lineups before the band ceased to exist — at least under the name Jethro Tull — sometime around 2004. Since 2011, he has performed the band’s music in concert under his own name, rather than that of Jethro Tull, whose worldwide album sales are estimated at more than 60 million.

Then again, this is the same Ian Anderson who emphatically declared in a 1988 Union-Tribune interview: “I don’t think anyone will remember Jethro Tull, except as an obscure reference in some book. I hate all this nostalgia. I don’t have any gold records around the house or other memorabilia. I’ve never kept anything like that, and I’m very glad ...”

That perspective put Anderson in a challenging quandary when he realized the band’s 50th anniversary was approaching.

How does a musician so certain of his future obscurity celebrate a landmark anniversary of a band he led for so long, a band whose name continues to be synonymous with his own?

“I realized I’d have to bite the bullet,” Anderson said, speaking recently from his office outside London.

“I could have ignored the anniversary and just carried on without acknowledging it. So it became an intellectual exercise. I thought: ‘Well, if I was to do a 50th anniversary tour, what would make it fun
and appealing for me, intellectually?’

“I worked up a set list and then thought about how to accompany that with video material that would add something to to the music and, perhaps, the lyrics. It’s about giving context context, really, and — from that point of view — kicking off a show with elements of what was in the news in 1968. The Vietnam war, the U.S. space race with the Russians; all of these were the stuff of not just of news, but reflected the culture of that time. So we play a lot of that visual imagery in the show.”

Vicarious enjoyment
Anderson let out a wry chuckle.

“Ironically,” he said, “the next concert I have to play is in Athens, in an ancient Greek amphitheater where it’s impossible to erect a screen (behind the stage).”

No matter how great his aversion to nostalgia is, the combination of classic Jethro Tull songs in tandem with archival footage from decades ago makes it difficult to not think of “Ian Anderson’s 50 Years of Jethro Tull” as anything but.

“Well, generally speaking it is nostaligic,” Anderson allowed.

“And I am kind of enjoying it, vicariously, because I enjoy other people enjoying it. But for me and other members of the band — some of whom weren’t alive back then! — its about trying to remember thousands of notes. Plus, there’s a huge physical aspect for me, singing and running around the stage. We don’t have time to crack beer open a during our concerts and talk over old times with our buddies. We have a job to do and people expect you to do it with with some proficiency.”

There is, Anderson noted, at least one other major challenge for him as a performer revisiting decades worth of a singular musical legacy.

“You’ve really got to respond to the music, give yourself yourself over to that moment and give new life to it (on stage),” he said.

“For me, that will be difficult with certain songs. I find it quite difficult to sing certain lyrics without an uncomfortable feeling about the adequacy of my songwriting skills and my lyric writing skills. Sometimes, if I read back lyrics of mine — particularly from early days — I feel a bit self conscious. Most of the songs I feel pretty good about. And, with some, I have a modicum of pride: ‘Did I really write that? Wow, that’s not bad.”

‘Let’s not look too eager!’
In early 1969, Jethro Tull was one of nine bands and three solo artists featured on the Island Records compilation album, “You Can All Join In.”

Its cover features a photo of no fewer than 29 young musicians, all brimming with hope and enthusiasm, early in their careers. Among those posing on the cover are singer-songwriter John Martyn, organist Mick Weaver and members of Traffic, Free, Fairport Convention, Spooky Tooth, the Spencer Davis Group, Clouds and Nirvana (a duo in no way related to the Kurt Cobain-led Seattle grunge band that was formed in 1987).

“I remember that photo session,” Anderson said, “and the concern of our manager, Terry Ellis, when I said: ‘We’ll stand in the back; let’s not look too eager!’ So there are four little faces at the back of the photo — us — and others who were a bit more anxious to be noticed, a bit more keen to try to achieve the limelight and push their way to the front. Oddly enough, some of those who did push to the front never enjoyed successful careers. I felt more confident hanging in the back and waiting to see how things worked out.

“It was a pretty awful gathering and a pretty awful photo!”

As the leader of Jethro Tull since its inception, Anderson has often been referred to by many inattentive fans as a person named Jethro Tull. Now, having performed the band’s music under his own name for over a decade, how does he delineate between “Jethro Tull” and “Ian Anderson?”

“Well, I don’t really have to, not on a personal level,” he replied. “It’s not something on my mind; it’s something that may or may not be self-explanatory to the audience. When I think of it I think in terms of the repertoire, because it’s hard to think of the 37 musicians who have been in the band. So many people have been part of Jethro Tull, in terms of recording and touring, that’s its kind of easy to think of the songs, which are indelibly linked to me. So I guess it means the music of Jethro Tull.”

Anderson is now at work on several new books and is also completing a new album, which has been delayed by the 50th anniversary tour.

“I hope I’m remembered fondly,” he said. “But it might bring me some pleasure knowing I may, perhaps, be thought of as someone who was moderately successful in spite of not being in the mainstream of pop or rock music. I’d like to be remembered for being a little bit outside the stable norms of contemporary music, in the same way as my two favorite American artists, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. They may not have enjoyed so much commercial success in their lives. But, from an artistic point of view, if you try to name important musicians celebrating Americana — but not in the way ZZ Top or many other bands did — they were way off the beaten tracks.”

Bonus Q&A with Ian Anderson
Q: In a 1993 interview you told me that your daughter, Gael, had recently informed you that you were not playing the flute correctly. You replied at the time to her: “What do you mean? Who’s the flute player around here?” Then you told me: “And she was right! I knew my technique was unorthodox, but it was horribly unorthodox….Happily, three months later, while you’ll hear one or two wrong notes – which I can only apologize for – you’ll also hear me play 2,000 or 3,000 other notes, many of which will sound a lot more tuneful than you’ve heard me play before.”

So, here we are 26 years later and I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Vladimir Horowitz: “If you don’t practice for a day, you know it; if you don’t practice for a few days, your wife knows it; and, if you don’t practice for a week, the whole world knows it.” How often do you practice, and what do you practice?

A: Well, first of all, the quotes are entirely appropriate and, indeed, that was an illustrative moment in my flute playing career when I realized I really had to do quite a bit of work. Something you take for granted, like riding a bike or brushing your teeth, there are better ways to ride and more hygienic ways to brush your teeth. And flute playing has turned out like that. Over the years, it have given me pause to play flute in a (certain) way… which is to play as amateur musician, (for which) I don’t get paid and it’s for fun. That is something I do virtually every day. I still tend to pick up the flute and play it once or twice a day for fun. It is fun. But, intentionally or not, it is practice, because you are keeping your physical engagement with this instrument alive. And, mentally, you have to be pushing yourself to remember complex passages of music in order to notice if you are slightly fluffing any notes.

James Galway told me some years ago that, as he got older, he had to practice a lot more than he did to begin with, just to stay at the level expected of him when he performs solo, or with an accompanist, or a concert with an orchestra. The demands are considerable. And I suppose in his line of work, the criticism will be pretty relentless if he has an off night, just as poor, old Pavarotti couldn’t deal with the hammering he got later in life, so he would cancel performances. That’s especially sad for singers — no one is great all the time, even if you’re Pavarotti (and) even with a sore throat, it wouldn’t negate the pleasure of giving people a concert.

But, of course, you’ll have to expect someone will be a trained opera critic and will take you to task. It’s either that or (cancel) the show, which I tend not to do, but Pavarotti did. You have to accept you’ll never be at your best and your best may start off like mine or somebody else’s, (at) 75 percent, but that’s as good as it will get.

Q: Do you alternate flute practice with vocal practice?

A: I tend to check my voice every day. Because, since I’ve been a child, I’ve been susceptible to throat and chest infections.

Q: Last year, two versions of the band Yes did a 50th anniversary tour with overlapping dates. This year, you are embarked on the second year of Ian Anderson’s 50 Years of Jethro Tull tour, while the Martin Barre Band is embarked on a “Celebrates 50 years of Jethro Tull” tour.” Fair play? Confusing?

A: I would hope it would not be too confusing to people who know anything about the band. But Martin was in Jethro Tull for – goodness me! – from 1969 to 2011. And much of that music, as a musician, it’s his inheritance to have that as kind of an asset for him. And something I always said to him, years before the new millennium, was: “Martin, you should get out and so some concerts and tours under your own name, doing Tull’s music as instrumentals. Given that the guitar parts are quite iconic you can go out and make it your own.” But he was a bit of a slow-starter and he didn’t get to grips with it until two, three or four years ago. I think he realized time was running out and he had to step up

It’s great he’s out there doing that. Perhaps what’s not so great is he felt the obligation to have a flute player and singer, so it did come across a bit as a cover band, with Martin as the central figure, when it should be about him and his guitar playing.

Q: You are a big fan of the late Frank Zappa. Did you know him?

A: I never met Frank and, sadly, never got the chance to, because he was in bad shape for the last weeks of his life. I got a message, shortly before he died, saying: “Frank would like you to call him.” I was staggered, because I thought Frank hated Tull from some comments he made in the 1970s – which, frankly, hurt me a lot, because I was a big fan of his, so to hear he wanted me to call him, knowing he was a dying man, I wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to me. I dialed the number three times over a period of a week and hung up each time, because I couldn’t face up to having to cope with someone in that position and not knowing what he was going to say. Maybe he was going to say: “I really loved your music and I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet.” Or maybe he would have said: “I wanted to let you know, before I died, how much I still hate Tull’s music.”

Who knows? I never will. I couldn’t bring myself to have that conversation with someone on his deathbed.

link

[maddogfagin]

From 2018

link

Wolf Trap welcomes Jethro Tull on its golden anniversary
By Keith Loria / Special to the Fairfax County Times Sep 6, 2018 Updated Sep 6, 2018


Ian Anderson has been leading Jethro Tull for five decades.
PHOTO BY SILVIA FINKE

As frontman, flutist, guitarist, composer and singer for iconic British rock band Jethro Tull for 50 years, Ian Anderson has a place in the music annals that is reserved for very few. Under his watch, Jethro Tull has recorded 30 albums and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide.

During the band’s 50-year history, it has also performed more than 3,000 concerts in more than 50 countries, and Anderson has been lending his flute mastery at every one of them.

In recognition of the anniversary of the release of Tull’s debut album, “This Was,” the vinyl that introduced flute to rock as a front-line instrument, Anderson has toured all summer celebrating the achievement. On Sept. 7, Jethro Tull will play one of the last legs of the tour at Wolf Trap.

“What people expect and what they get might not always be exactly the same thing, but they’re going to be close-ish,” Anderson said. “I’ve been around a long time and I know there are certain fans who want the key tracks that are emblematic of the music I have put out over the years, so I know I need to prepare those for the show.”

Anderson noted that the concert will include songs from its formative period to more beloved tunes from the Tull catalogue, mixing in songs from albums such as “This Was,” “Stand Up,” “Benefit,” “Aqualung,” “Thick As A Brick,” “Heavy Horses,” “Crest Of A Knave” and even a touch of 2012’s “TAAB2.”

“It’s a happy event to have a varied, eclectic output of music and perform a range of that on stage,” he said. “And that’s a joy, because my favorite songs tend to be the same as those of the ticket buyers.”

Although the band has gone through numerous changes since its debut—most notably the absence of original member Martin Barre who parted ways with Anderson in 2012—the band’s signature sound remains. Tull’s 2018 lineup includes guitarist Florian Opahle, keyboardist John O’Hara, bassist David Goodier and drummer Scott Hammond.

“This is a celebration of all the 33 band members who graced our ranks— musicians who brought their talents, skills and styles to bear on the performances live and in the studio,” Anderson said. “The guys I play with now have been with me for more than a dozen years and people I know pretty well.”

At 71, Anderson still enjoys playing live, though he admits it’s not an easy gig, and he’s not one of those people who punches the air in celebration after each performance.

“If you’re not mentally and physically exhausted and don’t feel like you’ve been run over by a very large steam locomotive, then you haven’t been doing your job,” he said. “It’s not a moment of rejoicing, but a sense of relief. A half hour later, after that beer and some time to relax, you have that uplifting moment and it’s a good feeling, but I’m not looking for people to tell me it was a good show. I’ll change the subject rather quickly.”

Anderson isn’t a fan of social media, but he does meet fans of all ages at various events and sometimes after concerts, and likes to hear about how they discovered the Jethro Tull sound.

“It’s my feeling that the first 10 years of Jethro Tull, geographically speaking, we probably reached 95 percent of the audiences we were ever going to bring into the mix,” Anderson said. “Most of our older fans discovered us in the late ’60s or early ’70s. The younger fans have found us through the internet or their parents’ record collection and realized how many great bands came up in that time period.”

Earlier this year, the band released “50 For 50,” a career-spanning three-disc CD set that features 50 songs chosen by Anderson himself from all 21 of the band’s studio albums. And there’s plenty more to come.

“In 2019, we already have a lot of shows booked and there’s a couple of recording projects I am working on and some other musically-related projects I am working on, so I have enough to keep me busy for the next four years,” Anderson said. “At my age, it’s energizing to be thinking a couple of years ahead, and I look forward to all of that.”

[maddogfagin]

www.loudersound.com/features/jethro-tell-ian-anderson-10-records-that-changed-my-life

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson -
10 records that changed my life
By Joe Bosso (Classic Rock) about 2 hours ago [10/8/2021]

Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson picks ten records that transformed his life in music, from Stateside swing to Finnish folk


(Image credit: Stuart Wood Photography)

Jethro Tull mainman Ian Anderson sat down with Classic Rock to run down his selections for the 10 records that changed his life.

“Obviously, when you’re talking about records that are ‘life changing,’ to use that term, you’re usually talking about pieces of music that you heard in your youth,” Anderson says. “But I’m one of those people who never stops listening to new things, so happily there are some recordings that have had a dramatic impact on me in later years.

"You never know when something is going to hit you and strike that chord, so to speak. It’s always a wonderful surprise when it happens.”

Glenn Miller and his Orchestra – In the Mood (1939)
“I was seven when I heard some of father’s big band 78s. I particularly liked In the Mood by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, which is a bright, syncopated swing piece. Something about the simplicity hit me – maybe because it’s essentially a three-chord blues. As a child, it got me energised in a way that church music and Scottish folk music didn’t really do.ps it planted a seed of things to come.”

“In some ways, this was a precursor to rock‘n’roll. My dad wasn’t really a music fan. He didn’t sit around listening to this sort of thing, but I guess before I was born he did. I enjoyed this one – it was a fun piece of music. Perhaps it planted a seed of things to come.”

Johnny Duncan & his Bluegrass Boys – Last Train to San Fernando (1955)
“I was nine of so when I heard some early rock‘n’roll in the form of Bill Haley and his Comets. We were starting to get records from the States because there were still a lot of American service men stationed in the UK. Magazines, fashion and certainly the music helped influence a lot of the British youth at this time.

“Around this time, I heard a song on the radio and I really liked it, and I convinced my parents to let me buy a copy with my pocket money. It was folky and it had something of a skiffle beat, which was becoming the rage in England. It was Last Train to San Fernando, by Johnny Duncan and his Bluegrass Boys. It was an incredible piece of Americana music, but interestingly, it’s really a calypso song but done in a skiffle kind of way.”

Muddy Waters – Hoochie Coochie Man (1954)
“This is one of the first songs of Muddy Waters that had a big impact, not only on me but on a whole generation of wannabe R&B and blues artists in Britain. It’s one of his best-ever pieces. Before his death, Muddy even re-recorded it with Johnny Winter and turned in another great version of the tune.

“This was my introduction to the genuine article – Chicago blues. I had heard stuff that was derived from the genre and had various shadings of it, like some of the three-chord swing music I had listened to. But when you hear the real thing, you know it, and Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man was inarguably the real thing.

“Real American blues became romanticized to us Brits. Of course, we didn’t know anything of the torture of the slave trade, the tobacco trade and the cotton trade, or the horrors of poverty throughout the Depression years – we didn’t know about that stuff. But we felt this rather heroic form of folk music, and if that’s the way we saw it, it’s better than middle-class white America, which didn’t see it at all. It wasn’t until we Brits sent Jimi Hendrix back to America – rock music that was very feisty and black – that it became revolutionary.”

Graham Bond – Spanish Blues (1965)
“This was the parallel to all of that American music, but in a more eclectic form, taking influences from blues and European jazz but also from classical. Graham Bond was a not terribly successful alto sax player who at some point got a gig with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. After a bit, he stole Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce from that band, and he persuaded them to go off with him when he formed the Graham Bond Organization.

“They played a homegrown amalgam of eclectic jazz and blues, which made a big impact on me as a teenager. I was just starting to play music at this time. The use of the Hammond organ, as played by Bond, was quite forceful and dramatic and wonderful. Of course, as everybody knows, the core of the Graham Bond Organization went on to form Cream, which took it even further.

“Spanish Blues wasn’t American blues or jazz; it was, as the title suggests, a rather European kind of track. It’s not exactly flamenco, but it does have an authentic feel to it. Hearing saxophone and Hammond organ along with bass and drums really clicked with me. It made me realize that you could do something with this kind of line-up. It didn’t have to be black American music; you could take things from classical music and use them. In some ways, it was the beginning of what became classic rock.”

Pink Floyd – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
There were two seminal albums in 1967 that carved a path for people like me in the progressive pop context. One was The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, of course, and the other was an altogether more surreal and proggy affair, Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Both albums took elements from lots of different sources and used them in colorful, creative ways.

“For me, the Pink Floyd album had more meaning. The Beatles were a pop group, so I thought their stuff was a bit contrived, a bit twee. I liked the singer-songwriter element to Floyd more. Syd Barrett’s songs were strange and funny, and they perfectly complemented the radical, druggy instrumental stuff the band did. You saw pictures and presented them with words and sound, rather than as paintings.”

Roy Harper - Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith (1968)
“A year later, when I first moved down to London, I heard a folk singer who was making a bit of a name for himself. I scraped together some coins and bought this album, which spoke to my interest in the solitary singer-songwriter way of making music. The song Another Day really resonated with me. Many people, in addition to me, regard it as a cult classic. Kate Bush covered it the tune.

“Living alone by myself during the summer of ’68, this album meant a lot to me. In fact, I got to know Roy Harper a bit because we ended up playing a couple of shows together, including the first concert at Hyde Park, which was Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Roy Harper and Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

Jethro Tull – Aqualung (1971)
“The one piece of music that really changed my life, certainly in a material way, was Aqualung. We’d had a little success prior to it, but this album established us right across the world. However, It was a gradual process – it didn’t spread the message in 1971 or ’72. It was a steady seller for years and years.

“The album took us into Soviet Russia, the Eastern Bloc of Europe, the fascist regimes of Latin America and elsewhere. We went far and wide. It was the most life-changing piece of music for me personally. It afforded me the opportunity to release even more adventurous albums, and just as importantly, I could go to all of these places to play live.”

Herbert von Karajan/ Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra –
Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (1963)
“After the Aqualung album, I saw A Clockwork Orange, and the music of Walter Carlos – who later became Wendy Carlos – really sparked my interest in classical music. He had already made a name for himself by taking classical pieces and performing them on synthesisers. I thought his treatment of Beethoven for the soundtrack of Clockwork Orange was magnificent.

“I had been exposed to classical music in my teenage years, and a bit when we made the Stand Up album – there’s a Bach piece on that – but I started to really explore it more having seen the Stanley Kubrick film. In particular, I developed an interest in Beethoven. I’m sure many other people were introduced to his work having seen Clockwork Orange. It led to my interest in orchestration.

“In my opinion, the greatest version of Beethoven’s 9th, the never-to-be-beaten recording, is by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in the early days of stereo.”

Värttinä – Aitara (1994)
“With this album, I discovered that the folk music of Europe could live alongside modern progressive rock. This is a Finnish band based in Western Helsinki, comprised of three female folk singers and a band of jazz and folk musicians from the Institute of Music.

“It’s a wonderful piece of music, particularly the title track, but I have absolutely no idea what they’re singing about. It could be something very mundane and dreary – I suppose I’ll never know. But that doesn’t matter, because the sound of their voices and the music of the band is quite beautiful.”

A.R. Rahman – Bombay Theme (1995)
“This set me off on the track of learning to understand a little bit more about Indian music, and even to write for some of those classical Indian performers. This particular track begins very conspicuously with the sound of an Indian bamboo flute.

“It’s written and arranged by A.R. Rahman, who is, to a large extent, the musical force behind Bollywood. He’s the leading practitioner of Indian music in the commercial sense – certainly for his movie work. I first heard Bombay Theme, which is sometimes called Mombay Theme, on a crossover album, and so it led me to investigate things further. I think it’s pretty extraordinary piece of music.”

[maddogfagin]

www.metalcastle.net/jethro-tulls-ian-anderson-talks-disrespectfully-for-the-beatles/

JETHRO TULL’S IAN ANDERSON TALKS DISRESPECTFULLY FOR THE BEATLES
By Eray Erel -AUGUST 10, 2021

Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson has talked disrespectfully for the world-known rock band The Beatles and said that they’re a band that is a bit contrived.

However, during a recent appearance on Classic Rock, Ian has touched on The Beatles and Pink Floyd. He mentioned the bands’ 1967 albums and said that both albums are carved a path for him and people like him.

“There were two seminal albums in 1967 that carved a path for people like me in the progressive pop context,” he said.

“One was The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ of course, and the other was an altogether more surreal and proggy affair, Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’ Both albums took elements from lots of different sources and used them in colorful, creative ways.”

Ian Speaks Disrespectfully For The Beatles

Ian has continued his words by touching on the bands’ albums. He said that the Pink Floyd album had more meaning for him. At the same time, he told about The Beatles that they’re a band that is a bit contrived.

“For me, the Pink Floyd album had more meaning,” Ian added. “The Beatles were a pop group, so I thought their stuff was a bit contrived, a bit twee.

“I liked the singer-songwriter element to Floyd more. Syd Barrett’s songs were strange and funny, and they perfectly complemented the radical, druggy instrumental stuff the band did. You saw pictures and presented them with words and sound, rather than as paintings.”

Anderson Reveals The Music That Changed His Life

Elsewhere in the interview, the musician has revealed the music that changed his life and aimed his band’s best-selling fourth studio album, Aqualung.

“The one piece of music that really changed my life, certainly in a material way, was ‘Aqualung,'” he reveals. “We’d had a little success prior to it, but this album established us right across the world.

“However, It was a gradual process – it didn’t spread the message in 1971 or ’72. It was a steady seller for years and years.

“The album took us into Soviet Russia, the Eastern Bloc of Europe, the fascist regimes of Latin America and elsewhere. We went far and wide. It was the most life-changing piece of music for me personally.

“It afforded me the opportunity to release even more adventurous albums, and just as importantly, I could go to all of these places to play live.”

[maddogfagin]

Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt - Podcast | Episode 49 - Ian Anderson

388 views Aug 22, 2021

Dig!
123K subscribers

Joining the Rockonteurs this week is Jethro Tull frontman, bandleader, song-writer and mainstay Ian Anderson. In a deep dive into Ian's career, Gary, Guy and Ian discuss how Jethro Tull grew out of the British blues boom to become one of the leading progressive rock bands, delivering huge selling concept albums like Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. The conversation also covers how and why such a strikingly unique band managed to conquer America (when many of their fellow British acts failed) and the iconic flute as part of the rock band.

[maddogfagin]

www.palmbeachpost.com/article/20120916/ENTERTAINMENT/812018286

What has ‘embarrassed’ Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson for over 40 years?

By Hap Erstein
Posted Sep 16, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 21, 2014 at 10:00 PM

It was a seminal moment in rock music history. Some 44 years ago, for no particular reason, a flute in a British music store caught the eye of Scottish-born musician-singer-songwriter Ian Anderson. And it suddenly occurred to him that the instrument could be a unique sound in his new rock group, the enigmatically titled Jethro Tull.

“It was just hanging there on the wall and I thought, ‘Hey, I wonder what that would be like.’ As long as I was pretty sure that Eric Clapton couldn’t play the flute, then it seemed like a reasonable bet,” says Anderson, who performs Thick as a Brick 2, a follow-up to Tull’s 1972 hit, as part of an 18-month international tour that stops at the Kravis Center on Wednesday.

“As a third-rate guitar player, I didn’t really feel like I wanted to compete with either Eric Clapton or the rumored hot shots in London like Jeff Beck and Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page,” recalls Anderson. “Living up in the north of England at that point, we were aware that there was some pretty scary new talent down there. I didn’t really feel I was ever going to be in that league.”

Although he taught himself to play the flute with a wildly unorthodox style and one-legged stance, Anderson was instantly the best flautist in rock music. “You know, to be a big fish in a small pool is sometimes a quicker way to getting noticed than just being one of the herd, to mix metaphors.”

It was, of course, the era of odd band names and Anderson’s history buff booking agent came up with the name Jethro Tull, an 18th century agriculturist who invented the seed drill. Anderson did not much care for the moniker then, and he still doesn’t.

“On the week that we were given that name by our agent, I was a little uneasy about it, but I didn’t know why,” he says. “I didn’t realize at that point that we’d been named after a dead character from the history books. By the time I found out, we were then the new resident band at the famous (London) Marquee Club, so it was a little bit too late to change.

“The name ‘Tull’ is a good West Country English name. But the ‘Jethro’ bit, you can’t escape that awful hillbilly kind of association,” sighs Anderson. “No, I am more than a little embarrassed about it and have been for over 40 years.

“I often say there is little I regret in my life, I haven’t left any really dirty laundry behind me. Far and away the main regret is that name, but what can you do?”

Growing up in Blackpool, Anderson was steeped in musical influences from the past. “My passion as a young teenager was for people who were already the age of my father. People like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. And indeed a few musicians who were already dead, some of the big band jazz guys from the wartime era, like Glenn Miller,” he explains. “When I was 15, I was listening to Ornette Coleman and Charlie Parker. It was jazz, it was improvisation, it was blues, a little bit of folk music. As I went on into my late teens and early 20s, classical music was something I started to pay some attention to.”

On the other hand, as he often said at the time, Anderson was indifferent to a wildly popular rockabilly singer from Memphis. “By the time Elvis Presley came along in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, I looked at it and I could see the attraction of it in some way, but it really didn’t appeal to me,” he says today.

In 1972 — exactly 40 years ago — Anderson wrote and recorded a progressive rock concept album, Thick as a Brick, with a single track lasting 44 minutes. Its lyrics were credited to a fictional 10-year-old prodigy poet, Gerald Bostock. The album quickly rose to the top of the Billboard chart and led to the group’s first tour of the United States and other countries. But other than a few short excerpts, Anderson has not performed this material onstage for decades, until this current tour.

The first half of his Kravis concert will be that original Thick as a Brick album, followed after intermission by the sequel, which considers what might have happened to Gerald in later life. As Anderson says of his created alter ego, “That fictional, multi-stranded character is the device to look at some different aspects of life and how they are today. For me the fun of it is to say, ‘Hey, let’s just make this big jump forward as fast as we can and get to today’s world and examine that in the light of times gone by and see how many things have changed.’ ”

Anderson happened to turn 65 last month, an ideal time to reflect back on his life, career and the road not taken.

Asked what he might have done for a living if he had not pursued his music, Anderson answers without hesitation. “I had the pen in my hand, ready to put my signature on the application form to enroll as a police cadet many years ago. But at the final second, the recruiting police inspector decided he didn’t quite trust my motives for wanting to become a policeman.

“I then went to try to get a job with the local newspaper, to train to be a journalist, but that didn’t happen. And I thought that I might be a farmer. I also gave thought to perhaps being an actor. I would have given some thought to being an astronaut, except we didn’t have astronauts back then and basically, I couldn’t climb up some step ladders without feeling a little giddy. So I thought, ‘I’m probably not made of The Right Stuff.’ ”

The 21-year-old who created Jethro Tull certainly never expected to still be rocking at 65 and pleasing audiences with such hits as Aqualung and Bungle In The Jungle. Nor does he have any plans to stop or even slow down. Why?

“The fact that you know from experience that it’s pretty good to keep pedaling the bicycle, because if you stop you’re going to fall off. And as you get much older, you’re probably not going to be able to get back on again,” he offers.

“So part of it has to do with the continuity of doing what you do, because it beats going to the gym. Can you imagine me in the pool with a bunch of geriatrics, doing some kind of aquatic Pilates? I mean, that’s just too horrible for words. Like playing golf or going fishing, I mean, oh dear, oh dear.”

So why should people go to his concert?

“Well, I think perhaps it is a combination of curiosity and pity. Curiosity in the sense if they haven’t been to a Jethro Tull for awhile, they can be a bit curious to see, y’know, does it still work and what’s it like. Then it’s my job to make it entertaining for them.

“And secondly, I suppose, there is that element of pity. You think, ’Well, this poor old codger, what is it that drives him on to do this at age 65? Some people will think, ‘Poor old chap, he’s obviously fallen on hard times. Either it’s to pay the bills or he’s got 17 wives with alimony payments to make.’” (In fact, Anderson has been married 36 years to only his second wife, Shona Learoyd, who oversees his lucrative music company and almost as lucrative smoked salmon operation.)

As he says about pleasing audiences, “It is just about expectations that either will be happily met or are so unreasonable in the first place that there’s not a hope in hell. Of course if you’re asking anyone to please all of the people all of the time, well, they won’t. I guess if half the people go away feeling, ‘Wow, we really enjoyed that’ and the other half go away feeling, ‘Well, it wasn’t too bad,’ then I would feel it was a positive outcome.”

[JTull 007]

Aug 28, 2021 6:23:54 GMT maddogfagin said:

www.palmbeachpost.com/article/20120916/ENTERTAINMENT/812018286
What has ‘embarrassed’ Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson for over 40 years?

By Hap Erstein
Posted Sep 16, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 21, 2014 at 10:00 PM

                                 So why should people go to his concert?

              Personally I prefer going to see TULL shows with NEW ALBUMS !!!!
  Ian has evolved over the years and so has the music which made me very EXCITED.
          When I hear older tunes it brings back memories and 'TULL CHILLS
   However... TULL 2022 sounds very EXCITING to ME

[maddogfagin]

link

Jethro Tull Frontman Says Band's Iconic Song Is About 'Harsh Reality of Overpopulation,' Talks Meaning of 'Aqualung'
"It was about population growth," Ian said about "Locomotive Breath."
Posted Apr 08, 2021 10:27 PM

During an appearance on Rock History Music, Ian Anderson talked about two of the band's major hits - "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath."

Both tracks were released on 1971's "Aqualung," you can check it out here via Amazon.

When the interviewer said, "'Locomotive Breath,' was that really about overpopulation?", Ian replied (transcribed by UG):

"Yes, yes. It was about population growth but it was talking about what we might now call globalization. It is about the population and its place in the expanding capitalist world that we live in.

"It might have seemed a difficult subject back then, and it's a difficult subject today, people don't like to be reminded of the harsh reality of overpopulation.

"Everything follows on from that, everything from the pandemic crisis we're in, you can trace that back to the effect of a huge population that travel, the spread of the disease, everything to do with climate change...

"You can see how that is vastly exacerbated by population size. So pretty much everything that we might fear and be concerned with in terms of its effect on our great-grandchildren.

"Their world to come is linked to the population size of planet Earth. It was observed many, many years ago that probably the optimum population would be somewhere between two and three billion - if we were to find a truly sustainable workable place in the environment.

"And even that would depend on the miracles of modern science coming to bail us out of the trouble we get into.

"But it should be a sobering reality when you consider that when I was born in 1947, the population of planet Earth was a moderate one - it was probably a little heating up but OK.

"How much in my lifetime do you think the population of Earth has grown? People might say 50%, some people might say 100% - probably doubled.

"They should be quite shocked to hear that is actually slightly more than three times now what it was when I was born. So in one person's lifetime, we have seen a tripling of our population.

"And although there are many signs that in many countries that population growth has reversed into a slight decline - and that's the case in most European countries where the fertility rate is down around 1.6 per fertile female.

"That would result in a slight decline in population over the next hundred years, and we would be heading in the right direction.

"But of course, in other countries, it's still up around five or six per fertile female.

"And at that point, because that is occurring in countries perhaps in many cases least able to support population growth, especially in the context of climate change, that's what will result in incredible pressure for migration from people, in particular, Africa and parts of Asia to areas such as yours [the US], or mine.

"And we have to learn how to deal with that fast level of pressure for immigration from people who simply are born into a world and a national context, they cannot support them.

"It will make today's world with a couple of thousand people crossing the English Channel to seek refuge in the UK illegally, or a few thousand people swimming across the river in Texas from Mexico.

"It will make that look, 'Hey, what were we worried about back then? That's just a triple.'

"We really have to face up to enormous changes, and that's what I'm trying to say in that song, that we are on this seemingly lemming-like suicide mission in terms of an unstoppable force that we seem incapable of dealing with.

"And we don't even want to talk about it because no one likes to be told how many children they can or cannot have.

"But I think it is a personal responsibility that people should be aware that they can make.

"When an educated western world society, where women who are educated have a degree of choice in what happens to them, then they very often are choosing to have smaller families - one or two children, or sometimes none at all.

"Hence the reduction in population in Europe, but that's not the case in your country, and it's certainly not the case in the African countries, for example.

"And it would be a hot potato if someone was to try and tell the American public, 'Maybe you should think about just having one or two children.' That would be even worse than taking the guns away."

'Aqualung,' the song itself is about the treatment of the homeless population?
"It's really more about our reaction to the homeless, the embarrassment, the sense of - in some cases - hopelessness of tragedy, of sadness...

"But also a degree of fear, a degree of discomfort. We have very mixed emotions in regard to a lot of things about which we could be charitable.

"And I think the song is, for me, more about our reaction to the homeless rather than specifically going into the detail of the homeless themselves.

"This should be presumptuous on my part perhaps because I’ve never been in that situation.

"It wouldn't be as disingenuous for me to write about being homeless perhaps as it would be for me to write about picking cotton in the Mississippi belt in the early-1900s, and painting my face black and pretending to be an authentic black American blues singer.

"It would be some stuff you just have to stand back and say, 'I can't do that, that would not be right coming from me.'

"And so I have to fall short sometimes at writing in a way that I think I can't be authoritative because I can't really know how somebody feels.

"I do write songs in the first person but they're not me, they are about a character that I've invented, and I'm inventing that persona and inhabiting that as a screenwriter would write lines to be acted out by an actor.

"So sometimes that's part of the way I write songs, and therefore we shouldn't always assume that just because I say 'I' and 'me 'in a song.

"What is being said is actually my own personal true inner belief or sentiment."

[bunkerfan]

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson talks Covid, Scandi Noir and being ‘hoist on his own petard’ by Prog Rock




Rock legend Ian Anderson brings Jethro Tull to Bath for a Prog Rock themed concert at The Forum on September 17th.

In advance of the concert he took time out to talk to the Bath Royal about getting back on stage after Covid (and his fears that the pandemic is far from finished with us); how he kept himself busy during lockdown by immersing himself in the science of Covid and watching Scandinavian Noir crime dramas; why he does not like poetry; and his feelings about Jethro Tull being perceived as a “Prog Rock” act (a label now embraced by the band in their current ‘Prog Years’ tour).

Jethro Tull have been performing for 54 years and have recorded numerous hit albums including Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Songs from the Wood, Living in the Past and Stormwatch.

Anderson’s unique songwriting abilities and musical virtuosity have made him a national treasure (even at age 74 he still adopts his trademark one-legged stance while playing the flute on stage).

"Jethro Tull: The Prog Years" at The Forum, Bath, on September 17th. Tickets here: www.bathforum.co.uk

[jackinthegreen]

Aug 31, 2021 19:05:40 GMT bunkerfan said:

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson talks Covid, Scandi Noir and being ‘hoist on his own petard’ by Prog Rock




Rock legend Ian Anderson brings Jethro Tull to Bath for a Prog Rock themed concert at The Forum on September 17th.

In advance of the concert he took time out to talk to the Bath Royal about getting back on stage after Covid (and his fears that the pandemic is far from finished with us); how he kept himself busy during lockdown by immersing himself in the science of Covid and watching Scandinavian Noir crime dramas; why he does not like poetry; and his feelings about Jethro Tull being perceived as a “Prog Rock” act (a label now embraced by the band in their current ‘Prog Years’ tour).

Jethro Tull have been performing for 54 years and have recorded numerous hit albums including Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Songs from the Wood, Living in the Past and Stormwatch.

Anderson’s unique songwriting abilities and musical virtuosity have made him a national treasure (even at age 74 he still adopts his trademark one-legged stance while playing the flute on stage).

"Jethro Tull: The Prog Years" at The Forum, Bath, on September 17th. Tickets here: www.bathforum.co.uk

I've just watched this interview, and have to say, didn't like it.......Ian just goes on too much about Covid. Yes, it's serious, and I am a vulnerable person too, but come on Ian, let the guy speak...

When the interviewer asks about "what was it like being on stage playing again after all that time etc" Ian doesn't answer, he goes back to the Covid stuff.

I have tickets to see the band here in a couple of weeks time, hope for some great music, I am hoping it will be Joe Parrish, but recent posts seem to show Florian still on the gig...

Loved Tull since the Living in the Past single in 1969 when I was 14...

[tullabye]

As soon as he finally got done with all things Covid it turned quite good and informative. Did not know the reason for the new album delay was because the record companies will not release until vinyl is able to be cut. In this day and age it seems that you have to book your spot 8 months in advance. Ian seemed frustrated about the process but good to know that he seems anxious for release. January 2022 release.

[maddogfagin]

link

Jethro Tull Frontman Says Band's Iconic Song Is About 'Harsh Reality of Overpopulation,' Talks Meaning of 'Aqualung'
"It was about population growth," Ian said about "Locomotive Breath."
Posted Apr 08, 2021 10:27 PM

During an appearance on Rock History Music, Ian Anderson talked about two of the band's major hits - "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath."

Both tracks were released on 1971's "Aqualung," you can check it out here via Amazon.

When the interviewer said, "'Locomotive Breath,' was that really about overpopulation?", Ian replied (transcribed by UG):

"Yes, yes. It was about population growth but it was talking about what we might now call globalization. It is about the population and its place in the expanding capitalist world that we live in.

"It might have seemed a difficult subject back then, and it's a difficult subject today, people don't like to be reminded of the harsh reality of overpopulation.

"Everything follows on from that, everything from the pandemic crisis we're in, you can trace that back to the effect of a huge population that travel, the spread of the disease, everything to do with climate change...

"You can see how that is vastly exacerbated by population size. So pretty much everything that we might fear and be concerned with in terms of its effect on our great-grandchildren.

"Their world to come is linked to the population size of planet Earth. It was observed many, many years ago that probably the optimum population would be somewhere between two and three billion - if we were to find a truly sustainable workable place in the environment.

"And even that would depend on the miracles of modern science coming to bail us out of the trouble we get into.

"But it should be a sobering reality when you consider that when I was born in 1947, the population of planet Earth was a moderate one - it was probably a little heating up but OK.

"How much in my lifetime do you think the population of Earth has grown? People might say 50%, some people might say 100% - probably doubled.

"They should be quite shocked to hear that is actually slightly more than three times now what it was when I was born. So in one person's lifetime, we have seen a tripling of our population.

"And although there are many signs that in many countries that population growth has reversed into a slight decline - and that's the case in most European countries where the fertility rate is down around 1.6 per fertile female.

"That would result in a slight decline in population over the next hundred years, and we would be heading in the right direction.

"But of course, in other countries, it's still up around five or six per fertile female.

"And at that point, because that is occurring in countries perhaps in many cases least able to support population growth, especially in the context of climate change, that's what will result in incredible pressure for migration from people, in particular, Africa and parts of Asia to areas such as yours [the US], or mine.

"And we have to learn how to deal with that fast level of pressure for immigration from people who simply are born into a world and a national context, they cannot support them.

"It will make today's world with a couple of thousand people crossing the English Channel to seek refuge in the UK illegally, or a few thousand people swimming across the river in Texas from Mexico.

"It will make that look, 'Hey, what were we worried about back then? That's just a triple.'

"We really have to face up to enormous changes, and that's what I'm trying to say in that song, that we are on this seemingly lemming-like suicide mission in terms of an unstoppable force that we seem incapable of dealing with.

"And we don't even want to talk about it because no one likes to be told how many children they can or cannot have.

"But I think it is a personal responsibility that people should be aware that they can make.

"When an educated western world society, where women who are educated have a degree of choice in what happens to them, then they very often are choosing to have smaller families - one or two children, or sometimes none at all.

"Hence the reduction in population in Europe, but that's not the case in your country, and it's certainly not the case in the African countries, for example.

"And it would be a hot potato if someone was to try and tell the American public, 'Maybe you should think about just having one or two children.' That would be even worse than taking the guns away."

'Aqualung,' the song itself is about the treatment of the homeless population?
"It's really more about our reaction to the homeless, the embarrassment, the sense of - in some cases - hopelessness of tragedy, of sadness...

"But also a degree of fear, a degree of discomfort. We have very mixed emotions in regard to a lot of things about which we could be charitable.

"And I think the song is, for me, more about our reaction to the homeless rather than specifically going into the detail of the homeless themselves.

"This should be presumptuous on my part perhaps because I’ve never been in that situation.

"It wouldn't be as disingenuous for me to write about being homeless perhaps as it would be for me to write about picking cotton in the Mississippi belt in the early-1900s, and painting my face black and pretending to be an authentic black American blues singer.

"It would be some stuff you just have to stand back and say, 'I can't do that, that would not be right coming from me.'

"And so I have to fall short sometimes at writing in a way that I think I can't be authoritative because I can't really know how somebody feels.

"I do write songs in the first person but they're not me, they are about a character that I've invented, and I'm inventing that persona and inhabiting that as a screenwriter would write lines to be acted out by an actor.

"So sometimes that's part of the way I write songs, and therefore we shouldn't always assume that just because I say 'I' and 'me 'in a song.

"What is being said is actually my own personal true inner belief or sentiment."

[ash]

Aug 31, 2021 22:37:11 GMT jackinthegreen said:

Aug 31, 2021 19:05:40 GMT bunkerfan said:

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson talks Covid, Scandi Noir and being ‘hoist on his own petard’ by Prog Rock




Rock legend Ian Anderson brings Jethro Tull to Bath for a Prog Rock themed concert at The Forum on September 17th.

In advance of the concert he took time out to talk to the Bath Royal about getting back on stage after Covid (and his fears that the pandemic is far from finished with us); how he kept himself busy during lockdown by immersing himself in the science of Covid and watching Scandinavian Noir crime dramas; why he does not like poetry; and his feelings about Jethro Tull being perceived as a “Prog Rock” act (a label now embraced by the band in their current ‘Prog Years’ tour).

Jethro Tull have been performing for 54 years and have recorded numerous hit albums including Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Songs from the Wood, Living in the Past and Stormwatch.

Anderson’s unique songwriting abilities and musical virtuosity have made him a national treasure (even at age 74 he still adopts his trademark one-legged stance while playing the flute on stage).

"Jethro Tull: The Prog Years" at The Forum, Bath, on September 17th. Tickets here: www.bathforum.co.uk

I've just watched this interview, and have to say, didn't like it.......Ian just goes on too much about Covid. Yes, it's serious, and I am a vulnerable person too, but come on Ian, let the guy speak...

When the interviewer asks about "what was it like being on stage playing again after all that time etc" Ian doesn't answer, he goes back to the Covid stuff.

I have tickets to see the band here in a couple of weeks time, hope for some great music, I am hoping it will be Joe Parrish, but recent posts seem to show Florian still on the gig...

Loved Tull since the Living in the Past single in 1969 when I was 14...

It was a good interview and Covid is very important to the band and it's members at present due to how it could stop the whole tour dead in it's tracks and I don't use the word "dead" lightly! Ian does many interviews and it's good to have one which isn't the same old questions, i.e. "so why the flute". I'm sure there will be many more interviews seeing as the UK tour is about to get on it's way and most local radio seem to invite him to talk.

Florian just did two concerts in Germany in the same place and as far as I know this was just a one off because of it's location.

[adospencer]

Some interesting bits , but Ian can never resist giving a lecture, nor going off on a tangent instead of giving a concise answer which would allow time for other questions.

[maddogfagin]

Sept 3, 2021 8:13:24 GMT adospencer said:

Some interesting bits , but Ian can never resist giving a lecture, nor going off on a tangent instead of giving a concise answer which would allow time for other questions.

I'd be interested to know Ian's mensa score as he's obviously a very intelligent guy and feels he has to speak out when many of his fellow musicians such as Jagger, Richards, McCartney don't seem to have thoughts about covid etc.

[adospencer]

Sept 4, 2021 5:58:05 GMT maddogfagin said:

Sept 3, 2021 8:13:24 GMT adospencer said:

Some interesting bits , but Ian can never resist giving a lecture, nor going off on a tangent instead of giving a concise answer which would allow time for other questions.

I'd be interested to know Ian's mensa score as he's obviously a very intelligent guy and feels he has to speak out when many of his fellow musicians such as Jagger, Richards, McCartney don't seem to have thoughts about covid etc.

Maybe  Jagger, Richards etc appreciate that we are interested only in their music, not their idea of putting the world to rights.

[ash]

Sept 4, 2021 7:01:53 GMT adospencer said:

Sept 4, 2021 5:58:05 GMT maddogfagin said:

I'd be interested to know Ian's mensa score as he's obviously a very intelligent guy and feels he has to speak out when many of his fellow musicians such as Jagger, Richards, McCartney don't seem to have thoughts about covid etc.

Maybe  Jagger, Richards etc appreciate that we are interested only in their music, not their idea of putting the world to rights.

Has anyone asked them and do any of them have COPD?   McCartney did more than his share of putting the world to rights in the past big-time! . As for Jagger he can tell you about his sex life and fast cars .

[tull4ever]

Dont know if this has been posted already but this is a much more interesting IA interview than the covid lecture stuff
Some real entertaining stuff .

m.youtube.com/watch?v=mp_77QYoUao

[jackinthegreen]

Sept 4, 2021 10:32:25 GMT tull4ever said:

Dont know if this has been posted already but this is a much more interesting IA interview than the covid lecture stuff
Some real entertaining stuff .

m.youtube.com/watch?v=mp_77QYoUao

Yes, I watched that

Interesting right at the end when Gary quotes Nick Cave..

[maddogfagin]

www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/19573016.jethro-tull-singer-speaks-playing-live-show-reading/



Jethro Tull singer speaks before playing live show in Reading
By Leon Riccio @leonriccio
News Reporter



Reading has always had a prevalent music scene, and historically has had a real soft-spot for rock bands over the years, from Reading Rock and many other independent venues, of which many still exist today.

With our town's cultural history, it should be no surprise that legendary progressive-rock band Jethro Tull have announced they will be returning to the stage at The Hexagon theatre this month.

Ahead of the legendary rock band's return to Reading, we spoke to Ian Anderson, singer and flutist of Jethro Tull.

How does it feel to be getting back on stage post-lockdown?

"For a lot of artists, it's been an incredibly heady and a wonderful experience to reunite with fans and perform on stage. I think it goes without saying there is a huge relief that you can get back on stage and pick up those pieces, not just for yourself but for the band and crew and all the other people in the performance industry.

"It's only fairly recently that we've 'crawled out from under the bed' - it's obvious the pandemic has not gone away, and therefore we have to bear in mind there's a lot of stuff we have to think about and do to make things safe.

"It's not only about our personal safety, but if any of the band or crew get it, that's the end of the tour, so we have a whole set of protocols we have to follow."

How does it feel to be playing the Hexagon again?

"We've played in Reading I don't know how many times since around 1960. The Hexagon is one of those places that, if you get me so far as the back stage door and blindfold me, I will probably be able to find my dressing room."

Have you noticed any changes to the crowds over the years?

"It really depends where we are playing. I don't like national stereotypes, but in Brazil and Italy I'd expect to see a lot more younger people in the audience.

"Outdoor shows it attract people in their teens and twenties who have become infatuated or interested in classic and progressive rock.

"In the US our audience is more uniformly people in their fifties, sixties and into their seventies, and that applies to indoor venues in the UK too.

"There are other situations where you look out and what you see are younger people, and the oldies tend to be further back and closer to the Portaloos, no longer having bladders of steel."



Recently you announced publicly that you have been diagnosed with COPD. Has this made any changes to how you perform?

"I was beginning to get concerned about six or seven years ago, and went for some tests in 2017. To be frank, it is mild COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and Asthma, but nonetheless its not going to put itself right.

"Over the many many years of performing on stage, we used what lighting directors call 'haze' or smoke machines. It's the same material used in vaping, and I've been sucking this sh*t in and out, on and off, for 50 years, so I would put down my condition pretty firmly to that.

"It's been more than 30 years since I last smoked a cigarette, and I was ok until about five or six years ago but if you are inhaling this stuff it does end up impairing your lung capacity.

"I have had to retrain myself to a degree to maximise my lung capacity and work around it, and think more carefully on when and how I breathe.

"I don't think I'm concerned as long as im able to keep performing but I'm doing okay now. Sooner or later it will become much more difficult to sing and play than it is now, whether it's two or 10 years from now I have no idea, but 20 years from now I can safely say I will either be pushing up daisies or writing my autobiography."

How would you describe the latest unreleased album, The Zealot Gene?

"It's a project that began in 2016, and in 2017 we recorded seven backing tracks, completing four of those songs shortly after, but we had another busy year in 2018 as we had released a string quartet album, so I stopped working on the new band album, and given all the tours I was pretty tied up.

"I thought I'd get back to it and finish it off, but when Covid came on, I lived in hope for a year that things would calm down and I'd be able to get back together in the studio, but clearly wasn't something any of us would be happy about.

"I decided to finish it on my own, and I invited the other musicians with contributions they sent to me, recorder in their own homes, so the final five tracks of the album were put together in a slightly less-than-live setting, but were finished a few months ago.

"Unfortunately we have to wait until the release date in January."

Jethro Tull will be performing at The Hexagon, Reading, on Saturday, September 18. For more information and to book your tickets, visit jethrotull.com/tour-dates/.

[maddogfagin]

www.littlehamptongazette.co.uk/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/brighton-jethro-tull-hit-the-road-with-a-degree-of-trepidation-3377630

Brighton: Jethro Tull hit the road "with a degree of trepidation"
Ian Anderson and the Jethro Tull band, one of the world’s most successful and enduring progressive rock bands, are back on the road.
By Phil Hewitt, Tuesday, 14th September 2021, 6:05 am

Ian Anderson -Photo credit Assunta Opahle

They do so with a degree of trepidation, admits Ian.

They play Brighton Dome on Wednesday, September 22 – and Ian is clear: we really aren’t out of the pandemic yet.

“The whole thing has obviously been disappointing and frustrating. Time and time again all my efforts and all the efforts of the team that we have put into organising concerts has had to be undone, and it really is a lot of work, and it has all been for nothing. It is very, very frustrating to be playing concerts that were postponed into 2021 and that have now been postponed into 2022.”

As he says, things have been “more up and down than Mick Jagger’s trousers.”

“But personally, I can’t complain. I live in a nice house in the country. I can walk around the garden and generally pretend that nothing is happening on the rare occasions that I crawl out from under the bed.

“But certainly I am going back to concerts with a degree of trepidation as regards my personal health. I am one of those people who are rather more vulnerable due to my age and due to underlying health conditions.

“And then of course it is a question of what happens if one of us goes down with Covid? You think of those shows that opened in London and then a week later were having to close, and that is something that happens with enormous financial implications. It is still a very precarious time to be going back into performance mode.”

So why is he doing it?

“We have to come back. It would be very wrong just to say I don’t feel like it. There are enormous obligations. I have to take the risk as long as the audience turns up.”

And that means the band will be meticulous in all the precautions they take. Ian is confident that people should feel reassured in terms of all the preparations the venues are making; and the band are being similarly cautious: “It is very much about the whole thing not just going down the hole just because one of us catches Covid.

“It is very easy to forget last July when we were less than a thousand infections a day and there was a lot of testing being done. Now we are looking at infection rates four-zero times higher than that time last year, and we all know what happened after that going into the winter.”

As a flute player and singer, obviously Ian can’t wear a mask on stage, but he would certainly want his audiences to get double-jabbed – and he would certainly like to see them in masks, proper masks.

“If I were in a concert hall for a couple of hours, I don’t think I would be taking further risks. If you go into Tesco’s or a concert hall or a football match or a train station, you will encounter someone with Covid. Hopefully you won’t catch it, but it is definitely a risk.”

As for the tour, it’s a tour which sees Jethro Tull go back to The Prog Years with 11 dates across the UK.

The tour will draw heavily on material from Jethro Tull’s more prog albums, much of it focussing on the early heavy hitters of the Tull catalogue, classic albums including Stand Up, Benefit, Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Passion Play and even a touch of Thick As A Brick 2 from 2012.

As Ian says: “Dusting off many older progressive songs amongst my earliest attempts to experiment outside the blues repertoire we began with has proved hugely enjoyable.

“Along the way, over the last 50 years, there have been a good few pieces that still strongly resonate with me today on either a musical or lyrical level. Hopefully both.

“Some are really tricky to play; some might sound that way but fall under the fingers quite naturally although the overall arrangements require feats of memory! Test my marbles; come to the party!”

Ian Anderson will be accompanied by Tull band musicians David Goodier (bass), John O’Hara (keyboards), guitarist Joe Parrish and Scott Hammond on drums. The show will be enhanced by full-scale video projection.

[maddogfagin]

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/entertainment/music/2533742/music-news-jethro-tull-head-for-perth/



MUSIC NEWS: Jethro Tull head for Perth
By Andrew Welsh September 17 2021, 11.34am



Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson is assuring fans that safety will be a top priority at the band’s upcoming shows.

The prog veterans are at Perth Concert Hall on September 27 for the only Scottish date on their pandemic-delayed European tour, with the UK leg kicking off in Bath tonight.

In a video message recorded on Tull’s website, Dunfermline-born Anderson – who last year revealed he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – asks his followers to turn up early at venues for distancing reasons as Covid infections continue to spike.

Do the right thing
“Do the right thing by yourself and everybody else, and just be sure that not only are you being safe with each other, but we are too,” the flute-playing rocker declares.

“All the band and crew will be regularly taking a rapid antigen test every two days and we’ll be making sure we’re safe in each other’s company.

“We want you to feel safe at the concert so don’t be embarrassed if you want to wear a face mask.

“I will certainly be wearing my face mask at all times when I’m not actually on the stage because I’m one of those vulnerable people with a lung disease, so I really, really don’t want to catch Covid.

‘You’ve been very, very patient’
“We hope that you have a great time, and many of you have been very, very patient because you bought your tickets way back before the pandemic hit.

“Finally we’re getting the show back on the road.”



The Prog Years tour is expected to draw heavily on early 70s material from Jethro Tull’s big-selling LPs Stand Up, Benefit, Aqualung, Thick As A Brick and Passion Play, plus work from 2012’s Thick As A Brick 2.

In the online video, Living In The Past hit-maker Anderson, 74, says he’s looking forward to presenting “a few things we haven’t played before or for a long time”, and can be seen briefly brandishing a “setlist”.

It mischievously names a host of classic songs by some of Tull’s greatest contemporaries, including Stairway To Heaven, Smoke On The Water, Brown Sugar, Eleanor Rigby, My Generation, Another Brick In The Wall and Born In The USA.

The list also mentions Tull touchstones Bourée and Locomotive Breath, plus a reference to a “TAAB Medley” – highlights from the band’s 1972 fifth album Thick As A Brick – with tracks from prog peers King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Emerson, Lake And Palmer, Yes and Frank Zappa cheekily earmarked for inclusion.

The Zealot Game
It was announced in the summer that Tull have signed to German indie Inside Out Music, with the band’s 22nd studio album The Zealot Gene – due for release early next year – already in the can.

Anderson’s being joined in Perth by regular cohorts David Goodier (bass), John O’Hara (keyboards), Joe Parrish (guitar) and Scott Hammond (drums), with video backing.

[maddogfagin]

www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/news/music-legend-tells-harrogate-fans-how-jethro-tull-influenced-sex-pistols-1361277

Music legend tells Harrogate fans how Jethro Tull influenced Sex Pistols
Interview - If anyone but Ian Anderson had claimed Jethro Tull had influenced the Sex Pistols the reaction would be sceptical to say the least.
By The Newsroom
Friday, 10th January 2020, 11:27 am


Veteran flute-playing Jethro Tull prog-folk legend Ian Anderson pictured at the Royal Hall in Harrogate in 2012.

But the veteran flute-playing prog-folk legend, who counts The Stranglers lead singer Hugh Cornwall among his close friends, comes across as intelligent and knowledgable as he is provocative, even at the age of 71.

Talking on the phone, he said: “The punks pretended they hated Tull and the prog rock bands in 1977 but that was part of the marketing for the new bands.

“Johnny Rotten was a big fan of our 1971 album Aqualung. If you look at the cover with the tramp leaning to one side and scowling there is a definite resemblance with his own stage persona in the Sex Pistols.

“Rotten told me years later he loved Aqualung.”

For five decades his famous band has survived every trend going on a journey which has taken Anderson from appearing on the Rolling Stones Rock in Roll Circus in 1968 aged 21 to a Christmas show at Ripon Cathedral last month which could have sold out many times over.

His forthcoming talk/video clips/live music tour will see the irascible, sharp as a pin Anderson survey the ever-changing Jethro Tull’s achievements from Thick As A Brick to, yes, that Stones TV show with its fire eaters, famous bands and hippie trappings.

Anderson said: “I think we were somewhat in awe of the Stones on that occasion.

“None of us got to talk on set to Mick Jagger; Bill and Charlie were the ones who talked to us.

“It wasn’t a particularly enjoyable experience. The good and the great were there like The Who but it was slightly weird.”

New Harrogate event on Tubular Bells album

Despite long-time musical colleague Martin Barre finally leaving the band in 2011 to do his own solo tours with Tull songs, something Anderson says he had been encouraging for years, the enduring popularity of the band he founded in 1967 shows no signs of ebbing.

Such is the band’s appeal, in fact, Anderson is actually doing two tours this year – The Prog Years Tour 2020 which features a full band and his ‘solo’ Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull with guitarist Joe Parrish which comes to Leeds City Varieties on May 4.

Scottish-born Anderson, renowned in the tabloids at one point for his salmon farms and country living, is at home, it seems, in classy venues.

He remembers his Harrogate show at the Royal Hall in 2012 well, though he soon switches the conversation to current world politics and climate change, subjects his lyrics have tackled from the early 1970s to recent solo albums.

Anderson said: “Musician can fall out of love with their early selves but I don’t mind playing ‘crowd pleasers’.

“I’m quite proud of having those songs in my repertoire.

“I take on a thespian role when I’m on stage performing.

“I’m totally engaged each time like an actor doing Hamlet. It’s never boring.”

What happened when Ian Anderson came to Ripon

Ian Anderson showed his community spirit when he visited the Harrogate district before Christmas.

Ripon Cathedral hosted a sell-out fundraising concert last year on Saturday, December 7.

An audience of 800 enjoyed the music of Jethro Tull with Ian Anderson leading the show – and welcoming special guest - Loyd Grossman. This was all against the stunning backdrop of Ripon cathedral - dramatically lit up for the concert.

Members of the audience travelled from all over the world - including the USA, Spain and Germany - to enjoy an evening at the cathedral. Ian Anderson very generously donated 100% of the ticket sales to the cathedral and as a result the concert raised a staggering £25,000 – the most amount ever raised from a concert! Molly Lawson, Fundraising Events Officer said: “The concert sold out back in February in just two weeks and I have been overwhelmed by some amazing feedback from our audience on Saturday. People thoroughly enjoyed the evening and we would like to thank Ian Anderson for his generosity and for making it all possible!”

This is when Harrogate's new bar will open

[adospencer]

Remember when we looked to Rock music (in fact music generally) for enjoyment, relaxation and escapism? If our musical heroes when interviewed gave us an insight into the music making process we were fascinated? Now we just seem to get lectures on ageing and Covid  (as if our mortality doesn't weigh heavily  enough). Please Ian, lighten up.

[maddogfagin]

Sept 22, 2021 6:58:50 GMT adospencer said:

Remember when we looked to Rock music (in fact music generally) for enjoyment, relaxation and escapism? If our musical heroes when interviewed gave us an insight into the music making process we were fascinated? Now we just seem to get lectures on ageing and Covid  (as if our mortality doesn't weigh heavily  enough). Please Ian, lighten up.

. . . . and then there were those short but wonderful articles where musos would describe their drum kit/amp set-up/preferred gauge of guitar strings, etc. How I loved reading Melody Maker each week.