FTV: Ian Anderson

 

     Let me set the record straight once and for all.  Jethro Tull was a real person.  He was an 18th Century agriculturist known for inventing the seed drill.  Tull’s name was suggested to band leader Ian Anderson by their manager when they moved from the north of England to London.  Gigs were hard to come by under the many different names they tried out.  Once they began attracting a bit of attention as Jethro Tull, “It was too late to change,” according to Anderson.  Ever since there has been some confusion about the name.  Their first single was released with a major typo that attributed the record to ‘Jethro Toe’.  To make matters worse, plenty of people just assumed that the manic flute playing lead singer’s name was actually ‘Jethro Tull’.  If not, they were often asked, “Which one is Jethro?”  Our local version of this would be people mistakenly thinking band leader Joziah Longo’s name is Gandalf Murphy (although if one does a Google search for Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovians band, AI makes the same mistake).   Apparently the name confusion didn’t matter too much after they departed the city of their origin, Blackpool, Lancashire in 1967.

     Sixty years later and 24 albums into his storied career, Ian Anderson is still putting out records at a remarkable pace for a rocker his age.  His last three albums include The Zealot Gene (2022), RokFlote (2023), and his latest, Curious Ruminant (2025), all of which have been released on the German InsideOutMusic label.  So why, at the age of 77, is he still out there doing what he has done these many decades?  Anderson told Prog Magazine’s James McNair, “I thought, ‘Okay, another end-of-life story’, but it’s what we do when we get older, right?  You want to leave a legacy that isn’t just carved on your tombstone, but also carved in your own memory before it’s too late.”

     Ian Scott Anderson was born August 10, 1947 in Dunfermilne, Fife, Scotland.   He is the youngest of three brothers born to an English mother and a Scottish father (“I’m a Brit.  I see myself as a product of that union,” he says).  Ian has been the only continuous member of Jethro Tull since they formed.  He became the most widely known rock flutist partially because he saw himself as a third rate guitar player.  After hearing what was coming from the London scene courtesy of Clapton, Page, and Beck, Anderson happened upon a flute in a shop window and thought, “Now that might be interesting.”    No one else was playing the flute in a  rock band at the time so that also set him apart.  He traded his electric guitar for the flute and taught himself to play.  His unusual habit of standing on one leg like a stork certainly got people to notice him.  Besides being an imaginative songwriter, Ian is a multi-instrumentalist who also plays harmonica, keyboard, bass guitar, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, mandolin, and several different types of whistles.  Outside of his work with Tull, he has an impressive catalog of solo albums dating back to 1983’s Walk Into Light.

     The Anderson family landed in Blackpool in 1959 and the 12 year old Ian was asked to leave grammar school for refusing to be subjected to the allowed practice of corporal punishment.  He did further his education by studying art at Blackpool College of Art from 1964 to 1966.  Ian’s first band (The Blades formed when he was 15 or 16) included musicians he would reunite with after finding wider success in Tull.  The Blades included keyboardist John Evan, bassist Jeffery Hammond, and drummer Barriemore Barlow.  Anderson led this soul and blues band as the lead vocalist and harmonica player (as he had not yet taken up the flute).  Ian held down a day job cleaning the Ritz Cinema in Luton (toilets and all) and it was during this time period that he made the decision to let the guitar gods have their way while he experimented with the flute.

    In the liner notes for their first album (This Was (1968)), it was noted Anderson had only been playing the flute ‘for a few months’.  He continued to play acoustic guitar while adding his plethora of other instruments to their sound.  The one leg flute playing came from his habit of playing the harmonica standing that way while holding the microphone stand with one leg for balance.  While this curious stance was chronicled on several Jethro Tull album covers, a journalist’s description of him as a ‘deranged flamingo’ didn’t catch on.  When another journalist mistakenly wrote about Ian playing the flute on one leg at the Marquee Club (he was actually playing the harmonica at that gig), he decided to use the image created by this press clipping and give it a go with the flute.  The liner notes for Thick As A Brick features a tongue in cheek quote about, “the one-legged pop flautist, Ian Anderson.” 

     Another example of Anderson’s earliest flute work can be seen in the 1968 film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.  Right on the heels of releasing their debut album This Was, guitarist Mick Abrahams left the band to form Blodwyn Pig.  In need of a new guitarist, their  out of left field choice was Tony Iommi.  The Pulka Tulk Blues Company had recently changed their name to Earth but the band had yet to find the foothold it needed to sign a record contract.  Interestingly, Iommi’s two week tenure with Tull happened to coincide with their participation in the Stone’s film.  Iommi’s Earth band members encouraged him to take the Tull gig, telling him, “This is a great opportunity, you should do it!’ but Iommi himself was unsure.  They did two songs for the film (Son for Jeffrey and Fat Man) but only one (Jeffrey) made the cut.  In the end, Iommi told Ian, “Look, I’m gonna leave.  I miss my old band.”  The brief time apart lit a spark and Earth got back together, renamed themselves Black Sabbath, and began writing their own original tunes.  The move ended up being a historic move for both groups when Iommi was replaced by Martin Barr in Jethro Tull’s line up.

     My first encounter with Jethro Tull came in 1970 when my Twig bandmate Mike Kesti loaned me his copy of their 1970 LP Benefit.  Mike told me to take a listen and to see if I thought there were any tunes we should try to add to our growing set list.  “I really like Teacher,” I told him at our next rehearsal to which he replied, “Yeah, that’s okay.  Maybe we can try it after we learn To Cry You A Song.”  Mike’s choice was interesting.  It was one of the first songs we learned with a dual guitar/bass riff as the song’s backbone and many stops and starts in the vocals.  It was six minutes long and my first question was, “Do you think anybody will dance that long to one song?”  Mike made the right choice because To Cry You A Song gave us a lot of confidence to go forward and learn more complicated songs.  As far as people dancing for six minutes, it was always a big hit at the frat parties we played.  

     We liked the song well enough to relearn it when Mike and I got together again in 1974 as Sledgehammer.  We decided to resurrect a few of our favorite Twig songs and To Cry You A Song was one of them.  We never did go back and learn Teacher, but it is still a Tull song that tops my list.  I later found out that Teacher had only been released as the B-side single behind the A-side track Witch’s Promise in the United Kingdom.  It would later resurface there on the greatest hits LP Living in the Past  in 1972, but I was lucky enough to hear it when it was included in the American release of Benefit in 1970.

     Halfway into this piece about Anderson, it came to me that I am breaking one of his cardinal rules:  he never refers to Jethro Tull simply as ‘Tull’.  “There’s pride there;  a kind of formal dignity.,” he explained.  When McNair asked if he plans to keep adding to his vast catalogue of music, Ian replied, “Who knows what the future holds?”  Ian claims he may have another album in him but also claims it would be foolish to say he has an album planned out when he hasn’t written any new music since Curious Ruminant was released.  He admits only that, “If we do make another record, it will have to be a bit different.  I can imagine a reversal to something quite basic.”

     Anderson has never been one to paint himself into any corners, musically speaking.  While their early albums formed a solid foundation for the band, it was 1971’s Aqualung that broke them to a wider audience.  The album’s blend of progressive and hard rock with dashes of folk music gave listeners large doses of heavy electric riffs side by side with acoustic guitar.  The lyrics span a host of topics;  religion, spirituality, and social issues like homelessness and prostitution are all grist for Anderson’s mill.  The connecting threads in the album’s tracks had some label it ‘a concept album’, something Anderson has vehemently denied.   By the time Aqualung came along, old friend John Evan made his first appearance with Ian since The Blades as did bassist Jeffery Hammond.  Aqualung would be drummer Clive Bunker’s last with the band and he would be replaced by another ex-Blade member, Barrimore Barlow.  The album was a major commercial success moving more than seven million copies (their best selling album).  The pumping rhythm of Locomotive Breath made it fun to play.  Our second guitar player in Sledgehammer, Lindsay, did an outstanding job on vocals.  I would have loved to sing it, but Lindsay nailed it so I concentrated on giving it my best Clive Bunker beat.

     On the heels of Aqualung came more albums that people wanted to characterize as ‘concept albums’:  Thick as a Brick (1972), A Passion Play (1973), War Child (1974), Minstrel in the Gallery (1975), and Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll:  Too Young to Die! (1976).  Though the core themes of these albums were different, the structure of the music was similar enough for all to be stamped as ‘Jethro Tull’ songs.  With the recording of 1977’s Songs from the Wood, Ian took a decided turn to a more folk rock sound.  Heavy Horses (1978) and Stormwatch (1979) followed in this same direction. 

     I liked Jethro Tull’s albums but Heavy Horses was one that particularly caught my fancy.  The cassette tape copy I made from the album actually wore out after I played it on many trips between Ontonagon and Marquette the year before my wife and I got married.  I kind of lost touch with Anderson’s work after Horses until I found a boxed set that covered most of his earlier works.  The time span between albums increased from one LP per year to one every two years after 1982’s The Broadsword and the Beast.  The 1990s expanded the inter-album gap to four years with almost twenty years elapsing between The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (2003) and The Zealot Gene in 2022.  The next JT album that got me back into the fold came after Ian made another left turn, this time returning to his blues roots with 1995’s Roots to Branches.

     In describing his latest LP (Curious Ruminant), Ian said, “ It is a product of my ongoing thirst  for knowledge rather than any inquisitive, cud-chewing cow or sheep:  It goes back to my early teenage years.  I always enjoyed learning stuff outside of an English grammar school’s normal curriculum.  I loved fantasy and surrealism, and I was a sponge when it came to the heady days of late-50s and early 60s science fiction.  Maybe my ability to write songs was innate, but the sci-fi stuff couldn’t have done any harm.  I like to learn something new everyday.”

     Though he admits his sci-fi interest didn’t really include the original Star Trek series, Ian did manage to record a track on William Shatner’s 2018 Christmas album.  He has been asked to and has participated in recording sessions for a variety of artists, but the Shatner gig came about in a little different manner.  Anderson told McNair, “I was a fan of Shatner’s for other reasons.  I’d met him once back in the 70s when I was very much out of my depth on some U.S. talk show, and he was very friendly and calming and reassuring.  William brings a level of theatricality to his spoken-word stuff, but it’s done very knowingly, so you can relax with it.”

     In another nod to the past, Ian was asked if he had any regrets about his rather manic stage presence in days of yore:  “It had been pointed out to me that, onstage, everything had to be exaggerated.  I was trying to reach people sitting up with the gods.  I think I took this to heart and over did it.  On TV, it could definitely look a bit hammy.  Out of boredom or devilment, I was probably at my worst on Top of the Pops, or some of the footage for [1976’s] Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll:  Too Young to Die!, where I am like Benny Hill with a flute.”

     What does the world hold next for Ian Anderson?  Jethro Tull ceased recording in the 2000s and disbanded entirely in 2011.  Live shows since then have been advertised as either Ian Anderson solo or Jethro Tull.  Guitarist Martin Barr has also spun off into a solo career.  Ian has dialed things back as he suffers from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).  He quit smoking years ago and attributes his ailment to inhaling too much of the dramatic haze emitted by on stage smoke machines over many years of touring.  He damaged his voice during the 1984 Under Wraps tour (“a combination of overexertion, chain smoking, and the habit of pushing his vocal chords beyond their limits,” according to McNair).  Anderson has adapted by lowering some of his vocal parts and relying on back up singers to do the heavy lifting in the higher ranges.  His flute work seems to not have been affected by his ailments.

     With age and infirmity in mind, is he thinking about retiring?  He told McNair, “I can imagine a reversal to something quite basic – not all the way back to our blues roots, I don’t think, but maybe something stripped down.  I sometimes toy with the idea of a four-piece band.”   What do you think?  To quote the lyric to one of my favorite Jethro Tull songs, “Well the teacher told me, it has been a lot of fun . . .”

 

Top Piece Video:  Teacher would seem to fit the bill!