ian anderson tour

JETHRO TULL Announces 'The Seven Decades' Summer/Fall 2023 U.S. Tour

Legendary rock band JETHRO TULL has announced "The Seven Decades" tour. Led by Ian Anderson , the concert will feature a rich collection of the best-known JETHRO TULL repertoire from 1968 to date. Fans will recognize the key songs from various albums — songs which put JETHRO TULL and Ian Anderson on the map during these seven decades. "The Seven Decades" tour will hit the U.S. from August through November, with stops in Indianapolis, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, New York City, Albany and more.

Tickets to all shows go on sale Friday, April 21 at 10 a.m. local, with various presales starting Thursday, April 20 at 10 a.m.

Tour dates:

Aug. 18 - Ravinia Festival - Highland Park, IL Aug. 19 - TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park - Indianapolis, IN Aug. 20 - Rose Music Center at The Heights - Huber Heights, OH Aug. 22 - PNC Pavilion at Riverbend - Cincinnati, OH Aug. 24 - Wolf Trap - Vienna, VA Sep. 26 - The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park - San Diego, CA Sep. 27 - Greek Theatre - Los Angeles, CA Sep. 29 - Thunder Valley Casino Resort – The Venue at Thunder Valley - Lincoln, CA Sep. 30 - The Mountain Winery - Saratoga, CA Oct. 01 - Luther Burbank Center for the Arts – Ruth Finley Person Theater - Santa Rosa, CA Oct. 27 - Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom - Hampton, NH Oct. 28 - MGM Music Hall at Fenway - Boston, MA Oct. 29 – Mohegan Sun Arena - Uncasville, CT Nov. 01 - Beacon Theatre - New York, NY Nov. 02 - The Capitol Theatre - Port Chester, NY Nov. 04 - Palace Theatre - Albany, NY

JETHRO TULL will release its 23rd studio album, "RökFlöte" , on April 21 via InsideOut Music . Following 2022's "The Zealot Gene" , the group's first LP in two decades, Anderson and his bandmates are returning with a 12-track record based on the characters and roles of some of the principal gods of the old Norse paganism, and at the same time exploring the "RökFlöte" — rock flute — which JETHRO TULL has made iconic.

"RökFlöte" will be available on several different formats, including two limited deluxe formats that include bonus demo material, extensive liner notes and a Blu-ray featuring Dolby Atmos, 5.1 Surround Sound, alternative stereo mixes by Bruce Soord ( THE PINEAPPLE THIEF ),as well as a bonus track and in-depth interview with Anderson . The album will also be available digitally in the spatial audio formats Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 RA.

Ian explained the album's title and theme in more detail: "The title of this offering went through a little change or two along the way. I started with the idea of a predominantly instrumental album for rock flute — as in rock music. When the subject material of the album presented itself, I was drawn to the term Ragnarök from Norse mythology — their version of apocalyptic end times or Biblical Armageddon. The 'final showdown' scenario is ubiquitous and inherent in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, for example. Ragnarök translates as 'destiny of the Gods', the rök part meaning destiny, course, direction. With umlaut firmly in place, courtesy of the Germanic origins of Old Norse, Flute became Flöte in keeping with the spelling. With me so far? I just can't miss the glorious opportunity for a good and legitimate umlaut."

"The Zealot Gene" , released in January 2022, was JETHRO TULL 's 22nd studio album and it garnered critical acclaim across the board. Reaching No. 9 in the U.K. album charts, a feat the band hadn't reached since 1972, it also debuted at No. 4 in Germany, No. 3 in Switzerland, No. 5 in Austria, No. 8 in Finland, as well as top 10 in the U.S. album charts, Current Album charts and Rock Album charts.

With more than 30 albums to their credit and sales totaling more than 50 million, JETHRO TULL are one of the most successful rock bands of all-time with a catalog that contains classics that still resonate today. Led by Anderson , TULL continue to tour throughout the world, entertaining audiences of all ages.

The band consists of:

Ian Anderson - Concert and Alto flutes, Flute d'Amour, Irish whistle and vocals David Goodier - Bass John O'Hara - Piano, keyboards and Hammond Organ Scott Hammond - Drums Joe Parrish-James - Electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).

Donald Fagen's Steely Dan Regret
50 Greatest Solo Artists
Jagger & Richards Yearly Photos
50 Greatest Power Ballads
Hair Purposely Left in 'Let It Be'
John Oates Album Review

Jethro Tull Announces ‘The Seven Decades’ US Tour

Jethro Tull has announced a 2023 U.S. tour stretching from summer into fall.

Dubbed the Seven Decades tour, the trek will be in support of the prog-rock group’s new album, RokFlote . Performances begin Aug. 18th in Highland Park, Ill. From there, Jethro Tull will wind their way through various parts of the U.S. before wrapping things up on Nov. 4th in Albany, N.Y.

A full list of tour dates can be found below.

RokFlote , Jethro Tull’s 23rd album, arrives Friday. Frontman Ian Anderson previously revealed how he drew on Norse mythology for the album’s title.

“I started with the idea of a predominantly instrumental album for rock flute – as in rock music,” he explained. “When the subject material of the album presented itself, I was drawn to the term Ragnarok from Norse mythology – their version of apocalyptic end times or Biblical Armageddon. The ‘final showdown’ scenario is ubiquitous and inherent in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, for example.

“Ragnarok translates as ‘destiny of the Gods,’ the ‘rok’ part meaning destiny, course, direction,” he continued. “With umlaut firmly in place, courtesy of the Germanic origins of Old Norse, Flute became ‘flote’ in keeping with the spelling. With me so far? I just can’t miss the glorious opportunity for a good and legitimate umlaut.”

Jethro Tull, The Seven Decades 2023 U.S. Tour Aug. 18 – Highland Park, Ill. @ Ravina Festival Aug. 19 – Indianapolis, Ind. @ TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park Aug. 20 – Huber Heights, Ohio @ Rose Music Center at The Heights Aug. 22 – Cincinnati, Ohio @ PNC Pavilion at Riverbend Aug. 24 – Vienna, Va. @ Wolf Trap Sept. 26 – San Diego, Calif. @ The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park Sept. 27 – Los Angeles, Calif. @ Greek Theatre Sept. 29 – Lincoln, Calif. @ Thunder Valley Casino Resort Sept. 30 – Saratoga, Calif. @ The Mountain Winery Oct. 1 – Santa Rosa, Calif. @ Luther Burbank Center for the Arts – Ruth Finley Person Theater Oct. 27 – Hampton, N.H. @ Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom Oct. 28 – Boston, Mass. @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway Oct. 29 – Uncasville, Conn. @ Mohegan Sun Arena Nov. 1 – New York, N.Y. @ Beacon Theatre Nov. 2 – Port Chester, N.Y. @ The Capitol Theatre Nov. 4 – Albany, N.Y. @ Palace Theatre

Jethro Tull Albums Ranked

Jethro Tull tour dates 2024

Jethro Tull is currently touring across 3 countries and has 11 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Filadelfia Convention Center in Stockholm, after that they'll be at Konzertsaal im Kulturpalast Dresden in Dresden.

Currently touring across

Upcoming concerts (11) See nearest concert

Filadelfia Convention Center

Konzertsaal im Kulturpalast Dresden

Haus Auensee

Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig HP8

CCS Stadtgarten Schwäbisch Gmünd

Palapartenope

GETEC Arena Magdeburg

Theater, Admiralspalast

Metropol Theater Bremen

Theater Am Marientor

Past concerts

Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

Sheffield City Hall Oval Hall

View all past concerts

Recent tour reviews

I was lucky enough to 'come of age' during the mid to late 1970's and it DEFINATLY was a GREAT DECADE for concerts in NYC and elsewhere!!! I saw Jethro Tull several times, primarily at Madison Square Garden, NYC. At that time, 'Tull' was usually magical to see and hear 'Live". Ian Anderson was at the top of his game and listening to him turn his flute into a 'soaring bird' taking flight was simply AMAZING!!!! I haven't seen them since, but I can only imagine that Anderson has continued to mold into an even better performer.

Sometimes ya just gotta live with the special memories. Concerts today are generally SO OUTRAGOUSLY EXPENSIVE that one has to be picky about which bands are worth dumping $500 to $1000 on, just for a mediocre show.

Report as inappropriate

We thoroughly enjoyed Jethro Tull in such a wonderful setting Ripon Cathedral.

His Christmas mix of songs with his past classics was just fabulous ( not really knowing what to expect !) & Ian could still perform on one leg !

The lighting was atmospheric moody & crisp.

The only slight negative was why on earth did He need Lloyd Grossman singing tame bland punk songs WHICH added absolutely nothing to the overall performance ?? ...if anything it cheapened the whole experience for us being alongside a true global Rock Legend ...…...but never mind We look forward to Jethro Tull live at Ripon again...WE'LL BE THERE !

Cheers & Merry Christmas

Roger Fawcett & Gail Hague ( Harrogate )

Jethro Tull still shine musically, and keep in mind: this is their 50th anniversary tour!

They had great sound, and played their instruments almost flawlessly.

All of them are high-level musicians, but a particular mention goes to Florian Opahle at the electric guitar, who performed beautifully and injected new life in many classic pieces with his own playing style and ideas (maybe a hint more of blues and heavy metal than previous guitarists, but very welcome by the crowd!).

Ian Anderson himself still is a great live performer, both physically moving around the stage and when playing the flute. This despite his age (72 years old). That said, even if it saddens me as a Jethro Tull fan, his voice really doesn't hit the right notes anymore.

He was often losing power to the point of inaudibility while singing even short phrases, and was also often off-key, to the point of being embarrassing.

I believe he recognizes the problem, as he had some videos of younger performers "helping him" sing some of the classic pieces, like "Aqualung".

However, for me his singing kinda hampered the whole concert. Combined to it, was the fact that this was a sitting rather than standing experience.

There was a standing ovation on the last two pieces, and as the last song, "Locomotive Breath" everybody rose to their feet. That was an intensely emotional moment.

tl;dr: recommended only to hardcore Jethro Tull fans. The occasional listener better be beware.

Most popular charts
Campaigns for promoters
API information
Brand guidelines
Community guidelines
Terms of use
Privacy policy
Cookies settings
Cookies policy

Get your tour dates seen everywhere.

But we really hope you love us.

Jethro Tull leader is just fine without a Rock Hall nod: 'It’s best that they don’t ask me'

Ian Anderson is ensconced in his home office in the English countryside, “where no one can find me.”

It’s a fitting introduction to the dryly witty centerpiece of Jethro Tull who, since the late '60s, has led various incarnations of the British folk-prog-blues rock band.

Their innovative sound, anchored by Anderson’s standout playing of alto and tenor flutes, as well as the Irish whistle, is forever connected to benchmarks “Locomotive Breath,” “Bungle in the Jungle” and “Aqualung” (the namesake album earned Jethro Tull its first American Top 10 album in 1971).

But the group – Anderson, David Goodier (bass), John O’Hara (piano/organ), Scott Hammond (drums) and Joe Parrish-James (guitar/mandolin) – is still progressing.

The 23 rd studio release from Jethro Tull, "RökFlöte," arrived in April, and between Aug. 18 and Nov. 4, Anderson, 76, and his musical mates will play 16 shows around the U.S. during a tour aptly named The Seven Decades.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Anderson, droll and forthright, talked about the longevity of Jethro Tull, the enduring argument about the band’s place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and his appreciation of the umlaut.

A 'rite of passage': Wolfgang Van Halen talks about recording in father Eddie's studio

Question: This tour is celebrating seven decades in the industry. At what point did it sink in that success might not be fleeting?

Ian Anderson: I grew up in a period when the music I listened to wasn’t what was popular on radio or TV, but blues and jazz. The folks I listened to as a teenager were old men, so it never struck me as odd since that was the music I preferred. But it was around 1970-71 when I began to think: "This is looking OK. Maybe I will get to be like those old guys I listen to and still be active in recording and performing when I’m in my 70s and 80s."

How are you planning to structure these live shows?

Quaint though it may seem, America is a little isolated pocket of the universe that only thinks of itself. The rest of the world is where I work most of the time, and I’ve been on tour since the summer of 2021. So this is just another outing for me, to jump to the USA . I’m fairly embedded in the current set list, though there are a few little changes. Having performed (in the U.S.) in 2019, we don’t want to replicate too much of the set list from last time around. But the general feeling is to try to produce one song from each of the seven decades and to keep the set list varied so the songs don’t fall in the same tempo or key or subject material.

A lot of veteran artists are in the twilight of their touring careers. Do you feel this type of retrospective tour signifies that for Jethro Tull?

It certainly is the twilight in that there is a growing inevitability that it will come to an end all too soon. But twilight of my enjoyment of it or nature of the performances artistically is, hopefully, not a twilight. So far I’ve been lucky to enjoy reasonably good health and good mental health. It’s very important as you get older to try to keep focused on what it is you’re doing. The day when you find me looking down at an auto cue (teleprompter) to sing the songs is when I should find another job. I do a lot of work and prep for tours. If I’ve been away from the stage for a few days I need to run through the set a few times. There are thousands of words and notes to remember. It’s a lot of songs, a lot of music, a lot of notes to play on the flute.

Does touring still hold any thrill for you, aside from the performances themselves?

In a more abstract way there is a thrill, but when it comes to getting to the airport and getting on a plane, there are too many things to be thinking about. Same as when you’re about to walk on a stage. I don’t feel any thrill or great anticipation. I’m merely preparing for what comes up, like a Formula One racing driver in the minutes before the lights go out or a tennis player at Wimbledon waiting for the next set. It’s a coldhearted thinking through things. I imagine John Glenn sitting with a few hundred tons of rocket fuel under his arse was probably not thinking, “Whoopee, I’m going into space!” He’s thinking about which switches to flip and when. You’re engrossed in what you’re doing rather than enjoying the moment. My job is too complicated to be sitting back and enjoying “the thrill.”

Tell me about the significance of the new album title − "RökFlöte" – especially those well-placed umlauts.

You can’t beat a good umlaut, especially if it has a reason to be there and is grammatically or linguistically correct, unlike Motörhead or Mötley Crüe, who toss them around like some kind of graffiti in the world of billboard advertising. Mine are quite correct. “Rök” in Old Icelandic means destiny and “Flöte" (in the German pronunciation) means the instrument that I play, so they’re both quite correct. The album began with title of “Rock Flute” because I saw it as a rock album with the other guys as a rock band. Not instrumental, but prominent flute playing. That title endured until January 2022 when I was doing my second day of working out the general terms of the new album and decided the subject matter that I’d settled on would justify changing the working title because it seemed to fit.

You’ve been overseeing reissues of Jethro Tull’s catalog for a while now. How many more are in the works?

The long-awaited big, huge edition of "The Broadsword and the Beast" album from 1982 is now set for Sept. 1 release. Beyond that we have one or two other plans, but this comes at the instigation of Warner Music. They have the copyright to the material, so they have to feel a commercial viability before they will embark on the expensive job of remastering and remixing. It’s really up to them to set the ball rolling, but then I do what I can to aid and abet in the process.

I hear from so many people how it’s criminal that Jethro Tull isn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But from what I understand, you don’t really want to be in there?

I think it’s quite wrong for us to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when so many great American acts are being ignored and will be for all time because I suppose they haven’t sold enough records or aren’t that popular to impress the founding fathers of the Rock Hall. I have no idea who they are because I’m not really a music fan and don’t follow that stuff. … But Tull isn’t an example of Americana, and Americana is what the Rock Hall should be about. It’s celebrating American music in an American institution, and I don’t really feel Tull really qualifies in that sense. It’s not that I have any disdain for Americana − that’s what got me into music in the first place − but I don’t feel that’s what I do.

But if you were nominated?

I can confidently predict it will not happen, because I have it on fairly good authority that the folks who make these decisions are not Tull fans and decided a long time ago that we would not be part of it. It takes away the difficulty of sending a polite “no thank you” note because I’m not about to jump on a plane and go to wherever it is just to be part of a celebration. It’s best that they don’t ask me ; then I don’t have that difficulty of sounding like a real old sourpuss and say I’m going to be washing my hair that day. Which really isn’t a plausible excuse any longer. But I have great respect for all of those artists who are part of it.

Goodbye to 'The Black Godfather': Music industry mogul Clarence Avant dies at 92

BAD WOLVES Enlist CHRIS DAUGHTRY On New Single “Hungry For Life”

Harm’s way shares music video for “terrorizer”, uk prog-rockers returned to the earth announce new album “stalagmite steeple”, share new single “dark morality”.

ATREYU Will Perform Entire “The Curse” Album At 20th-Anniversary Concert This October
GODSMACK Announces Fall 2024 US Tour With FLAT BLACK & NOTHING MORE
THE PINEAPPLE THIEF Announce Final Dates Of “It Leads To This” North America Tour
PALLBEARER – Mind Burns Alive (Album Review)
LORNA SHORE Announces North American Headlining Tour Featuring WHITECHAPEL, KUBLAI KHAN TX, SANGUISUGABOGG

JETHRO TULL Announces “The Seven Decades” Summer/Fall 2023 U.S. Tour

Legendary rock band JETHRO TULL has announced “The Seven Decades” tour. Led by Ian Anderson , the concert will feature a rich collection of the best-known JETHRO TULL repertoire from 1968 to date. Fans will recognize the key songs from various albums — songs which put JETHRO TULL and Ian Anderson on the map during these seven decades. “The Seven Decades” tour will hit the U.S. from August through November, with stops in Indianapolis, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, New York City, Albany and more.

Tickets to all shows go on sale Friday, April 21 at 10 a.m. local, with various pre-sales starting Thursday, April 20 at 10 a.m.

“The Seven Decades” Tour dates:

Aug. 18 – Ravinia Festival – Highland Park, IL Aug. 19 – TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park – Indianapolis, IN Aug. 20 – Rose Music Center at The Heights – Huber Heights, OH Aug. 22 – PNC Pavilion at Riverbend – Cincinnati, OH Aug. 24 – Wolf Trap – Vienna, VA Sep. 26 – The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park – San Diego, CA Sep. 27 – Greek Theatre – Los Angeles, CA Sep. 29 – Thunder Valley Casino Resort – The Venue at Thunder Valley – Lincoln, CA Sep. 30 – The Mountain Winery – Saratoga, CA Oct. 01 – Luther Burbank Center for the Arts – Ruth Finley Person Theater – Santa Rosa, CA Oct. 27 – Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom – Hampton, NH Oct. 28 – MGM Music Hall at Fenway – Boston, MA Oct. 29 – Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, CT Nov. 01 – Beacon Theatre – New York, NY Nov. 02 – The Capitol Theatre – Port Chester, NY Nov. 04 – Palace Theatre – Albany, NY

JETHRO TULL will release its 23rd studio album, “RökFlöte” , on April 21 via Inside Out Music . Following 2022’s “The Zealot Gene” , the group’s first LP in two decades, Anderson and his band-mates are returning with a 12-track record based on the characters and roles of some of the principal gods of the old Norse paganism, and at the same time exploring the “RökFlöte” — rock flute — which JETHRO TULL has made iconic.

“RökFlöte” will be available on several different formats, including two limited deluxe formats that include bonus demo material, extensive liner notes and a Blu-ray featuring Dolby Atmos, 5.1 Surround Sound, alternative stereo mixes by Soord , as well as a bonus track and in-depth interview with Anderson . The album will also be available digitally in the spatial audio formats Dolby Atmos & Sony 360 RA. Pre-order it HERE .

“RökFlöte” track-listing:

1. Voluspo 2. Ginnungagap 3. Allfather 4. The Feathered Consort 5. Hammer On Hammer 6. Wolf Unchained 7. The Perfect One 8. Trickster (And The Mistletoe) 9. Cornucopia 10. The Navigators 11. Guardian’s Watch 12. Ithavoll

“RökFlöte” Album Artwork

Ian explains the album’s title and theme in more detail: “The title of this offering went through a little change or two along the way. I started with the idea of a predominantly instrumental album for rock flute — as in rock music. When the subject material of the album presented itself, I was drawn to the term Ragnarök from Norse mythology — their version of apocalyptic end times or Biblical Armageddon. The ‘final showdown’ scenario is ubiquitous and inherent in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, for example. Ragnarök translates as ‘destiny of the Gods’, the rök part meaning destiny, course, direction. With umlaut firmly in place, courtesy of the Germanic origins of Old Norse, Flute became Flöte in keeping with the spelling. With me so far? I just can’t miss the glorious opportunity for a good and legitimate umlaut.”

“The Zealot Gene” , released in January 2022, was JETHRO TULL ‘s 22nd studio album and it garnered critical acclaim across the board. Reaching No. 9 in the U.K. album charts, a feat the band hadn’t reached since 1972, it also debuted at No. 4 in Germany, No. 3 in Switzerland, No. 5 in Austria, No. 8 in Finland, as well as top 10 in the U.S. album charts, Current Album charts and Rock Album charts.

The band consists of:

Ian Anderson / Concert and Alto flutes, Flute d’Amour, Irish whistle and vocals
David Goodier / Bass
John O’Hara / Piano, keyboards and Hammond Organ
Scott Hammond / Drums
Joe Parrish-James / Electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin

Comments are closed.

Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson on music, flutes, morphine drips and why he can’t stand hippies

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull at a Christmas concert in Rome, Italy, Dec. 16, 2021

The flute-playing founder and leader of Jethro Tull is the band’s only member who has been in all of the 30-plus lineups of the band. Nick Cave and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett are fans

Show more sharing options
Copy Link URL Copied!

Ian Anderson is understandably pleased Jethro Tull — the pioneering progressive-rock band he founded and has led since 1967 — has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and is now embarked on the aptly named “The Seven Decades Tour.” It includes a Tuesday San Diego concert at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park.

The veteran flutist, singer, songwriter and guitarist is also pleased Jethro Tull counts a number of high-profile musicians among its fans. They include former R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, Nick Cave and members of the bands Midlake and The Decemberists, as well as actress Lisa Lampanelli.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull bites the bullet for 50th anniversary tour

Cited as an inspiration by everyone from Nick Cave to the band Midlake, Jethro Tull is now 51 years old, but band founder Ian Anderson is not one for nostalgia.

June 30, 2019

But Anderson scoffs when asked if he has seen any unlikely fans — a contentious political figure, perhaps — turn up at Jethro Tull’s concerts.

“I have no idea who is in the audience; they are all strangers to me,” he replied, speaking from his home in Wiltshire, England. “But that’s part of the appeal. You are in front of people you don’t know, will never meet, and don’t want to know.

“Concerts give you the opportunity to make some new friends, or some new enemies. Then, after the show, I disappear into my little dressing room and crawl under a rock, because I’m not a social creature.”

Depending on the day and his mood, Anderson can indeed be a prickly character on occasion. He can also be warm, endearing and an insightful commentator on his chosen profession. He is the only member of Jethro Tull who has been in all of its 30-plus lineups.

“Sometimes the people you dread meeting — because of anecdotal, spurious hearsay — turn out to be the nicest people,” Anderson said. “Sadly, the opposite is true, as well. People you think are going to be nice turn out not to be. I guess I’m the same.

“Catch me on the right day and you’re fine. But I’m sure I’ve disappointed some people who were catching me at the wrong moment, when I didn’t want to have to stop — in mid-mouthful in a restaurant — to take a selfie with them.”

Flute first, then and now

Norwegian actress Julie Ege and Jethro Tull London, February 19, 1971.

The Scottish-born Anderson turned 76 in August, 58 years after Tull — the band long synonymous with his name — was launched as a jazzy blues-rock ensemble.

Its latest album, the 12-song “RökFlöte,” was released this year and boasts lyrics inspired by the polytheistic beliefs of Norse mythology. The band’s 2022 album, “The Zealot Gene,” finds Anderson exploring themes of political fanaticism and using biblical texts to reflect on current events.

With Anderson’s 80th birthday just four years away, how important is it for him to surprise himself when creating new music?

“It’s incredibly important when you’re recording it,” he said. “And I’m pretty pleased with my aspirations to continue making music that we have brought to fruition through good luck and hard work. (It’s like) riding a bike. If you fall off, there’s a danger you might not be able to get back on. So, it’s good not to fall off.”

Jethro Tull’s most popular album, 1971’s “Aqualung,” has sold more than 12 million copies. Tull’s wildly ambitious 1972 concept album, “Thick as a Brick,” made history in at least two ways.

It is the only release to ever top Billboard magazine’s U.S. album charts that consists of just one song — albeit a very extended, complex song that lasts nearly 44 minutes. Moreover, “Brick” was a progressive-rock opus that simultaneously parodied the bombast and self-indulgence of progressive-rock.

Like all of Jethro Tull’s albums before and since, it featured Anderson singing and playing the flute. The instrument had not previously been a focal point of any rock band. But Anderson changed that, starting with Jethro Tull’s 1968 debut album, “This Was.” Nearly every song on it boasts prominent flute work, none more so than the spirited version of jazz sax and flute great Roland Kirk’s vocal-free 1965 classic, “Serenade to a Cuckoo.”

That Jethro Tull was led by a bearded, long-haired, seemingly crazed young musician — who often played flute and sang while perched on one leg — added to the band’s image and appeal.

Anderson discussed his move to the flute in a 1988 San Diego Union-Tribune interview, saying: “I was a not-very-good singer in a not-very-good blues band. And so I started also to play not-very-good harmonica, and ended up playing not-very-good flute. I did it largely because it was different, and because it was there.”

In 1967, the year Tull was formed, only a few rock bands memorably utilized a flute, but not as a lead instrument. One was the American band The Blues Project. The other two were both English: The Moody Blues and Family.

Did any of these bands inspire Anderson as a “not-very-good flutist?” In a word: no.

“What inspired me as a flute player was Eric Clapton, because it was his guitar playing I wanted to emulate,” he said.

Eric Clapton speaks up for J.J. Cale

The English blues-rock legend discusses Cale & ‘The Breeze,’ Clapton’s heartfelt tribute to his close musical friend and longtime Valley Center troubadour.

July 25, 2014

“It was really my determination to do something other than play the ubiquitous electric guitar, which everybody wanted to do — including me — when I was a teenager. I quickly realized Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and (Deep Purple’s) Ritchie Blackmore were the wiz-kid guitar players down in London and were way ahead of me.

“That made me look for something else to play. But I had no idea what to do with the flute once I got a couple of notes out of it. I tried to play the blues and went on from there. Like anything else, you realize there is more to it, so I did listen to a few other players, including — after a few months — Roland Kirk.”

But Kirk, Anderson contends, was not his primary influence.

“One of my favorites as a teen was Mose Allison,” he said. “Mose would mumble and sing along with his piano playing, which was rather endearing. I suspect I picked up on scat-singing (while playing flute) from him and other people in the world of jazz more than from a flute player like Roland Kirk.”

Mose Allison, influential blues and jazz great, dead at 89

His songs were recorded by such high-profile admirers as Bonnie Raitt, The Who, Diana Krall, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Blue Cheer and many more

Nov. 15, 2016

In the early 1970s, then-still-fledgling Anderson topped the masterful Kirk as the No. 1 flutist in Playboy’s annual jazz and pop poll. Was Anderson flattered, embarrassed, or both, at this turn of events?

“Well,” he answered, “I did actually meet Roland Kirk, who I was terrified of. Because word was that he was a pretty intimidating person and not flattering or kind to other people. We met when I played this jazz festival in 1969 on the East Coast, I don’t remember where.

The Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island?

“Yes, Newport,” Anderson said. “I don’t know why they booked us and Led Zeppelin, which seemed weird. Our manager said: ‘Roland Kirk wants to meet you.’ I thought: ‘Oh, god, what am I going to do?’ Plus, Kirk was blind which made it even more difficult to confront him in a social setting. But he was really kind and nice. Or, at least, he pretended to approve of my rendition of his song because he was getting the mechanical royalties for it!

“Many years later, Kirk’s second wife (Dorothea) showed up at one of our shows in New Jersey, long after he was dead. She said: ‘Thanks. I get a (royalty) check twice a year for your performance of Roland’s song and it’s helped to have that coming in to help pay the bills.”

Nyet to Russian oligarchs

Paying bills has not been a problem for Anderson since Jethro Tull began selling millions of albums and filling arenas in the 1970s. By the 1980s he owned several salmon farms in Scotland. At their peak, they employed 400 people and — in 1997 alone —produced 900 tons of smoked salmon, with annual revenues of $26 million.

Commenting on his fish-fueled entrepreneurship in a 1988 Union-Tribune interview, Anderson said he would rather be remembered for providing hundreds of new jobs than for selling tens of millions of albums.

“I guess I’m a socialist at heart,” he said at the time. “Actually, I’m a communist bastard at heart, but I live in a capitalist world, so I try to be a good capitalist. My kids usually prefer to say: ‘My daddy’s a fish farmer.’ It’s easier to say that than: ‘He plays in an old man’s rock group with these fat, balding fellows!’ ”

By 2003, Anderson had sold his salmon farms and processing plants. His concert tours with Jethro Tull and as a solo artist are a near-constant. And he has the financial liberty of declining performance opportunities as he sees fit.

“There are quite a few offers that have come my way, for large amounts of money,” Anderson acknowledged. “The offers are to do things I feel are quite inappropriate, whether it’s a private party for some Russian oligarch, or a cruise ship tour, or things at big, multi-act festivals. I think I know what I’m worth and there are times I would not do things just for the paycheck. It’s not worth it.”

By his count, Anderson has performed in 55 countries on at least five continents. He recalls first encountering Russian President Vladimir Putin at a 1992 Jethro Tull concert in St. Petersburg. At the time, former KGB agent Putin was the chairman of the city’s External Relations Committee and an assistant to its mayor.

“We were supposed to play in Kyiv last year on a tour that we had to cancel because of the invasion of Ukraine by Putin,” Anderson lamented. “And we canceled our tour of Russia, where I’ve enjoyed playing in the past. Given Putin’s propensity for extremism — and his desire to rebuild the Soviet Union to resemble what it was when he was an officer in the KGB — I don’t expect we’ll ever play again in Russia in my lifetime.”

Earlier in his lifetime — 1969, to be exact — Anderson turned down an offer for Jethro Tull to perform at the now-legendary Woodstock festival, citing the fact that he didn’t “like hippies.” In the 1970s he sometimes berated concertgoers for smoking pot because the smoke impacted his singing and flute-playing.

Yet, in photos of Jethro Tull in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Anderson looked very much like a full-blown hippie.

“Clearly, my personal outlook was very much not aligned with the hippie lifestyle, especially when it came to drugs,” he said. “It wasn’t as individuals — some of them were probably nice people, if they ever had a shower — but the lifestyle seemed synonymous with all the drugs and the ‘free sex’ thing, which I just never got the hang of...

“I didn’t go in that direction, and I‘m glad I didn’t. But in my final years, I might deduce I want to catch up on that. And there’s a 50 percent chance I’ll end my days on a morphine drip.”

He chuckled.

“Of course, at my age there is that element of uncertainty,” said Anderson, who titled Jethro Tull’s 1976 album “Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll, Too Young to Die.”

“You have to be realistic about longevity, potential ill health and the onset of dementia,” he continued. “Although, theoretically, for people who do what I do there’s a fighting chance of staving that off. Because, playing concerts and making new music, we are so engaged with the process of concentration, performance and remembering things we did last night and 50 years ago.

“Ultimately, nothing will save us but our genes. But, to some extent with music, you can increase your odds of longevity.”

Jethro Tull: The Seven Decades Tour

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222 Marina Park Way, downtown

Tickets: $45-$170

Phone: (619) 235-0804

Online: theshell.org

Get U-T Arts & Culture on Thursdays

A San Diego insider’s look at what talented artists are bringing to the stage, screen, galleries and more.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

More from this Author

Beck performs on the final day of Wonderfront Music and Arts Festival at the Embarcadero Marina Park.

Wonderfront festival concludes with a bang, thanks to The Roots, Beck and Steel Pulse

May 13, 2024

Appreciation: Sax great David Sanborn dead at 78. ‘I think people relate to a lyrical humanness in my playing,’ he said

San Diego CA - May 11: Dominic Fike performs at Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival on Saturday, May 11, 2024 in San Diego, CA. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Wonderfront festival delivered the hits Saturday on a night when the San Diego Padres went scoreless

May 12, 2024

The Montreal Jazz Festival offers free music on six outdoor stages in the center of the city.

Montreal Jazz Festival a treat for music fans of multiple genres — and a bargain, with 150-plus free concerts

Accordionist and singer C.J. Chenier led his Red Hot Louisiana Band

Gator by the Bay’s rousing tribute to zydeco-music giant Clifton Chenier a night to remember

May 11, 2024

Wonderfront music festival has returned to kick off its next wave

May 10, 2024

More in this section

Les Ballets Jazz Montréal presents "Dance Me" with music by Leonard Cohen.

Entertainment

Les Ballets Jazz Montréal sets the music of Leonard Cohen to dance

La Jolla Music Society is presenting the ambitious Canadian dance program at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Wednesday

Ernie Isley and Ron Isley 51st Songwriters Hall of Fame, NYC Marquis, June 16, 2022

This weekend’s three don’t-miss San Diego-area concerts

Our picks include Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Isley Brothers at Pala, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai at Harrah’s, and the King Crimson-offshoot band Tu-NER at TERI Campus of Life

May 9, 2024

The JACK Quartet performed a concert Monday, May 6, at the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla.

Classical Music

Review: JACK Quartet concert combined 20th century moderns with 21st century eclectics

Last-minute venue change to the Birch Aquarium proved no obstacle to the expert performances

May 8, 2024

Steve Albini of Shellac performs during Primavera Sound Madrid 2023 on June 10, 2023 in Madrid.

Nation-World

Steve Albini, legendary producer for Nirvana, the Pixies and an alternative rock pioneer, dies at 61

Albini, who was prepping for a tour with his band Shellac, passed away from a heart attack on Tuesday night

San Diego, CA - April 30: San Diego Symphony CEO Martha Gilmer poses for a photo at Jacobs Music Center on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in San Diego, CA. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

San Diego Symphony announces 2024-25 season at newly renamed concert hall after $125 million redesign

The 95-year-old venue, now named Jacobs Music Center, will boast improved acoustics, a new sound system, a permanent elevated choral terrace at the rear of the reconfigured stage, and much more, while retaining its historical essence.

May 7, 2024

Wonderfront returning to San Diego this week as landscape for music festivals grows increasingly challenging

A record number of festivals have recently been canceled, postponed or gone out of business, while Coachella’s attendance has gone down for the second consecutive year. What does it take to buck the trend? Will Wonderfront’s lineup do the trick with Kaytranada, Beck, Weezer and The Roots?

May 5, 2024

Ian Anderson Announces Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary North American Tour

Ian Anderson has announced a North American tour that will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his band, Jethro Tull.

The concerts will feature a broad mix of material, ranging from the band's earliest work, to its peak period in the early to mid-Seventies, to the band's 21st century work. Anderson (vocals, flute) will be joined by David Goodier on bass, John O'Hara on keyboards, Florian Opahle on guitar and Scott Hammond on drums.

“I am not usually a birthday or anniversary kind of guy but, just for once, I won't be a party-pooper either," Anderson said in a press release announcing the tour. "I treasure the memories of the earlier years of Jethro Tull repertoire, associated as it is with the adventures of visiting so many countries for the first time to connect with new fans around the world. And 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."

"Join me and the current band for a nostalgic evening of varied music, representative of my ever-changing songwriting as our careers progressed through the years.”

You can see the full tour itinerary below.

For more on tickets, stop by jethrotull.com .

Jethro Tull by Ian Anderson North American Tour

5/30/18 Phoenix, AZ: Comerica Theatre

6/1/18 Los Angeles, CA: Greek Theatre

6/2/18 Berkeley, CA: The Greek Theatre

6/3/18 Paso Robles, CA: Vina Robles Amphitheatre

6/5/18 Visalia, CA: Visalia Fox Theatre

6/6/18 Sacramento, CA: Sacramento Community Theater

6/8/18 Bend, OR: Les Schwab Amphitheater

6/9/18 Troutdale, OR: Edgefield

6/10/18 Woodinville, WA: Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery

6/29/18 Saint Louis, MO: Fox Theatre

6/30/18 New Buffalo, MI: Four Winds Casino Resort - Silver Creek Event Center

7/1/18 Sterling Heights, MI: Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill

7/3/18 Toronto, ON: Budweiser Stage

8/31/18 Minneapolis, MN: State Theatre

9/1/18 Kansas City, MO: Starlight Theatre

9/3/18 Highland Park, IL: Ravinia Festival

9/5/18 Huber Heights, OH: Rose Music Center at the Heights

9/7/18 Vienna, VA: Wolf Trap

9/8/18 Philadelphia, PA: Mann Center for the Performing Arts

9/9/18 Boston, MA: Blue Hills Bank Pavilion

9/11/18 New York, NY: Beacon Theatre

Thank you for reading 5 articles this month**

Join now for unlimited access

US pricing $3.99 per month or $39.00 per year

UK pricing £2.99 per month or £29.00 per year

Europe pricing €3.49 per month or €34.00 per year

*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription

Prices from £2.99/$3.99/€3.49

Get The Pick Newsletter

All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!

Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player . Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded . Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.

“It was a quality instrument to learn on. Without my dad, who knows what kind of tree trunk I would’ve had”: You’ll never guess what guitar thrash metal pioneer Kerry King learned to play on

Slayer's Kerry King and the 30 greatest New Jersey guitarists of all time – only in the new Guitar World

“It makes me sick to even think that I spent that much money on a guitar. Nile Rodgers was like, ‘What is that?!’” Tash Sultana on the magic of Strats and blowing a guitar legend’s mind with an extremely rare model

an image, when javascript is unavailable

Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson: My Life in 10 Songs

By Kory Grow

For Ian Anderson – prog rocker extraordinaire and the world’s best one-legged-stance flautist, bar none – a half-century career in music is no remarkable feat. “It’s not any particularly novel or unusual occurrence,” the Jethro Tull leader says nonchalantly through his dry British accent. “This year marks the anniversary of many other bands who did things around the same period of time. King Crimson started in 1968. So did Yes, Rush and Deep Purple. And of course it’s Led Zeppelin’s 50th anniversary too. So there we go.”

But what he fails to acknowledge is that none of those bands, no matter how out-there they got, were able to blend their hard-rock aspirations with the same levels of pomp, guile or unapologetic pretension as Jethro Tull. None scored FM-radio gold singing lyrics like “Lend me your ear while I call you a fool” (“The Witch’s Promise”) or by writing a 44-minute, tongue-in-cheek prog-rock song (“Thick as a Brick,” presented in two parts on the original LP and packaged in a fake newspaper) or by playing frilly flute solos over Renaissance-inspired folk-rock (“Songs From the Wood”).

In their 50 years, Jethro Tull have notched an astounding 15 gold or platinum albums in the U.S., as well as two Number One LPs. Their most famous song, “Aqualung,” has a guitar riff that’s as cutting and memorable as “Iron Man” and “Smoke on the Water,” and their music has influenced Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Porcupine Tree, Pearl Jam and Nick Cave, among others. Yet the band has not yet been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the only time it has won a Grammy was in the Hard Rock/Metal category – a concept that seemed so preposterous to Anderson that he didn’t bother to show up.

Now, despite the singer’s apparent disinterest in anniversaries, the group – which has cycled through dozens of members over the years – is celebrating its legacy with a 50th-anniversary tour and a new compilation album, 50 for 50 . For the latter release, Anderson picked 50 songs from Tull’s 21 albums for a three-CD set.

To give the group its due, Rolling Stone spoke with Anderson about Jethro Tull’s history, and the singer put some of those songs in context. “I suppose in my late teens I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m ever gonna do justice to being a blues singer. It’d be farcical for me to pretend to be something that I’m not,'” he says. “So I started trying to play and begin to write songs that were a little more eclectic.” Here, he picks 10 songs that show how Jethro Tull progressed.

“Beggar’s Farm”

This Was (1968)

This was one of the first pieces that I wrote; I think technically I cowrote with Mick Abrahams, our original guitar player. It was essentially a 12-bar-blues–derived piece, but lyrically it was a little unusual. It was a relatively successful attempt to take the essence of black American blues and turn it into some middle-class white boy [music] – not too far from being a clone, just to be influenced by that style and have that mood. But I wasn’t trying to sing it as if I was imitating Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf or any of my heroes from when I was a young teenager.

It had a kind of slightly jazzy feel going on in it as well. When I wrote that song and we started playing it, I’d only been playing the flute for about eight weeks [ laughs ]. But when we recorded it, it was about six months down the line, so it’d settled into something reasonably competent in regard to the recording.

Ones of my influences back then was a peer act that we sometimes appeared with. They were a band called Fleetwood Mac, by which of course I don’t mean the Fleetwood Mac of today; I mean the original “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.” Peter Green was the fine and very lyrical guitar player and very good singer with Fleetwood Mac. I think he’d replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and then migrated over with John McVie, the bass player, into what became Fleetwood Mac.

But the way that Peter did songs, he had this great knack of taking things that were essentially a blues piece and then turning them around into what was being referred to as “progressive rock.” It was no longer just an imitative and rather implausible copying of black American folk-blues. It was doing something else with it that I think was peculiarly British, really. I always thought if Peter Green had done “Beggar’s Farm,” it would have been a whole lot better song. Because he just would have brought his particular touch to it. He would have done the same kind of thing as he did with “Black Magic Woman,” which was a song that Fleetwood Mac used to do and then was covered successfully by Santana. So that’s what was behind that.

“Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square”

Stand Up (1969)

I remember walking past a pawn shop and seeing an instrument hanging in the window and buying it. It was a small, Russian, three-stringed balalaika. I fashioned a pickup to put on it from an old electric guitar and recorded “Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square.” It was a whole different ball game. It had nothing to do with the blues anymore. It had a sort quirky, English feel with this strange little balalaika played through a Leslie cabinet or some kind of vibrato unit to give it a wobbly sound.

But that was one of those more original and unusual pieces that I think caught the fancy of British fans who catapulted the Stand Up album into the charts at Number One. When that happened, Joe Cocker came to announce it to me over breakfast at the Loews Midtown hotel in Manhattan, in the summer of 1968. He said, “God, congratulations. I just heard your album went to Number One in England.” And I said, “Yeah. I don’t suppose you’ve got an extra slice of bacon there, Joe, that you’re not gonna eat,” because we were very poor in those days.

“Teacher”

Benefit (1970)

We recorded two different versions of “Teacher.” We did one for the USA, which was the radio-friendly version that was on the American edition of the Benefit album and another for the U.K. Interestingly, our manager is convinced to this day that this is actually a song I wrote about him and that he is the teacher, which is complete bollocks. In fact, what I was singing about was more those creepy guru figures that would mislead innocent young minds like those of the Beatles. They would suck in people and use the power of persuasion to bend their will and lead them on a spiritual path to enlightenment. And a lot of the time, of course, it was just about getting your money and driving around in a big, white Rolls Royce, which struck me as worthy of writing a song about. I wasn’t singing necessarily about spiritual leaders of a particular ethnic persuasion or a particular religious view, but just the idea of the teacher, the guru.

“Locomotive Breath”

Aqualung (1971)

The Aqualung album was somewhat uneasy in terms of actually making the record because we were working in a new studio that Island Records had built in a converted church in London. We were in the big room, which was the body of the church, and it was just so echoey and horrible and cold and really quite a creepy as a place to work. Led Zeppelin were in the nice cozy basement studio that had been the crypt, which was a moderate, modest size place.

So we struggled a bit with the sound, trying to get something that was going to work for the more intimate singer-songwriter songs. Because it was a departure, I went in without the guys and just recorded myself. And then maybe they would come in and add a little bit afterwards. “Locomotive Breath” was actually an utter failure when we tried to play it all together. It didn’t jell. We didn’t get the groove. I think John Evan recorded the piano intro, then I went out into the studio with two drum sticks and clicked them together because this was in the days before click tracks, and then I went out and played to with a hi-hat and bass drum. Then Clive [Bunker] went out and added the tom-toms and the cymbals. And then I played the electric-guitar rhythm part all the way through. And then we had something that was beginning to sound a bit like a song and it had that kind of metronomic feel, which I wanted it to have, because it’s about a railway train running on the tracks. So it should click-clack in time.

It was my first song that was perhaps on a topic that would be a little more appropriate to today’s world. It was about the runaway train of population growth and capitalism, it was based on those sorts of unstoppable ideas. We’re on this crazy train, we can’t get off it. Where is it going? Bearing in mind, of course, when I was born in 1947, the population of planet earth was slightly less than a third of what it is today, so it should be a sobering thought that in one man’s lifetime, our planetary population has more than tripled. You’d think population growth would have brought prosperity, happiness, food and a reasonable spread of wealth, but quite the opposite has happened. And is happening even more to this day. Without putting it into too much literal detail, that was what lay behind that song.

“Aqualung”

Well, the character Aqualung was based on a photograph that my first wife had taken. She was studying photography in some college in London and she went off on some student assignment to shoot photographs of homeless people living in south London under the railway arches. She came back with some pictures and one particular character caught my eyes. He was someone who had a defiance about him, maybe even a little bit of anger, but at the same time, he was uncomfortable, slightly fearful, particularly of being photographed by a young woman. I suppose in a way, it made him feel like an object of curiosity or a little ashamed. So with all of those thoughts in my head, I said, “Right, well, let’s write a song about this. You scribble down some ideas on a piece of paper, and I’ll come up with some music.” And so she wrote some words and we fashioned that into lyrics. Some of the lines were definitely not lines I would have written. Like, “Snot is running down his nose” was not one of mine [ laughs ], it was one of hers.

It was probably the only time actually ever in my life I’ve really collaborated with anybody on a song. I remember sitting in a hotel room somewhere in America with my guitar, and I came up with the opening riff of the song. It was on an acoustic guitar and I wrote it as an acoustic piece of music, but, when I showed it to Martin, I said, “Look, forget what you’re hearing, just turn it up all the way on your Marshall amp and play this line. And it’s gonna work.” I suppose inspired in a little way by the drama of Beethoven’s opening notes of the Fifth Symphony. You take a few notes and you come up with some motif, which is powerful, and it establishes the whole nature of the song. It’s a great trick when you can do it. Deep Purple did it with “Smoke on the Water.” Cream did it with “Sunshine of Your Love.” When you come up with one of those simple, magnificent riffs, it’s a great thing to own. It’s a fine jewel in the musical firmament.

“Thick as a Brick”

Thick as a Brick (1971)

I suppose you can pick any little section of Thick as a Brick , but let’s maybe talk about the first three minutes, which open up with the words, “I really don’t mind if you sit this one out.” In other words, it’s opening up to rejection. I knew in writing a spoof prog-rock piece, maybe half the people would get the joke and half the people would just get pissed off. And I wasn’t very sure that, in America, it would be well received.

It was taking something rather surreal and preposterous and then putting it before you and making you believe in the improbable, like an eight-year-old, precocious schoolboy has written these lyrics. That was the idea and I can remember very vividly coming up with this little repeating phrase on the acoustic guitar with a capo on the third fret, playing what essentially is a D chord and thinking, “Yeah, this is a nice little thing.”

I wrote the first three minutes and went off to meet the guys in the Rolling Stones’ rehearsal room in South London in Bermondsey, and sat down to say, “OK, this is the first part of the new album.” So we learned the first few minutes and then, the next morning I wrote another three or four minutes and met the guys in the afternoon and we recapped what we’d done the previous day and added another four minutes to it. It went on like that for about 10 days until we had the whole album written and rehearsed. It was done completely sequentially. Then we went into the recording studio and we recorded it in about 10 days. It took longer, actually, to put together the album cover with all the artwork and the 16-page newspaper with three of us working on it than it did to record the album.

“Skating Away (on the Thin Ice of the New Day)”

War Child (1974)

This was my first song talking about the issue of ecology and, in this specific case, climate change. Back in those days, scientists believed that we were heading towards a period of global cooling, that we could be heading towards a new ice age. And in fact, they realized that in fact, no, we’re heading toward a period of global warming. So my song became kind of redundant. But the idea was sound. And I still have a fondness for it today, because it is talking with optimism about facing the changing world and a changing climate to which we have to adapt, bravely and optimistically. And it feels very apt and appropriate for today.

“Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die”

Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die! (1976)

The title came to my mind on a very, very bad, turbulent flight in the USA. I hate flying anyway, but this was a really bad flight, and I was convinced we were all gonna drop out of the sky, and just the words came into my head, “I’m too old to rock and roll, but I’m too young to die.” And I wrote that down on a piece of paper and decided to make something of it [ laughs ]. Rather than write a song about fear of flying, it seemed more fun to write a song about an old biker who refuses to change with the times and clings to his lifestyle, to his culture. And along with the clothing, the fashions, the music and the things that are part of it; in other words, he’s a bit of a luddite and doesn’t take well to change. It wasn’t an instant, out-of-the-box favorite of our audiences, but it seems to have caught on over the years, perhaps because people think I’m singing this in an autobiographical way. But I’m not. The character is in the third person in the lyrics of the song, so it’s quite clearly descriptive.

“Songs From the Wood”

Songs From the Wood (1977)

I wrote “Songs From the Wood” based on elements of folklore and fantasy tales and traditions of the British rural environment. Our PR guy, Jo Lustig, had given me a book about English folklore as a Christmas present, and I thumbed through it and found lots of little interesting ideas and characters and stories and things that I decided to evolve into a series of songs. You might describe Songs From the Wood as a contemporary folk-rock album, in the sense that it’s a rock album but it has some sort of folky feel, and it doesn’t owe really anything at all to blues or jazz or any black American music. The title track is quite a nice one, because it has a lot of carefully contrived harmonies which I sang myself in the studio. But probably more than any other Jethro Tull album, the guys in the band contributed elements of the arrangement that I think were quite creative. One or two of them were the authors of some of the songs and indeed got paid their appropriate, scientifically derived fraction of the mechanical royalty for all time. Well, at least until 70 years after they die when copyright runs out. But they can be assured of a few coins dropping through the letterbox for a while to come.

“Farm on the Freeway”

Crest of a Knave (1987)

Once again, it’s harking back to that sort of era of farm life. It’s more social realism. In this song, I’m talking about the time when American farming, in particular, was under a huge amount of pressure and threat due to the building of roads. The economy of everything was becoming much harder, not only for American farmers but farmers pretty much everywhere. To me, it seemed like a good opportunity to write about an interesting subject. It just had to be set in America, rather than Europe; it’s not “Farm on the Autobahn.”

We won the heavy-metal Grammy for that album, which was a bit of an odd event. I don’t think people voted for Jethro Tull because of the category we were in; it was just an opportunity to vote, to give Jethro Tull a Grammy for being a bunch of nice guys who hadn’t won a Grammy before. And frankly if there’d been a category for best one-legged flute player then I would’ve won that as well, but there wasn’t.

Watch Kelly Clarkson Perform 'Say It Ain't So' With Weezer

Cool Collab
By Emily Zemler

Donna Summer's Estate Reaches Settlement With Kanye West Over Alleged 'Theft' of 'I Feel Love'

Found a Groove
By Nancy Dillon

Marilyn Manson Signs New Record Deal, Teases First Music Since Sexual Assault Allegations

By Jon Blistein

Kehlani Sets Summer Release for New Studio Album 'Crash'

By Larisha Paul

Astroworld: Last Remaining Wrongful Death Suit Has A New Trial Date

By Ethan Millman

Most Popular

'mad max' director says 'there's no excuse' for tom hardy and charlize theron's 'fury road' set feud: tom 'had to be coaxed out of his trailer', sam rubin, longtime ktla entertainment reporter and anchor, dies at 64, near the giza pyramids, archaeologists identify a newly discovered ancient egyptian structure, melania trump confirms her son barron just made a total 180 once again with his future, you might also like, chile’s quijote films, arte+ unite for ‘the mysterious gaze of the flamingo’ (exclusive), the 56 best gifts for wives who have everything to receive this mother’s day, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, when ‘the morning show’ ventured into the heat, the makeup needed its own cooler, nfl playoff rematches, christmas games highlight 2024 schedule.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades Tour: A Timeless Journey Through Prog Rock – 11/4/23 @ Palace Theatre

Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull - The Seven Decades @ The Palace Theatre, Albany, NY - 11/4/23 (Photos by Stephanie J. Bartik for 518scene.com)

ALBANY–Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades Tour was a mesmerizing and nostalgic journey through the annals of progressive rock, proving that great music knows no bounds of time.

As I walked into the Palace Theatre in Albany for the SOLD OUT show, I couldn’t help but notice the sea of attendees, predominantly male and over 60, many of them sporting the iconic ponytail. It was a demographic that had aged alongside the music; a testament to the enduring power of Anderson’s artistry.

One unique aspect of the evening was the announcement that the show would be cellphone and camera-free. This bold decision, aimed at reducing distractions for both performers and fans, intrigued me. I expected to see a few defiant blue digital glows throughout the crowd, but to my surprise, the audience wholeheartedly embraced the concept. The only distraction was a stray balloon that an audience member set free at the beginning of the show, but after three songs, another fan carefully stored it under their seat until intermission. It was a refreshing sight in today’s world of smartphone addiction.

(Note: The photos you see published with this piece were taken by the author during the encore, which is the one portion of the show where photography was permitted.)

At the age of 76, my main concern was whether Ian Anderson could still deliver the magic that defined our mutual younger years. However, as soon as he took the stage, any doubts were dispelled. While the high notes might not soar as they did 50 years ago, Anderson’s vocal range and stage presence remained impressive. His energy was infectious, and at times, he resembled the mythical Kokopelli, with a leg up, flute in hand.

The Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades Tour was a tribute to Anderson and Tull’s exceptional career spanning over seven decades, and it featured a talented ensemble of musicians who added depth to the performance. The setlist was a journey through Jethro Tull’s iconic discography, from “Nothing Is Easy” to the timeless “Aqualung.” The addition of classical covers like Faure’s “Pavane in F-Sharp Minor” and Bach’s “Bourree in E Minor” showcased Anderson’s versatility and classical influences.

Today, bandleader Anderson is the only original member of Jethro Tull who’s left, but this is not necessarily a bad thing: The flute virtuoso was joined by longtime bassist David Goodier, veteran pianist/organist John O’Hara, and new(er) additions drummer Scott Hammond and guitarist/mandolin player, Joe Parrish-James.

The visuals accompanying the music were a highlight, with a dazzling light show and immersive graphics that added a contemporary touch to the classic tracks. It was a visual feast for fans, old and new, and complemented the music brilliantly.

In an era where music rapidly evolves, Ian Anderson stands as a beacon of artistic integrity and innovation. His Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades Tour is a must-see for any music lover, offering a glimpse into the indomitable spirit of a rock legend. Despite the passage of time, Anderson’s performance was nothing short of extraordinary, leaving the audience with a renewed appreciation for the magic of progressive rock.

Anderson’s ability to transcend generations and continue to sell-out shows after seven decades is a testament to the timelessness of his music. As a fan who has followed his journey since the late 1960s, I can confidently say that Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades Tour was a musical experience that will forever hold a special place in my heart.

Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades @ The Palace Theatre, Albany, NY – 11/4/23 (Photos by Stephanie J. Bartik)

Our Partners:

LATEST REVIEWS

Supertramp’s ‘Breakfast in America’
Bob Seger – Final Tour
Janis Joplin Biography Review
CSNY’s ‘Deja Vu’
Rolling Stones – 2019 Concert Review
Eric Clapton Celebrates at MSG
Roger Waters ‘Us + Them’ Tour
Warren Zevon’s ‘Excitable Boy’
Tom Petty 40th Anniversary Concert
1971: Year That Rock Exploded – Book
Steppenwolf’s Debut: Heavy Metal Thunder
‘Who’s Next’ – Album Rewind
Privacy Policy

Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull’s Past, Present and Future

Ian Anderson via a Zoom interview, May 8, 2023

He’s one of rock’s most distinctive voices, composers and flutists. And in 2023, Ian Anderson, synonymous with Jethro Tull since their debut album arrived in 1968, is seemingly as busy as ever, having just released the band’s second studio album, RökFlöte , in as many years, while also filling their touring calendar into 2024. He reached the milestone age of 75 on August 10, 2022, and told Best Classic Bands, “I certainly don’t think more than a year ahead. That becomes increasingly more foolhardy as you get older.”

We talked to the musician via Zoom about the new album, the demand that the band faced in its first decade with the constant cycle of writing, recording and touring, and his own mortality.

RökFlöte is based on the characters and roles of some of the principal gods of the old Norse paganism, while at the same time exploring the “RökFlöte”—rock flute—which Anderson has made iconic. Of the album’s theme, he says, “The world of scary Norse invaders seems to have captured people’s attention. But I don’t think it really tells the story of who those people were, what they did. Which was a curious mixture of bringing a rather wayward culture to countries at that point that were already, essentially, Christian. But they did dreadful things. They were the equivalent of Putin going into Ukraine. They were really quite awful people.

“There’s no doubt that if the Viking invaders had their hands on hypersonic missiles or some tactical nuclear weapons, they would have used them. Luckily, they didn’t. But they were a bad lot.”

RökFlöte begins and ends with the spoken intro by a woman, who sounds like she’s speaking in the fictional language, Valyrian (like Emilia Clarke’s character, Daenerys Targaryen, in Game of Thrones ). Anderson is asked if he watched the series.

“No, I avoided the swashbuckling, dark ethereal worlds, everything from Harry Potter through to the more dark and scary stuff that I’ve never really enjoyed. It seems so heavy-handed as a treatment to glamorize the kind of drama that sits somewhere between science fiction and ancient history. It’s a well-worn trick and having been an avid consumer of science fiction written in the ’50s and ’60s, I decided in the ‘60s what kind of science fiction I liked and didn’t like… anything that smacks of the grandiose worlds that get exploited in blockbuster movies or Netflix series. Compared to the opening of the first three or four minutes of the first episode of Breaking Bad , that had you by the balls straight-away, and you knew that was going to be something special. It’s the same with music. You either get attracted to something or you don’t. And maybe some people, whenever they hear [mimics Beethoven’s 5th Symphony ‘dah dah dah dum…’], just think, ‘Oh, switch it’ because they’re not attracted to something that is such a declamatory and forceful, simple statement. Musically, it’s a bit too in their face and they’re not ready for it. We’re all different, thank goodness.”

RökFlöte follows the 2022 release of The Zealot Gene , following a gap of nearly two decades between Jethro Tull studio albums. And Tull has been playing a pair of songs from each of the new titles during their current tour. “The [new] songs are an unwelcome intrusion to the expectations that [the audience] might have of hearing classic Jethro Tull from the ‘70s,” Anderson admits. “I’m always aware of that. Since 1969, debuting songs from a new album has been tortuous because you know people are not familiar with it. They know you from your previous work. You hope several years down the line people will say, ‘Oh, I know this one. It sounds like an old friend.’ The response to the songs from the last two albums has been generous and positive and that’s the most we can hope for. But I don’t think it has the impact, perhaps, of songs like ‘Aqualung’ or ‘Locomotive Breath’ will have on an audience. I could throw in ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and maybe a couple of Stones songs and they’d be very happy. Except me. (laughs)”

He’s asked if he can close his eyes and imagine himself five, six decades earlier on stage.

“Well, absolutely. The passage of so many years has always been relatively immaterial. When you work with music, it’s not that it rekindles your youth, so much as it is just a reference point that you can immerse yourself in. When you play music, it is a bit timeless. When I play a song that I wrote in 1968 or 1969, it really just feels like I’m just stepping into that pair of shoes that are really well worn. It doesn’t feel like it’s 55 years [later]. I think I’d feel the same if I were a classical musician playing the work of Mozart or Bach or Beethoven. I wouldn’t consciously be thinking, ‘Oh, this is music from the mid-19th century.’ I’d just be dealing with the music as [a] living, permanent [part of] the world of today.”

Related: Our Album Rewind of Tull’s 1972 classic, Thick As a Brick

Jethro Tull released a new studio album every year from 1968 through 1980. One wonders what that constant cycle of writing, recording, touring, writing, recording, etc., was like.

“It was a very arduous period of constant tours and sometimes things were of relatively short notice,” says Anderson. “Back then, a tour would be booked only three months down the line. And if you were trying to put together time for rehearsals and recording a new album, and you were trying to sandwich this into a schedule that constantly felt like it was changing… I think that sometimes the music suffered in not being able to step back a little bit and take some time. But I feel that the positive side of that scheduling was to really push you to try to achieve things against what seemed to be a lot of odds.”

“But there was no time to take a break. And for 10 years, it certainly affected all of us in the band. We were getting pretty fatigued about touring and the little things that are disagreeable became more and more disagreeable, and we, in many ways, continued to grow apart, because none of us were really like each other. We were all quite different characters in the early days of Jethro Tull. And we really didn’t have a lot in common as people. So we tended not to socialize during the brief days that we might be back home [from the road] or when we weren’t in the studio. We didn’t hang out together really at all. And I think the times we were together were preserved for more creative and mutual benefit in terms of being truly a band…a group of people who worked and largely lived together. But it was getting torturous by the end of the ‘70s and at least three of the band, at that point, decided that they didn’t want to continue. Sadly, one of them was unable to continue because he met an early period of ill health, which resulted in his death so that was, in its own way, a bit of watershed moment, really. But two other guys had had enough and the band was clearly not going to go on the way that it had.”

Ian Anderson, holding his rock flute, with Jethro Tull’s 2023 lineup

These days, Anderson employs a modestly sized touring party, with the band and four key crew members. The lineup consists of Tull veterans David Goodier (bass guitar) and John O’Hara (piano, keyboards and Hammond organ), plus Scott Hammond (drums), and Joe Parrish-James (electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin). They’ll be in the U.K. and Europe through mid-October, with three separate U.S. tours in between and after.

“I take it a few months at a time… up to a year,” Anderson says. “The visa officials say, ‘When will you be back?’ I give the same answer, ‘I have no plans to come back.’ Just as I said many years ago, ‘I have no plans to release another Jethro Tull album.’ (laughs) Because I didn’t. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it. It just means that I have no plans inked in in the date sheet. I think people misconstrue when you say you have no plans that you intend not to do it but that’s not really the case.

“Let’s be honest. At my age, I have every hope that I will be alive and kicking and be able to do some semblance of a working day 10 years from now. But that is, to a degree, slightly wild optimism. The reality is that any time I might get some bad news at one of my annual health checks. It’s gonna happen some day. Will happen. I prefer to take it a year at a time, see how things go. I have to do some degree of planning. I certainly don’t think more than a year ahead. That becomes increasingly more foolhardy as you get older.”

See Jethro Tull on tour. Tickets are available here and here .

Latest Posts

Interview: British Invasion Songwriter Graham Gouldman on His Yardbirds, Hollies Hits - 05/10/2024
The Beatles Restored ‘Let It Be’ Film Shows a Band Still at a Creative Peak: Review - 05/10/2024
The Billy Joel Historic MSG Residency: Surprise Guests - 05/09/2024

Stories We Want You to Read

David Gilmour Adds Another 2024 Tour Date

3 Comments so far

Les Paul lived 94 glorious years. May Ian and his contemporaries live so long.

It’s tragic to see Anderson, who was once one of THE most talented and amazing singers of any band now reduced to a guy who can barely get the lyrics out, never mind with any real energy or emotion. My big bugaboo about “Jethro Tull” as it stands now was Anderson’s unceremonious dismissal of Martin Barre after so many decades of loyalty and incredible musical contributions. But now, to see what Anderson has come to, I don’t think it really matters any more.

yes Martin was around over a long period. Seems to happen a lot in groups

Click here to cancel reply.

Your data will be safe! Your e-mail address will not be published. Also other data will not be shared with third person.

Comment * -->

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Loading, Please Wait!

Events and tours

There’s an awkward moment when Ian Anderson arrives in Bath for the Classic Rock Interview. As he emerges from the train station on a rainy winter morning, dressed for the weather in an anorak and woolly hat, he recoils sharply when I offer a handshake.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he says. “But I’ve got a bad wrist.” With a thin smile, he adds: “I’m probably a close second to Pope Francis for getting upset with people grabbing my hand without asking first.”

He has a bad leg, too. And as bad luck would have it, it’s his right leg, the one on which he has always stood, with his left peg dangling, while playing flute as frontman for Jethro Tull , the band he has led since 1967.

“Quite painful,” he says of the torn meniscus in the knee joint.

This injury, like that to his right wrist, is result of the occupational hazards common to many stage performers. Anderson sprained his wrist in a fall during a show in 2019.

“The problem with my leg goes back a long way,” he explains. “I damaged both knees in the seventies because I was stomping around on stages and impacting the joints. But my knees were in worse shape twenty years ago,” he says with a shrug, “so I suppose I should look on the bright side."

Early in our lengthy conversation in the bar of the Francis Hotel, it becomes apparent that small talk does not come naturally to Anderson. Instead, he launches into a detailed analysis of the policy mistakes that cost the Labour Party the recent general election, before stating his support for the Liberal Democrats.

Classic Rock Newsletter

As he will say, he is not the archetypal rock musician.

Ian Scott Anderson was born in Dunfermline, Scotland on August 10, 1947. He was a teenager living in Blackpool when he joined his first group, The Blades, in 1963. As a singer, guitarist and harmonica player, he served his apprenticeship in various blues bands before Jethro Tull – named after the 18th-century agriculturist – formed in 1967, the same year in which Anderson took up the flute, on a whim.

In the 70s, Tull’s idiosyncratic blend of progressive rock, hard rock and folk music made them one of the biggest bands in the world via a series of landmark albums including Aqualung , Thick As A Brick , Minstrel In The Gallery and Songs From The Wood . And while many musicians have passed through the line-up during the band’s long history, at the age of 72 Anderson remains captain of the ship.

That history is celebrated in a new and beautiful silk-bound book, The Ballad of Jethro Tull . And while Anderson continues to tour and record as a solo artist, he and his current four-piece band had planned to tour throughout 2020 with what he calls “a big production show”, Jethro Tull: The Prog Years.

“I perform under the name Jethro Tull depending on the kind of concert it is,” he explains. An expansive talker, witty raconteur and deep thinker, he relates the band’s story, and his own, over two hours, fuelled first by coffee and later, after midday, a large Scotch. He begins with an early memory, of a small boy living in Scotland, who found something in music that would shape the rest of his life…

As a young boy living in Dunfermline in the early fifties, what was the music that first had a powerful effect on you?

I was sent to Sunday school, so the first music ever heard was church music, and little snippets of Scottish folk music. Then, when I was about eight years old, I heard big-band jazz, and after that the early Elvis – Heartbreak Hotel, Jailhouse Rock – when Elvis was dangerous, before he got sequinned.

Did you go willingly to Sunday school?

No. I was terrified of churches. I didn’t understand what was going on. I questioned religion and I was angry about it. I had a real aversion to the dogma of the Christian religion I was brought up with – scaring people into the arms of Jesus as opposed to the prongs of the devil’s pitchfork.

When you were twelve your family moved to England, to a bigger town, Blackpool, where you spent all of your teenage years. What are your clearest memories of that time?

When I was around sixteen I became aware of this thing called the folk revival. That was when I first heard Bob Dylan , and I didn’t really take to him at all. But at the same time, I heard Muddy Waters , which got me into blues, particularly acoustic country blues, and that would become my route into the professional music world.

Growing up in Blackpool, drinking and fighting and drugs were all very much part of my teenage awareness of what was around me. But when I was seventeen, someone bought me a half of lager, I hadn’t had anything to eat, and I went out into the street and threw it up. I didn’t drink again until I was twenty-five, on tour with Tull in America.

And drugs?

Of course, I knew about that stuff. I’d see people popping pills at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. When I went to art school, in Blackpool, some of the guys were smoking marijuana. I had a friend in life-drawing class who had marks on his arms. I thought it was a rash. He said: ‘No, it’s needle marks. Heroin.’ But it was never seductive to me. I always saw it as something of a personal threat. I don’t like anything that changes my perception or my chilling, lizard-like mental capacity.

Blues was what you played in your first band, The Blades, and so it continued when the first line-up of Jethro Tull came together in 1967 .

We came out of that period where to get a gig – let alone get a record deal – you had to be in a blues band or an out-and-out pop group. But on the periphery there was Captain Beefheart and the Graham Bond Organization – very different to purist black American blues – which was important to the development of Jethro Tull.

And that signpost got bigger in the summer of sixty-seven when Pink Floyd had The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and The Beatles had Sgt. Pepper . Those records energised me – you could step outside the comfort zone of twelve-bar blues or pop music and you could do something different.

It was also in that summer of ’67 that you first picked up a flute.

I’d been playing guitar and harmonica, but as a guitarist I was never going to be as good as Eric Clapton , simple as that. So I parted company with my Fender Strat , whose previous owner was Lemmy Kilmister , who was then the rhythm guitar player for the Rockin’ Vickers, and I bought a flute, for no good reason. It just looked nice and shiny.

Was the flute easy to master?

At first I couldn’t get a note out of it. I put it back in its case and never touched it again for six months, until somebody said to me: “You don’t blow into the hole, you blow across it.” Oh, okay. Suddenly I got a note, then another and another. Within a week I was playing blues solos and it became part of our gig. That was the beginning of the Jethro Tull with the guy who stands in the middle playing the flute while standing on one leg.

Always the same leg?

Yes. Ever since I started playing harmonica at the Marquee club I’ve always stood on the right leg.

Although you were inspired by the psychedelic sounds of The Beatles and Floyd, on the first Tull album, This Was , released in October 1968, blues was the dominant tone.

Yes. Mick Abrahams, the guitar player, loved blues and R&B. And as he was a little older than the rest of us, he was the guy who knew what he wanted to do. But when I started writing on guitar for the second album, my stuff didn’t really gel with Mick. So it was a very important moment when Mick left the band and Martin Barre joined in January of sixty-nine. Straight off, Martin understood what I was getting at.

Which was what, exactly?

It was a more eclectic thing, bringing in elements of Western classical music, Asian music and even church music – the beginnings of something that was a little more spiritual. And also some real hard, driving rock songs. All of this stuff was in my head, but it required the input of Martin Barre, particularly.

He was a very unfinished, unformed guitar player, so he and I were fumbling together, and that fumbling was what helped him develop a style and helped me develop as a songwriter.

With that second album, 1969’s Stand Up , did you feel that Tull had defined their sound?

Stand Up was the first really important album. It was the one where it was now a band that wasn’t the same as everybody else. It was becoming something much more individualistic. We’d left the blues behind. That album was melodically and rhythmically more adventurous.

It wasn’t what I would call progressive rock, because some of it was definitely not rock music. But it was around that time that the term ‘progressive rock’ first appeared in the UK music press to describe Yes , King Crimson and Jethro Tull, among others. And then a little later there was Emerson, Lake & Palmer and the early Genesis , by which time prog was up its own arse, obviously.

Do you mean ELP and Genesis specifically?

I was never a fan of Genesis, but their musicianship was incredible. And ELP were complete show-offs. But Greg Lake, who I never liked in the old days, became someone I was very close to in the years before he died.

For someone synonymous with progressive rock, you seem a little dismissive of it.

I just look upon it with a benign smiley face, a bit like Rick Wakeman does. You need a sense of humour about these things. ELP, when I got to know them, seemed to be capable of laughing at themselves. The caped Rick Wakeman is absolutely an arch villain of prog excess, musically and in terms of general appearance. He knows it’s a bit of fun. To some people, Jethro Tull is a prog band. To others it’s a folk rock band or even a hard rock band.

And to you?

It’s a lot of little delicate shifts from one thing to another. With Jethro Tull you can’t wrap it up in the way you can wrap up Status Quo .

Your love of folk music, rooted in your childhood, had a strong influence on many early Tull albums, and over the years you’ve worked with a number of folk artists: Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Roy Harper…

In the seventies, Tull were close with Roy Harper , as were Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I liked Roy because he was a nutcase whose whole stage persona was based on being completely out of it, even though he was only stoned about eighty per cent of the time.

Roy was a great man with ideas and lyrics that were off the beaten track. He would sing very delicate and touching love songs, and also brave stuff like I Hate The White Man . That gave me the confidence to try to let out those kinds of emotions in my own music.

Aqualung, Tull’s the fourth album, released in 1971, became the biggest seller of the band’s career, and a rock classic.

Aqualung is an album of contrasts. It had some big, bombastic rock songs – Locomotive Breath and Aqualung – but also the singer-songwriter thing. With some of the songs, I was in the studio on my own, playing acoustic guitar. It wasn’t that it was folk music, but it was acoustic music, which the band would to some degree add other components to.

That album wasn’t a huge hit out of the box. It did okay at the time, a bit better than the previous ones, but it just kept on selling over a long period of time. The last time I looked, a few years ago, it had clocked up twelve million sales. Pretty big.

And also your masterpiece?

Certainly there are songs on that album that I’m pleased to have in the repertoire, Aqualung and My God and some of the acoustic things that are a little more whimsical and personal. The only rubbish thing about that album was the bloody awful painting on the cover, which I never liked.

Why?

The character on the cover is a homeless person. My first wife, when she was studying photography, had photographed some homeless people, and that was the source of the song Aqualung .

Many of the songs I’ve written over the years have come from either a photograph or a memory. I think in terms of visual imagery, something I share with many British musicians who went to art college.

That’s how Aqualung developed, as a series of little visual images that I made into songs. But when the artist, Burton Silverman, delivered this painting for the album cover, based, I think, on a photograph he took of a homeless man in the Strand…

It looked a lot like you.

I’d been really emphatic about it: I’m not this character. I’m not a homeless person. I’m a spotty middle-class English kid. I’ve never had to sleep rough on the street, and I don’t want to be pretending to be that character. But our manager, Terry Ellis, had obviously had a quiet word with Silverman: “Make it look like Ian, we’ll sell more records.”

So the character on the cover looks like a cross between me and John Lydon when he was Johnny Rotten. That might explain why John Lydon later said that Aqualung is one of his favourite records. Which certainly was not in keeping with Malcolm McLaren’s instructions.

The next album, Thick As A Brick, was another of the band’s best. After Aqualung was misconstrued as a concept album, you created Thick As A Brick as a spoof concept album .

Well, yes. I was absolutely truthful about Aqualung not being designed in any way as a concept album. It had three or four songs that kind of hung together. The rest of the songs had nothing to do with each other in terms of musical style or lyrical content. So with Thick As A Brick I thought: “This is going to be a bit of parody of what was then becoming ‘the prog rock thing’. I’ll have a little dig at it, a bit of a spoof.”

And yet for all the humour in Thick As A Brick, there was a deeper meaning in your portrayal of fictional boy genius Gerald Bostock .

It was kind of serious stuff, yes. It was all about my childhood, growing up in the fifties in that era of the postwar Biggles hero mentality. Not the passage of boy to man, it was the passage of child to adolescent. That album was about all the misconceptions that came out of the way we, as children, get brainwashed

Brainwashed in what way?

Back then there were these comics, Rover and Lion , which had stories about ‘Jerry’ and ‘The Hun’, sending out these awful nationalistic stereotypes, which hopefully most of us kids didn’t take too seriously. But I remember the first time I went to Germany in sixty-nine, on tour, and in my head I could picture Sergeant Braddock shooting down the Hun!

All of that stuff was part of my childhood, and it took a while to readjust to the fact that you were now in the postwar ruins of Berlin, it was a new era, the Cold War, and things were different to what you were brought up to believe in – the idea of this rather defiant and very nationalistic British sentiment.

The cover of Thick As A Brick was brilliant, designed as a send-up of a provincial British newspaper, which you named The St. Cleve Chronicle And Linwell Advertiser. Presumably you were happier with this one?

I was responsible for instigating that cover. Terry Ellis hated it. “You can’t do this, it’s ridiculous!” I said: “Trust me, it’s going to work, it’s going to be good.” It was that very British surrealistic humour that began with The Goons and continued with Monty Python. It was weird, but we all got it. And then the Australians got it. And finally even the Americans got it!

Did that surprise you?

Well, when Monty Python And The Holy Grail came out [in 1975], I was one of the backers of the movie. When I saw it with the band, in New York, we were in hoots of laughter in certain bits, while the rest of the audience sat in complete stony silence. And then they all laughed at bits where we thought: “That’s not funny, that’s too corny and obvious.” It took a while for the Americans to catch up with Python and with Thick As A Brick , but they did.

It sounds like you had a lot of fun with that album cover.

Oh, we had a barrel of laughs doing it. We stole that Pythonesque approach, making up all of these completely ridiculous and fictitious things. It was all very silly and schoolboyish and, as you say, a lot of fun.

And just recently, when I was having lunch in Heddon Street in London, I walked past the bank where we did some of the photos for that cover – when Jeffrey [Hammond, bassist] had to run out wearing a mask and carrying a briefcase as if he’d robbed the bank. During that shoot the police were called. Some people thought that Jeffrey really was a bank robber. And when a policeman turned up, we didn’t think he was a real policeman. We thought it was one of our lot dressed up! It was all very confusing.

In 1976, a year before the Big Bang of punk rock, the knowing title of Tull’s ninth album – Too Old To Rock ‘N’ Roll: Too Young To Die! – seemed to anticipate the coming storm.

It was throwing down the gauntlet, for sure. Same as in the opening lines of Thick As A Brick : ‘ I really don’t mind if you sit this one out .’ It was confrontational. Too Old To Rock ‘N’ Roll: Too Young To Die! is a red rag to a journalistic bull if they want to come after you. But it’s better to have some level of self-deprecating humour.

Were you thinking, even then, how you might grow old gracefully in this business?

I thought it was enough that as a musician I might just grow old, whether gracefully or disgracefully. Rule number one is: try not to die when you’re twenty-seven. Rule number two: try not to die when you’re in your fifties through the rock’n’roll lifestyle. You know, don’t cross a busy road unless you really have to.

The only rubbish thing about Aqualung was the bloody awful painting on the cover, which I never liked Ian Anderson

There was prescience, too, in Tull’s 1979 album Stormwatch, with the song North Sea Oil warning of the environmental crisis to come.

That wasn’t a prophecy. I can’t claim in any way to be way ahead of my time. That’s far too generous. I was simply reacting to things that were being discussed in certain circles. When the first elements of climate change were being identified back in the early seventies, you didn’t have to be a university professor to know that stuff. The information was out there in the public domain if you cared to look for it.

Stormwatch was also the last album made by what is widely considered to be the classic line-up of Jethro Tull: you, Martin Barre, keyboard player John Evan, drummer Barriemore Barlow, bassist John Glascock and keyboard player and orchestral arranger David Palmer. In November 1979, just two months after it was released, John Glascock died at the age of twenty-eight as a result of a congenital heart condition. It was said that he’d damaged his health with drink and drugs, and that you’d threatened to kick him out of the band in an effort to straighten him out. What’s the truth in that?

John was always a bit of a party guy from the get-go. He wasn’t a wildman. He was an easygoing, nice guy, a benign drunk. And I’ve known people who were not that way. John was never fired from the band. He was just told by me: “You’ve got to stop and get yourself fixed, and come back when you’re well.” When we stepped away from day-today contact with him it could have gone either way. I hope he knew his job was waiting for him if he could make it back. But he didn’t, and that was the great sadness that we had.

How did that affect you emotionally?

It made me angry with him. It made me angry with myself. I could have done more to confront John and steer him back. We all could have tried harder to make him understand that this really wasn’t a great way of living his life, and his job depended on sorting himself out. But one will never know if his demise was due to the failure of the heart surgery he had, or to what degree it might have been aggravated by his lifestyle.

Within a year of John’s death, Barriemore Barlow and David Palmer had left the band. These were old friends of yours. Before Tull, Barlow had played alongside you in The Blades in the early sixties, and Palmer had worked with Tull since 1968. And in all those years, Palmer had kept a secret from you, a secret that was finally revealed in 1998, when Palmer came out as transgender, renaming herself Dee.

I remember it well. I called him – and I’ll say ‘him’, because at that point, as far as I knew, he was David Palmer – to say: “I’ve got a bit of a problem here with some journalists hanging around my house insisting that I’m cross-dressing and that I’m planning to have a sex change.” I laughed it off and said: “Where could they have got this story from?” At which point David said: “Ah, Ian, I’m glad you called…” And I quote him quite precisely here: “There’s something I’ve been wanting to get off my increasingly ample chest…”

Do you think there were clues that you’d missed?

There were some signs. The clothes that David was wearing in the late seventies seemed a little odd, a little ambiguous. Somebody had said: “It looks like there’s a bra strap under his shirt.” But in all those years, he and I never had a conversation about the issues he had as a child, growing up in an uncomfortable way.

That conversation came much later on, after the gender reassignment – a complete transformation. When I saw her then, it was quite difficult for both of us. It was difficult for a lot of people who knew the old David Palmer, because he had seemed in many ways like the last person in the world who would go in that direction. He was kind of a man’s man. He smoked a pipe and spoke with a deep voice. David was in his sixties when he made his decision. It was a very brave thing to do.

Dee Palmer is one of many former members of the band interviewed for the book The Ballad Of Jethro Tull. But one key figure from Tull’s glory days didn’t contribute to it.

I managed to persuade a number – sadly not all – of ex-band members to contribute their memories and thoughts. We picked the main guys who played with the band for a number of years – John Evan, Jeffrey Hammond, Dave Pegg, Doane Perry. But Martin Barre declined to partake of the opportunity to help sell a book, make some money and publicise his own efforts. He felt for whatever reasons he had that he didn’t want to do that.

It was very interesting for me to read what all these people came up with. They remembered things differently to me, which gave another insight into the period where we spent a lot of time together. I didn’t edit anything from their contributions, and I think they were very diplomatic, actually.

There’s a bit of bad blood between some ex-band members. Not with me, but with each other. They have to be nice to me because they still get their royalties twice a year [laughs].

In putting the book together, was all that digging into the past an emotional experience for you?

Not really, because the visitation of all of that is what I do for a living anyway, through the music. I’m always going back through the old catalogue, with a view to different songs being in the set-list. And as I said from the start, this is not a tell-it-all, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll book, because we weren’t that kind of a band.

What kind of band was it?

It was a ‘go to bed early and read an Agatha Christie book’ band. But there’s always a party guy in every band, and in the early days, before John Glascock, that guy was Glen Cornick [bassist from 1967 to 1970]. When Glen discovered America, and America discovered him, they embraced in a not always healthy way. He’d be out drinking and clubbing, which put a bit of a wedge between him and the rest of us. Glen was lovely guy. He just wanted to make every minute count when he became famous.

You said it was when Tull toured America in the seventies that you started drinking.

I would have a beer, Lowenbrau, this awful, sickly German beer that was on our rider. But I wouldn’t drink socially, only in the privacy of my dressing room. Or sometimes after a show we would have a drink in a hotel bar, but it was one drink.

In those days the band were so tight musically. Were you tight as people as well?

Within any group there will always be one or two who chum up. In the early days nobody wanted to chum up with Glen Cornick, but I ended up rooming with him. It wasn’t great. I, like Martin Barre, preferred my own company.

Have you changed at all in that respect?

No. I’m a loner. When you’re touring, you’re a part of a social group, intensely, from sound-check to getting back to the hotel. But I travel alone. I use public transport and book my own trains. And I eat alone. I can’t abide sitting down to eat with other people if I can avoid it.

You still spend a lot of time on the road, with Tull tours and also doing your more intimate solo shows.

It’s an interesting format for the solo shows, a bit of music and then Q and A, where we invite the audience to become Andrew Neil and try to pin me down and see what a slippery character I am. We did a couple of tours in America called Rubbing Elbows With Ian Anderson.

It’s a lot of fun, and you do get a few quite wacky questions from the audience. One woman asked me: “Does standing on one leg mean that one leg is stronger than the other?” I stood up said: “Does one look bigger than the other to you?” She said: “Yeah, your right leg looks a little bigger.” I said: “That’s an astute observation. But unless you have a tape measure with you…” And of course she put her hand in her pocket and produced a tape measure. So she ended up on stage, measuring my thighs.

Do you still enjoy travelling the world?

Always. I have a great love of Americana, but for me, Europe, with its many languages and cultures, and even the different spins of Christianity, it’s very fascinating to this day. I always felt very connected to Europe from the early seventies onwards, and that, I think, reinforced my musical inclinations.

I still play things by Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson , just to remind myself of where my voyage began as an aspiring professional musician, but really it’s the European stuff that always got to me – all great composers, German, Italian and Austrian.

So I am instinctively a remainer, maybe not entirely in the political sense but in the cultural sense. I love Europe. I’m not a huge fan of Italian food but I can’t wait to dip into my spaghetti vongole again. It’s like meeting an old friend. But eating alone, of course. And hopefully in a deserted restaurant.

You also perform fundraising shows in various cathedrals and churches across Europe and the UK. That’s quite a turnaround for someone who was terrified of churches as a child.

I like the idea that we should be doing what we can to preserve certain institutions and traditions, even if we are not necessarily, as individuals, people of faith. I can’t call myself a Christian, but I have a huge cultural attachment to Christianity. It’s what I grew up with. I have a huge reverence for churches and cathedrals, and when I perform in these places I try to find that difficult balance between the music of the church and the music that I do.

It gets a bit edgy at times, where some of my music pushes the boundaries in terms of lyrical content, but nobody walks out. The audience understands. We’re not trying to evangelise you, we’re just trying to take your money to fix the church roof. Sometimes when I meet new people and they ask me what I do, I say I work for the Church of England. It’s easier to explain than saying I play flute in a rock band, because lots of people, especially younger people, have no idea about Jethro Tull.

Some of your most powerful songs have addressed religion, most notably My God , from Aqualung .

My God was the one that got people’s knickers in a twist in the Bible Belt of the USA, mostly from worshippers who got the wrong message. But even back then, and certainly now, there are priests who say to me: “I know what you were talking about with that song.”

In the seventies, some of our songs, the ones about religion, were banned in Spain and Italy. People thought we were treading on toes. But now, in Italy My God is the most famous Jethro Tull song.

So where do you stand with all of this now?

I do not have faith. I believe in possibilities. I believe in probabilities. I have no time for certainties. Certainties are too close to delusion. I believe in Jesus of Nazareth as a slightly radical, bolshy Jewish prophet. I do not believe in Jesus the Christ. I believe in the wonderful story of The Bible, the ethics in the teachings, but I can’t offer myself as having faith. Agnosticism – on a scale of one to ten, you can put me down as about a six and a half. I’m edging towards ‘There could be something in all of this’, but I’m not pushing myself to resolve it any time soon.

Ask me again on my deathbed and I might be calling for the priest. But right now I’m okay. I’ve got a wobbly knee but I’m all right. And really, the idea of faith versus no faith at all is a bit like Boris Johnson’s very right-wing Conservative party versus Corbyn’s very left Labour party. It’s a sharp division, and I’m a person who instinctively occupies more middle ground in most areas of life. Which doesn’t make me a very good model for the archetypal rock musician.

You say that, but you’ve had the kind of career that most musicians can only dream of. You’ve enjoyed huge success on your own terms. And in 2008 you were awarded an MBE for services to music. What does that mean to you?

In an entirely non-disparaging way, I refer to it with affection and respect as ‘the village postman award’, in the sense that lots of people who are awarded MBEs are unsung heroes of everyday life. With the honours system, the higher up you go, the more likely you are to be cynical about those who are knighted, because it usually involves a lot of dosh. But the lowly MBE does represent great members of society, so I’m perfectly happy with the idea of being honoured for ‘services to music’.

Another award you, with Tull, received, in 1989, was aGrammy for Best Hard Rock/ Metal Performance. It was a shock result, Tull winning in a category in which that year Metallica were the overwhelming favourites. When that happened, were you as amused and perplexed as everybody else?

I didn’t think it was very likely that we would win the Grammy , and yes I was a little perplexed and amused when we were nominated in that category. Our record company told us: “Don’t bother coming to the Grammys. Metallica will win it for sure.”

My view is that we weren’t given the Grammy for being the best hard rock or metal act, we were given it for being a bunch of nice guys who’d never won a Grammy before. And there wasn’t an award for the world’s best one-legged flute player, otherwise I’d have to buy several more fireplaces to have enough mantelpiece space for all the trophies.

So what does the future hold for the world’s best one-legged flute player? Is there more music in you?

I’ve been recording, but I’m yet to finish the album.

A solo album, not a Tull album?

I’m not telling. And I always like to reserve the right to change my mind.

Come on, Ian…

There’s really not much to tell. Yes, it’s a concept album. It’s not a bunch of love songs. It’s songs that are thematically joined at the hip. But the connection, I want people to figure that out for themselves. I like a bit of mystery.

At this late stage of your career, is there any chance that you would get what’s left of the old band back together for one last hurrah?

It would be an awfully crowded stage. And in many cases those old band members no longer play and haven’t for many years. It’s a tricky one. And I’ve always felt awkward about the idea of getting the old band back together, because which edition of the band are we talking about? Picking some people and not others would be favouritism. And I don’t have favourites.

As you say, Tull lives on, and will do for as long as you’re out there playing the band’s music .

If the show is all Jethro Tull repertoire, I feel that’s Jethro Tull. If you looked at Wikipedia two or three years ago, it said ‘Jethro Tull was…’ Now, that past tense has disappeared, due to some grudging acknowledgment that Jethro Tull goes on. I’ve always argued that Jethro Tull is not at an end any more than The Beatles are. The Beatles still sell millions of records and downloads. The glorious thing about the world of entertainment is that your work lives on after you.

And when all is said and done, are you happy with your lot? Has life been good to you?

I’ve felt like that for a long time. I jokingly say, but there’s a lot of truth in it, that one of my favourite hobbies is waking up in the morning. I like to wake up in the morning every twenty-four hours! It’s a great pursuit to follow. And the first thing I feel when I wake up is a feeling of gratitude.

Jethro Tull: The Prog Years Tour kicks off in Aylesbury on September 30 . The Ballad Of Jethro Tull can be ordered now .

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q . He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar . He lives in Bath - of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”

“She’s had her share of missteps in life.” Slash explains why he invited Demi Lovato to appear on his new blues record

Yes to release Super Deluxe Edition of Fragile in June

Watch Steven Tyler join the Black Crowes onstage for a rip-snortin' romp through Mama Kin in London

Most Popular

IMAGES

Jethro Tull by Ian Anderson Expands Tour
At Home With Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson: ‘Face Masks Are Common Sense
Ian Anderson Brings ‘Thick as a Brick’ Tour to Nashville
Ian Anderson Announces 'Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary' Tour
Ian Anderson Tickets, 2020 Concert Tour Dates
Ian Anderson Tickets

VIDEO

Jon Anderson and the Paul Green Rock Academy perform Siberian Khatru
Ian Anderson Cinematography Reel April 2024
Jon Anderson
Anderson Tour of Scotland 1994 02
Ian Anderson
To Athens

COMMENTS

Tour Dates
Tour Dates Here are the scheduled concerts. Please note we only list concert bookings that are completely finalised with paperwork and details in place. Please check with the venue's own website for accurate show time information. And - PLEASE - be in your seats 5 minutes before the start of the show.
Jethro Tull
Join me, Ian Anderson, in giving your support now to the Polyphony Foundation. A most worthy cause and an important cog in the wheels which grind all-too-slowly towards peace in the Middle East. Ian Anderson. The official website of Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson, featuring latest news, tour dates, an in-depth discography, archive content and much more!
Jethro Tull Tickets, 2024 Concert Tour Dates
Jethro Tull on Tour. Ian Anderson — Jethro Tull's flautist, vocalist and guitarist — leads the band's live shows. With bold charisma, he pairs his instrumental work with mesmerizing, full-bodied dance moves that match the band's dramatic musical intricacies. Anderson's bandmates also ably channel the emotional arcs of Jethro Tull's ...
JETHRO TULL Announces 'The Seven Decades' Summer/Fall 2023 U.S. Tour
Legendary rock band JETHRO TULL has announced "The Seven Decades" tour. Led by Ian Anderson, the concert will feature a rich collection of the best-known JETHRO TULL repertoire from 1968 to date.
Jethro Tull Announces 'The Seven Decades' US Tour
A full list of tour dates can be found below. RokFlote, Jethro Tull's 23rd album, arrives Friday.Frontman Ian Anderson previously revealed how he drew on Norse mythology for the album's title ...
Ian Anderson Tickets, 2024 Concert Tour Dates
The Jethro Tull 50th anniversary concert was fantastic! The group was tight and Ian's voice seemed better than in recent concerts. The music after all these years still is top notch. This is a concert well worth seeing if your a fan of progressive rock. Buy Ian Anderson tickets from the official Ticketmaster.com site.
Jethro Tull Tickets, Tour Dates & Concerts 2024 & 2023
See all upcoming 2023-24 tour dates, support acts, reviews and venue info. Live streams; Chase City concerts. ... Ian Anderson is the driving force behind Jethro Tull and makes all the shows interesting with his adept skills at flute playing as well as his eccentric stage presence. The band has great dynamics on stage and often plays in a ...
Jethro Tull tour dates 2024
Ian Anderson himself still is a great live performer, both physically moving around the stage and when playing the flute. This despite his age (72 years old). ... for me his singing kinda hampered the whole concert. Combined to it, was the fact that this was a sitting rather than standing experience. There was a standing ovation on the last two ...
Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson on Rock Hall of Fame, new album, tour
The 23 rd studio release from Jethro Tull, "RökFlöte," arrived in April, and between Aug. 18 and Nov. 4, Anderson, 76, and his musical mates will play 16 shows around the U.S. during a tour ...
JETHRO TULL Announces "The Seven Decades" Summer/Fall 2023 U.S. Tour
Legendary rock band JETHRO TULL has announced 'The Seven Decades' tour. Led by Ian Anderson, the concert will feature a rich collection of the best-known JETHRO TULL repertoire from 1968 to date. Fans will recognize the key songs from various albums — songs which put JETHRO TULL and Ian Anderson on the map during these seven decades. 'The Seven Decades' tour will hit the U.S. from August ...
Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson on touring, bedbugs and Martin Barre
Beginning his working day with a 9am Zoom call, Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson is a busy man. Here we talk about a new UK tour from Tull, the vinyl release of The Château d'Hérouville Sessions - the band's great long-lost album from the 70s - and the likelihood of former guitarist Martin Barre performing with them again. You're ...
Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson on music, flutes, morphine drips and
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull bites the bullet for 50th anniversary tour Cited as an inspiration by everyone from Nick Cave to the band Midlake, Jethro Tull is now 51 years old, but band founder Ian ...
Jethro Tull
All the latest official news from Jethro Tull & Ian Anderson in one place. MENU. LATEST NEWS. All the latest news from Jethro Tull & Ian Anderson in one place. Mandoki Soulmates - A Memory of our Future out 10th May 2024 Read More. ... Tour Dates. Discography. The Attic. Press. Management.
Ian Anderson Announces Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary North American Tour
By Jackson Maxwell. published 14 November 2017. Ian Anderson has announced a North American tour that will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his band, Jethro Tull. The concerts will feature a broad mix of material, ranging from the band's earliest work, to its peak period in the early to mid-Seventies, to the band's 21st century work.
Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson: My Life in 10 Songs
Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson: My Life in 10 Songs. As the pioneering prog rockers celebrate their 50th anniversary with a tour and new box set, their leader reflects on the tracks that defined ...
Ian Anderson Concert & Tour History (Updated for 2024)
Ian Anderson Concert History. 587 Concerts. Ian Scott Anderson, MBE (b. 1947) is a Scottish singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, best known for his work as the leader and flautist of British rock band Jethro Tull. Concerts. Photos.
Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull
ALBANY-Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull - The Seven Decades Tour was a mesmerizing and nostalgic journey through the annals of progressive rock, proving that great music knows no bounds of time. As I walked into the Palace Theatre in Albany for the SOLD OUT show, I couldn't help but notice the sea of attendees, predominantly male and over 60, many of them sporting the iconic ponytail.
Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull's Past, Present and Future
Ian Anderson, holding his rock flute, with Jethro Tull's 2023 lineup. These days, Anderson employs a modestly sized touring party, with the band and four key crew members. The lineup consists of Tull veterans David Goodier (bass guitar) and John O'Hara (piano, keyboards and Hammond organ), plus Scott Hammond (drums), and Joe Parrish-James ...
Ian Anderson
Events and tours. The massed finale of the English Roots Against Apartheid ceilidh at London's Town & Country Club in 1987 — a big band including all of Oysterband and Tiger Moth plus various Mustaphas and Boothills, Richard Thompson, Billy Bragg, Rory McLeod, Michelle Shocked, Hank Wangford and more. Photo by Jak Kilby.
Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson, known throughout the world of rock music as the flute and voice behind the legendary Jethro Tull, celebrates his 53rd year as a recording and performing musician in 2021. Ian was born in 1947 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. After attending primary school in Edinburgh, his family relocated to Blackpool in the north of England in 1959.
Ian Anderson
Ian Scott Anderson MBE (born 10 August 1947) is a British musician best known for his work as the singer, flautist, acoustic guitarist, ... In September 2017, Anderson announced plans for a tour to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of This Was, and a new studio album in 2019.
Ian Anderson interview: the beginning, middle and end of ...
Ian Scott Anderson was born in Dunfermline, Scotland on August 10, 1947. He was a teenager living in Blackpool when he joined his first group, The Blades, in 1963. As a singer, guitarist and harmonica player, he served his apprenticeship in various blues bands before Jethro Tull - named after the 18th-century agriculturist - formed in 1967 ...
China's Xi is visiting Europe for the first time in five years
Xi landed in France Sunday and, while the pomp and ceremony may remain during his six-day European tour, views on China across the continent have shifted dramatically since his last visit.
The Prog Years UK Tour 2021
Ian Anderson and the Jethro Tull band have announced that they will return to the road with The Prog Years Tour 2021 with 11 dates across the UK in September. This 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 ...

JETHRO TULL Announces 'The Seven Decades' Summer/Fall 2023 U.S. Tour

Comments Disclaimer And Information

Jethro Tull Announces ‘The Seven Decades’ US Tour

Jethro Tull Albums Ranked

Jethro Tull tour dates 2024

Currently touring across

Upcoming concerts (11) See nearest concert

Past concerts

Recent tour reviews

Jethro Tull leader is just fine without a Rock Hall nod: 'It’s best that they don’t ask me'

BAD WOLVES Enlist CHRIS DAUGHTRY On New Single “Hungry For Life”

JETHRO TULL Announces “The Seven Decades” Summer/Fall 2023 U.S. Tour

“The Seven Decades” Tour dates:

“RökFlöte” track-listing:

Related Posts

Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson on music, flutes, morphine drips and why he can’t stand hippies

The flute-playing founder and leader of Jethro Tull is the band’s only member who has been in all of the 30-plus lineups of the band. Nick Cave and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett are fans

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull bites the bullet for 50th anniversary tour

Flute first, then and now

Eric Clapton speaks up for J.J. Cale

Mose Allison, influential blues and jazz great, dead at 89

Nyet to Russian oligarchs

Jethro Tull: The Seven Decades Tour

More from this Author

Wonderfront festival concludes with a bang, thanks to The Roots, Beck and Steel Pulse

Appreciation: Sax great David Sanborn dead at 78. ‘I think people relate to a lyrical humanness in my playing,’ he said

Wonderfront festival delivered the hits Saturday on a night when the San Diego Padres went scoreless

Montreal Jazz Festival a treat for music fans of multiple genres — and a bargain, with 150-plus free concerts

Gator by the Bay’s rousing tribute to zydeco-music giant Clifton Chenier a night to remember

Wonderfront music festival has returned to kick off its next wave

More in this section

Les Ballets Jazz Montréal sets the music of Leonard Cohen to dance

This weekend’s three don’t-miss San Diego-area concerts

Review: JACK Quartet concert combined 20th century moderns with 21st century eclectics

Steve Albini, legendary producer for Nirvana, the Pixies and an alternative rock pioneer, dies at 61

San Diego Symphony announces 2024-25 season at newly renamed concert hall after $125 million redesign

Wonderfront returning to San Diego this week as landscape for music festivals grows increasingly challenging

Ian Anderson Announces Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary North American Tour

Get The Pick Newsletter

Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson: My Life in 10 Songs

“Beggar’s Farm”

“Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square”

“Teacher”

“Locomotive Breath”

“Aqualung”

“Thick as a Brick”

“Skating Away (on the Thin Ice of the New Day)”

“Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die”

“Songs From the Wood”

“Farm on the Freeway”

Watch Kelly Clarkson Perform 'Say It Ain't So' With Weezer

Donna Summer's Estate Reaches Settlement With Kanye West Over Alleged 'Theft' of 'I Feel Love'

Marilyn Manson Signs New Record Deal, Teases First Music Since Sexual Assault Allegations

Kehlani Sets Summer Release for New Studio Album 'Crash'

Astroworld: Last Remaining Wrongful Death Suit Has A New Trial Date

Most Popular

Verify it's you

Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades Tour: A Timeless Journey Through Prog Rock – 11/4/23 @ Palace Theatre

Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull – The Seven Decades @ The Palace Theatre, Albany, NY – 11/4/23 (Photos by Stephanie J. Bartik)

Share this:

Our Partners:

RECENT POSTS

LATEST REVIEWS

Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull’s Past, Present and Future

Stories We Want You to Read

3 Comments so far

Click here to cancel reply.

Loading, Please Wait!

Events and tours

Classic Rock Newsletter

Most Popular

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS