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CULTURE

I A N A N D E R S O N

or five decades Ian Anderson has been recognised the world over as the leader of Jethro Tull. Credited with turning the flute into an unlikely rock instrument,

the singer took Tull to the top of the charts.As the 50th anniversary of the progressive-rock band

approaches, the Scotsman reflects on a storied career.In 1967 he traded in his guitar for a flute because “it

wasn’t on the radar in terms of rock music or blues”.The songwriter said: “I had just given up playing the

guitar, given that I wasn’t going to be able to compete with Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page.

“I decided at 19 it was time to get rid of my Fender 1960 Strat and I traded it for a £30 student flute. At first I couldn’t get a note out of the wretched thing, but was soon playing it on stage.”

The flute became the band’s calling card, and Ian’s one-legged playing stance an immediate trademark.

He said: “This got noticed by the first people who ever wrote about us. They said ‘he plays the flute and he stands on one leg’. I thought I better go along with this instant imagery.

“There is a surreal joy that comes from maintaining your balance in a precarious way while you’re doing something else.”

He added that the sight of a piper perched on one leg has appeared throughout mythology and religion in different cultures, for centuries, although he didn’t realise this at first.

“There are a number of South American gods who played the flute standing on one leg,” he said. “In the Pied Piper of Hamelin myth in Germany he is depicted dancing on one leg. This imagery crops up again and again. I was just the 20th century version of it.”

Following 1968’s debut This Was, early folk-inspired albums Stand Up, Aqualung and Thick as a Brick were big sellers and the band was a major concert draw. Jethro Tull mixed hard rock, lush acoustic guitars, world music and much more with surreal lyrics.

The wild-eyed frontman regularly took to the stage in tartan. He said: “Andersons are a family, not a clan, but we have our own tartan, so it seemed a shame not to sport it.”

The son of a Scottish father and English mother, he was born in Fife, raised in Edinburgh and moved to Blackpool aged 12.

The rumble of Scots folk music has been heard throughout his recordings, but he now feels “increasingly awkward” about his Scottish ancestry following the clamour for independence in recent years.

He explained: “The SNP of today, I have no liking for. It is perpetuating an age-old loathing of the English that goes back to Bonnie Prince Charlie.

“It is still all too easily whipped up, like the wind under a Scotsman’s kilt, to reveal the ugly side of what lies beneath. Now that’s an interesting thought!”

In 1976 the band released the record Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die!, a concept album

about an ageing rocker. But how does 70-year-old Ian Anderson feel about Jethro Tull turning 50?

“I am just faintly embarrassed about it. But agents, promoters, record companies like to jump on these things because they see them as a marketing tool.”

He married Shona Learoyd in 1976. His second wife, she has been involved in the band’s on-stage special effects.

Line-ups changed over the years and public rock tastes shifted with the onset of punk in the late Seventies, but Jethro Tull continued to fill venues and sell albums.

The band won a Grammy in 1989, taking the honours in then-new category Best Metal/Hard Rock. They beat favourites Metallica and AC/DC, proving the lasting appeal of the band and its ability to cross generations.

Unlike most rock stars who toured through the hedonistic Sixties and Seventies, Ian has never done drugs.

“It was something everybody seemed to be doing and I don’t recollect meeting anybody where I thought ‘Wow, you’re so much more fun when you’re out of your brain on marijuana or acid or stimulating chemicals’.”

He added: “There is a rather misguided, romantic notion of what rock’n’roll should be that includes drugs and alcohol. There are survivors, like Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and members of Aerosmith. I suppose the most famous is Keith Richards, who had really been on the hard stuff, then miraculously survived.

NOT TOO OLD TO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

F“For so many people it ends when they are in their

20s, like Jimi Hendrix.”Ian laments Hendrix as the “quiet and soft-spoken

nice guy” who got “waylaid by that dreaded entourage of chemical providers and hangers-on”. “They seemed to take over his life and he wasn’t a happy bunny.”

The 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, which featured Jethro Tull and finished with one of the final live appearances by Hendrix before his drug-related death, aged 27, is a bittersweet memory for Ian.

He said: “I think Jimi was feeling trapped in his own fame. He was getting sick of playing the same songs.

“He didn’t want to go on last, no-one in their right mind did at a three-day festival. You’re inheriting all the damaged cables and all the audience are tired and drunk. In the case of the Isle of Wight Festival they’re breaking down the barriers and storming the venue. I think most of the acts didn’t get paid. I know we didn’t.”

The unconventional frontman became rock royalty when he received an MBE for services to music at Buckingham Palace in 2008. But how did the rocker feel about accepting such an establishment gong?

“I think many people who refuse, or hand it back like John Lennon, are the folks for whom it becomes a tarnish in their lives,” he said.

He continued: “It’s the word ‘empire’ that causes an issue. While that is mixed up with a lot of bad stuff, it’s mixed up with a lot of good stuff too. It spread engineering, science, commerce, industry.”

Ian’s latest release, Jethro Tull – The String Quartets, was recorded inside Worcester Cathedral and St Kenelm’s Church, Gloucestershire.

He now sees “Jethro Tull” as a fine musical repertoire, rather than the ever-shifting group it later became.

As he put it: “With prog rock, people are very quick to mock it, but there are some bloody good tunes.”

Meet the outspoken prog rock star who swapped the guitar for a flute and won a Grammy

I don’t recollect meeting anybody where I thought

‘Wow, you’re so much more fun when you’re

out of your brain on marijuana or acid or

stimulating chemicals’

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