By Ryan Sparks
Jethro Tull's flute toting
minstrel, front man, and founder, Ian Anderson has been wowing
audiences around the globe for over forty years. Whether he's
out with Tull or touring on his own as a solo artist, Anderson
is a first class act all the way. A man of many interests, he
has not only collected his fair share of awards over the years,
but he's also lent his support to various charitable causes as
well.
I spoke to him on the phone
from Switzerland between legs of his current North American solo
tour which runs through the end of November. We discussed the
secret to his longevity, how he feels about being awarded
honorary doctorates, and also his admiration for the diverse
cultures of the world and how it's influenced his life and
music. He also told me about his love as a boy for the wide open
green spaces and woods, which later led him to pursue an
interest in both land farming and the raising of Atlantic
salmon. The lighter side of our chat found him poking a bit of
fun at himself and the interesting wardrobe choices he made back
in the 70's, including the infamous codpiece.
Ian Anderson is one of rock's
last elder statesmen, and it was both an honour and a pleasure
to have him share some of his stories with us at Classic Rock
Revisited.
Ryan: At the moment you’re in between legs of your current
acoustic tour. You’ve been doing these solo acoustic and
orchestral shows for quite some time now both on your own and
with Tull. Do you approach them differently? I would assume the
solo shows allow you to experiment a bit more.
Ian: Some of the
repertoire is the same, and my particular function within that
repertoire doesn't really change a lot because I'm still singing
the songs, strumming the guitar and playing the flute. I'm
notionally the un-plugged guy in Jethro Tull, so for me not a
lot changes when I'm doing that repertoire, which shares itself
between solo tours and Tull tours. For me nothing changes other
than the band are quieter on the orchestral and acoustic tours.
However, it does give me the opportunity to put in a different
repertoire, which is obviously those songs which were written
and recorded acoustically, and are a part of Jethro Tull's
repertoire, or occasionally some of my own solo repertoire. It
also gives me the opportunity to put in two or three new pieces
which might not be as easy to do with Jethro Tull, where the
anticipation from the fan base is one that expects mainstream
heavy hitters in terms of repertoire. They might not be as
receptive to new material, especially if it's a little more
esoteric in its architecture and musical style.
Ryan: Your list
of accomplishments over the years has been extraordinary and I’d
like to ask you about some them if I may, but firstly for
someone who just last year celebrated forty years as performing
musician, as you've gotten older you haven't been content to
simply rest on your laurels. What's the secret to your
longevity?
Ian: It has
partly to do with the fact that I don't think you ever finish
learning about music. It's always been my belief that the focus,
attention and the motivation is something that I think you have
to have if you're going to be an honest performing musician, as
opposed to just some juke box on legs. You will get that more
from accepting the fact that you have something to learn
everyday in music, sometimes from working with musicians who are
much younger than yourself, and that is a lesson I learned some
while back. Other musicians that I have worked with both in
Jethro Tull and outside of Jethro Tull have not learned that
lesson. They frankly just thought that they knew everything they
needed to know about music some time ago, and now they just play
within their comfort zone. It could be argued that someone like
BB King plays within his comfort zone and has had a long,
industrious, and welcomed career, because lots of people enjoy
what he does. However, that wouldn't suit me at all because I
have to extend that comfort zone into a discomfort zone in order
to give me the kind of personal satisfaction from struggling, to
try to learn new tricks. Old dogs, counter to rumor are usually
quite good at learning new tricks, if they get an early bed at
night, and they wake up early in the morning vigorously
refreshed and ready to take on some new challenges. That's my
motivation musically, to keep trying to accept new challenges
however difficult they might appear to be.
I wrote some
music last year for flute and sitar and that was a challenge
because I had to learn about the mechanics and the workings of
the sitar, as well as musically how it might integrate given its
facilities and great sonorous advantages. Also its strict
limitations in terms of what can be articulated in making a
space for it in music, which is somewhat more progressive with
chords than the usual use of it in Indian music, where it stays
firmly anchored in a certain key, within certain ragas and
certain scales. So you've got a challenge to find ways to make
the sitar work with a western music group, and also flute. We
managed to do that quite well in India last year, and we're
still playing a couple of those modified arrangements on the
solo tour that I'm doing at the moment. Having added some lyrics
to those songs, we're using that new material which is as yet
unrecorded, to offer up to audiences on this Ian Anderson
concert tour.
Ryan: These days
when you up onstage and you look out at the crowd what is the
age demographic? Do you see a lot of new faces?
Ian: It depends
where we are and the time of the year. If I'm doing an outdoor
show in Italy in the middle of the summer, I'm looking out at
thousands of people who seem to have an average age of about
twenty. When you can only see about a hundred meters out into
the crowd they all seem to be quite young. The old folks might
be there, but they're probably standing towards the back and
closer to where the toilets are because they can't last very
long in their older state. They need to go to the toilet a
little more often, so they don't want to be stuck at the front
where they might not be able to visit the lavatory for perhaps
three or four hours. It's an amusing thing to say but there's a
degree of truth in it, because I know. I also would not want to
be stuck in the front at a standing, open air event and not be
able to move, only to have to fight my way through the audience
knowing I would never get back again. So it's the young folks
that you see at those kinds of shows.
If I'm playing
Italy in the winter, perhaps in the same city, in a nice
traditional concert hall built three hundred years ago, then I'm
going to be looking at a bunch of folks who probably have an
average age in their mid fifties. It just depends on the
circumstances really, but broadly speaking I think Jethro Tull's
audience have always been a mixture of young and old, and gender
wise, unlike many of the rock bands from the harder end of the
spectrum, we tend to pretty much have an even mix of males and
females. Whereas with a lot of the bands today it's boy, boy,
boy, not quite sure, boy, boy. So happily we don't find
ourselves staring at a bunch of adoring, long haired, black
t-shirted, fist waving hooligans. We tend to have something that
looks more like a cross section of the sort of people that you
would find walking down the street, or sitting in a sunny piazza
to go back to Italy.
Ryan: Growing up
as boy in Scotland it must have been an honor to be recognized
by Heriot- Watt University when they awarded you with an
honorary doctorate in literature.
Ian: Well I
suspect they gave it to me because Ozzy Osbourne doesn't come
from Edinburgh. The fact remains as we all know, that honorary
degrees are given out to all sorts of people; many of whom are
thoroughly undeserving of such an honor. Universities
pragmatically do like to have some characters to count among
their alumni, and so the idea of giving an honorary degree I
think is one that has its place, it just wouldn't be my natural
inclination to then adopt some letters after my name, whether
it's doctor of literature or MB or whatever it might be. It's
nice to have recognition from your peers and a pat on the back,
but I don't think that means you have to run around wearing such
medals, conspicuously adding them as if it somehow makes you a
more important person. We all know it doesn't take that much
work to get a degree because most of the people that I know with
degrees, including my two children, didn't exactly work too hard
to get them [laughing]. I'm a little bit cynical about the value
of a degree, but it is nice to have, and particularly nice for
me being a person who grew up in Edinburgh, to be recognized by
an Edinburgh university. It was gratefully and appreciatively
received.
Ryan: For someone
who has travelled the world as extensively as you have over the
years, how would say the cultural diversity has influenced both
your life and your music?
Ian: A great
deal because whilst I feel very much a European, a North Western
European, British first and I suppose Scottish in a romantic
kind of way, but my mother was English so I am a mongrel breed.
We Brits are all mongrels; we're all from somewhere else, rather
like Americans and Canadians. Even if you're from an Indigenous
tribal, Indian nation, that's not where you're from, you
probably came from Mongolia [laughing]. We're all from somewhere
else and we're all rather blessed to be where we are. These days
being from somewhere else is increasingly something of a hot
potato. While the cultural diversity is nice to experience and
feed from, in terms of, in my case its presenting music which is
flavored and spiced by lots of different musical elements and
cultural differences. This came initially from black American
music, blues and jazz, and increasingly over the years, musical
sources in Asia, the Middle East and North West and north
Eastern Europe. These things are very much a part of what
interests me about music. It's the common ground and the
differences that I find exciting. The cultural differences are
what I find very inspirational, but at the same time there are
lots of common elements in the music of different cultures.
Through those common areas we can find ways to make music
together with people from pretty much everywhere on the planet I
would think, as long as you have some musical sensibility and a
little bit of broad mindedness. That's a starting point for then
perhaps demonstrating how the cultural differences play a vital
part in bringing together music, so it's not just about fusion.
It's not about bringing atoms together, it's also about
splitting them and trying to demonstrate that there are some
very, very different particles in there that don't necessarily
co-exist happily. Playing music with people from other cultures
is about celebrating the differences in our cultures and not
necessarily celebrating the common ground. The common ground is
what gets us going and it's what gets us off the starting blocks
in a musical context.
Ryan: On the
topic of different cultures and places your tour of India didn't
turn out as planned last year in the wake of the horrendous
terrorist attack in Mumbai. Yet you were determined to go on
with the show. What was your mindset like when you took the
stage, did the tragedy alter your performance in any way?
Ian: Well it made
all my musicians, crew, and myself very nervous because in the
wake of the attack in Mumbai we had a week of shows in other
parts of India and there was a heightened sense of security.
However, the degree to which the security was implemented was in
most cases laughable. It made you very aware that the policing
of public events in India is really woefully inadequate and done
by people who could not be described as being professionals with
any training or awareness of the risk in which they impose, not
only on the people they're supposed to be guarding but they
themselves. So yes it heightened the degree to which there's a
great vulnerability, especially for travelling musicians, and
it's arguably like that for Americans and Brits these days
wherever we go, even within our own shores. It does make you
realize there's a definite risk and you can really do little
more than try to keep your ears and eyes open to do the obvious
things to make sure you minimize any obvious drawing of
attention to yourself. Having bodyguards, limos and armed guards
is probably not the best way to slip through society without
perhaps getting even more attention. It's a tricky one and
obviously all the band and crew in those ten days or so in India
were making something of a sacrifice themselves in staying on.
The English cricket team legged it out of there the day after
the Mumbai massacre started. A lot of tourists and business
people left and the hotels were relatively empty. We weren't
being foolhardy in staying on, we were honoring a commitment to
the people who bought our tickets, and we were honoring a
commitment in I think a more moral sense, to not let terrorism
scare us away. Being foolhardy we were not. Yes we were
accepting a slightly increasing level of apparent risk, but as
they say the show has to go on, and if you run away and jump on
the next plane home, then the terrorists have won.
Ryan: In the
70's you adopted more of a farming lifestyle and the late 70's
saw Tull record a trilogy of albums that had a more rural feel
to them. Was this lifestyle more conducive for you and were
these records a natural extension of that?
Ian: They were
because I grew up on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where as a
growing child I was able to venture into nearby open spaces,
woodlands and public areas. I guess today I'd be very worried if
I had children of that age, letting them go out and wander
around in the fields and woods given that we're much more
conscious of the potential for bad things to happen. However,
back then it seemed relatively innocent and I did have access to
the countryside and wide open spaces which I found to be
invigorating in a way. As soon as I was able, which was around
'74 or '75, I was looking for somewhere where I could live
outside of a major city like London, and yet still be close
enough to get to the airports when I had to go and do the things
you have to do with record companies and recording studios and
so on. When I met my wife we moved out to the countryside and
since then we've continued to live in a rural environment
surrounded by farmland, being involved in land management and
the operation of farming. Of course I had a spell for fifteen
years also being heavily involved in developing aquaculture in
Scotland. It's part of what my wife and I have done. She's been
more involved in the land farming and I'm more involved in the
fish side of things.
Ryan: Are you
still involved in trout farming was it?
Ian: I was never
involved in trout; I was involved strictly in the farming of
Atlantic salmon, but also in sponsoring and being involved in
the development of some aquaculture techniques with new species
as they were then. We did some work with Arctic Char, and I
funded some early trials of farming halibut. But basically
commercially speaking, it was Atlantic salmon grown in the sea
off the west coast of Scotland. At our maximum level of
operation we had I think nine farms operating and three
processing plants in a different part of Scotland. It was
something that grew and got to the point where I really felt it
was out growing me in terms of my wish to devote that amount of
time, as well as the actual financial guarantees. When you have
four hundred people showing up for work every day, they become
quite dependant on keeping their jobs, that whole responsibility
of having a considerable workforce, and as it was then I suppose
in today's exchange rate about thirty five million US dollars.
So it was a substantial amount of annual turnover and if
something went badly wrong, it would have suffered me as well as
the jobs of four hundred people. So it seemed appropriate to
start loosening the reigns and devolve that into leif operations
for other people to take over, and for me to go into a more
distant secondary role as a shareholder. I had to let another
company take the reins to deal with the processing side. Sadly
after all this time, as far as I know the fish farm is still
there under different owners, as we finally drew our last leases
to conclusion last year. All but one or two are still in
operation, but the processing plant, sadly in the recession has
bitten the dust. What was one of the biggest salmon smoking
operations in Scotland, providing the bulk of product to the
biggest, multiple British grocery chains, sadly bit the dust. It
bit the dust without my money in it though [laughs]. So I'm
grateful that I got out when I did. I just decided to spend my
twilight years as a full time musician, rather than taking on
too many other things. These days apart from the commercial
music work that I do I get involved in a few charitable things
and conservation things. I'm trying to get an active program
underway for the ultimate protection of our last domestic wild
species which is the Scottish wildcat. It's the only one we have
in Scotland and extremely endangered at the moment. There are a
few of us who want to see if we can make a difference before
it's too late.
Ryan: Last
question Ian and it has to do with wardrobe. Whatever happened
to the jumpsuits from the A tour?
Ian: Well I don't
have anything left in the way of costumes because most of it was
made by theatrical costumiers in London who still supply the
theatrical profession and the movie industry in the U.K. In fact
my son-in law who's a thespian of ill repute is going for a
fitting tomorrow at Angels himself. I was quite amused to see
that name was still alive and well. He's going to get fitted for
some period drama that he's doing for television. So it was very
much like that and it was always really embarrassing because the
thing was, it was an era where t-shirts and jeans and whatever
it was gave way to a rather more thought through theatrical
clothing in the early 70's. Of course there were those who
turned it into a real joke like Elton John and David Bowie who
sort of really went a step too far. But there were those of us
who used the expertise of the costumiers who did stuff for the
royal ballet and other people, to come up with ideas for
clothing that was practical to wear onstage, and didn't make us
look like we were just wearing blue jeans and trainers, which
seemed incredibly boring.
I remember when
the Eagles were our support band back in '72 they just ambled
onto the stage in blue jeans, cowboy boots and checkered shirts.
They practically looked like some out of work guys from a bad
Cowboy and Indian B- movie. I used to think how incredibly
boring these people were , which was a bit unfair, though I
think they actually were pretty boring, and the audience thought
so too [laughs]. It was a time I suppose where there were those
who felt uncomfortable, because I'm sure the Eagles would have
felt uncomfortable in going onstage overdressed. It was almost
as if they wanted to underplay things, which I now can
appreciate and think they were probably quite right to do that,
especially early on because they didn't come on too strong or
too fancy in front of the audience. They let the audience come
to them, rather that hitting them with some kind of dramatic
appeal. When we began dressing up as it were to go onstage in
the early 70's, I suppose in the beginning it was a little rough
and ready, a little Dickensian and a little shabby looking,
certainly in my case. Then around '73 or '74 it became a little
more elaborate with a rather more balletic costume that would
have graced the live frame of the aging Rudolf Nureyev doing
some guest appearance with the Royal Ballet. So it went past the
point where it was credible, and I was not comfortable wearing
that stuff, but when you've spent thousands of dollars to have
somebody design you something and then you don't wear it; the
Scotsman in me felt that I'd better get my money's worth out of
it before it falls to pieces [laughs]. All that stuff has long
gone off to charity auctions, long before ebay and people began
requesting items of clothing to raise money for charity. I gave
away all of my clothes going back to the 70's, all my old
flutes, everything went off to charity auctions. I have none of
that stuff left. I actually have about two old flutes left from
that era, but something like twenty of them went off to various
charities. These days the types of flutes I play are not going
to be given away unless they go to descendants or something.
Ryan: You also
wore a jock onstage.
Ian: Yeah and
then Michael Jackson got one. All of these things had their
little moments in the sun. Wearing a codpiece onstage was
amusing and then it became too much of a stereotype really. It
was time to leave that behind. I think '74 was probably the last
year I wore that, which in one form or another had been part of
my stage attire for about three years. Just so you know, these
days if you ever catch me wearing a codpiece I shall be wearing
it on the inside of my pants.
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