Ian Anderson is the guitarist/flute player you see center stage at
Jethro Tull concerts, hopping up and down Pan-like with his leg coiled
behind his calf. He is also the bandleader, lead vocalist, and songwriter.
But Jethro Tull’s music is created collaboratively by the band, which
took its name from the 18th-century English farmer who invented the
seed drill. Anderson’s current bandmates are guitarist Martin Barre,
keyboardist Andrew Giddings, drummer Doane Perry, and bassist Jonathan
Noyce. Many illustrious players have passed through Jethro Tull over
the years, among them drummers Barriemore Barlow, and Clive Bunker,
keyboardist John Evan, and bassists Glenn Cornick and Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond.
The various incarnations of Jethro Tull have covered a lot of musical
territory on such diverse albums as Stand Up, Benefit, Aqualung,
Thick as a Brick, Passion Play, War Child, and the Grammy-winning
Crest of a Knave.
After 30 years and as many albums, Jethro Tull is still touring and
creating new sounds, and Anderson has been the band’s only constant.
He played flute on the bluesy first album, This Was, and used
acoustic guitar, mandolin, and balalaika on the second album, Stand
Up, which was informed by Celtic rather than American roots. Anderson’s
acoustic presence has imbued almost every subsequent Tull album. In
fact, the band’s mix of electric and acoustic instruments is a Tull
hallmark.
Anderson’s rare solo ventures have always been primarily acoustic.
His latest CD, The Secret Language of Birds, presents 15 songs
in which Anderson invokes many different locales, both musically and
lyrically. He sends listeners musical postcards from the lava-ridden
streets of Montserrat and the alleys of Bombay. I spoke to Anderson
in March about his latest solo project and his many years with Jethro
Tull.
Tell us about your early days with the acoustic guitar.
ANDERSON I think of myself as a player
of guitar-family instruments rather than just an acoustic guitarist.
My first excursion on acoustic instruments with Jethro Tull, apart from
the flute and harmonica, was actually the mandolin—in December
of 1968, when I recorded a piece called "A Christmas Song." I really
only started playing acoustic guitar on the Stand Up album [1969].
When I heard Eric Clapton play electric guitar in my late teens, I
realized that I was never going to be that good. So I decided to trade
in my ’60s Fender Strat for a $50 student-model flute. To my knowledge,
Eric Clapton did not play flute, nor did Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page,
so at least I was in a field of music where I might be the big fish
in a small pool. So I have to thank Eric Clapton for giving me my start
on the flute. A couple of years later I got back to playing acoustic
guitar, and I still played a little electric on some of the Jethro Tull
songs.
Did you listen to British folk musicians like Bert Jansch?
ANDERSON I was aware of people like
Bert Jansch and Roy Harper, the antihero of British folk. Roy was less
of a traditionalist and more of a modern folk player, much more idiosyncratic
in his writing. His style was basically flatpicking, but picking notes
out of parts of chords. I never did understand what he played, but it
was a way of being self-contained and trying to allude to the melody.
That was sort of easy for me to pick up on, because I didn’t do all
that fingerstyle stuff. I would just pick out chord arpeggios with the
odd passing melodic note that would work with the vocal. And I wrote
songs, starting around ’69 or ’70, that certainly owe something to Roy
Harper. I used to do that in the ’70s when the band showed up late.
I would do some little acoustic piece of my own. I didn’t really do
that in the ’80s or ’90s because I felt a little guilty about cutting
the other guys out of the action. In writing Jethro Tull music, I tended
to come up with song ideas that worked for the drummer and the guitar
player and were interesting for them to play. It’s only on this most
recent album that I’ve returned to writing songs for me. Once in a while
it’s nice to be completely selfish and just do something because it
feels good to play.
How did Secret Language of Birds come about as a solo album?
ANDERSON I just decided that the next
project was going to be an album of acoustic songs. And I sat down and
wrote those songs. And having finished it, we went on to work on a Jethro
Tull album, which involved writing another batch of songs for the band.
In doing a Jethro Tull album, the vocals are invariably the last things
to be recorded. I quite like working in a situation of my own where
I can put the vocals down early and then work the other instruments
in and out of that. It’s more organic. You have an idea with a certain
instrument, and you can go straight on to tape with it and add the vocals
early on.
Drummer Barriemore Barlow, who played on Tull classics such as Thick
as a Brick and Passion Play, has said that he wouldn’t have
played so busily had he been able to hear the vocals.
ANDERSON But the argument is that
somebody has to go first. If he hadn’t put down those drum parts, the
rest of us might not have worked around them and played what we played.
That’s the difference between doing an acoustic album and a Tull album.
I go first on the acoustic album, and that’s it.
The new album has a travelogue quality to it with its various locations—Montserrat,
Panama, Bombay. Were they written on location?
ANDERSON Some of the songs were written
during two vacations—one in Barbados and one in Montserrat. But
most were written at home on rainy afternoons—or rainy mornings,
more likely, because I usually write music and lyrics in the morning.
So, yes, it’s from a variety of places. I’ve always written music in
hotel rooms and restaurants all over the world.
These later songs seem to be more subtle, less melodramatic than
the earlier songs on albums such as Aqualung.
ANDERSON Some of the songs that I
wrote on the album Aqualung weren’t even the thoughts and expressions
of a 23-year-old; they were the songs of a 14- or 15-year-old. The sentiments
I was pursuing in some of the more lyrically aggressive songs like "Wind
Up" or "My God" were about my experiences and confusion about religion
when I was a schoolboy. But it seemed relevant to take those emotions
and put them into songs as a young 20-something. But I find now, in
my considerably advanced years, that to go back and write a song about
teenaged angst and confusion would be hard to do without faking it.
What I’m more likely to do is pursue songs in the way that I did early
in Jethro Tull, as a visual artist. I like singing songs that put people
in a landscape. I have a picture in my head for each song that I write,
and it’s a framed, still image. My early training as a painter and drafter,
I think, produced in me a way of writing music and lyrics that illustrate
visual ideas.
I try to bring some maturity to the thing I’ve been doing for most
of my career, writing songs that tell people a story, not in the temporal
sense, but a story they make up to fit the picture I suggest to them.
It’s like sending people a postcard. You’re giving them a little flavor
of where you are and what you feel and how you’re getting on. But it
can only be just that, a little snapshot. They have to do some of the
work to imagine the bigger picture.
And so in the Einsteinian universe where the observer is all important,
the listener is all important. The artist making music in a vacuum is
meaningless. In an empty universe you can be as creative as you like,
but unless you’re God, not a lot is going to happen.
Can you still relate to the songs you wrote long ago? The band still
performs some of them live, such as cuts from the second album, Stand
Up.
ANDERSON We’ve played quite a lot
of those songs on and off over the years. But, yes, it was an album
that literally does stand up. Even though some of the songs do sound
very much like a product of their time, they don’t sound too odd. Because
of the improvisation involved, they’re not just replications of some
earlier thoughts. I think that’s what appeals to me about the Jethro
Tull material: it is a bit more perennial. The improvisational aspect
allows you to redefine and put a different spin on those songs night
after night.
The more acoustic, more structured pieces I play tend to be less varied
from night to night. But somehow their very chiseled, crystalline nature
makes them fun to do. But they’re not so much fun to do at a rock ’n’
roll Jethro Tull concert. The audience is there to hear grander, louder,
more nostalgia-ridden pieces.
Some of your writing, like "Christmas Song" and "Wond’ring Aloud"
is simply stated, but other songs sound almost like several songs in
one, with chord modulations, key changes, tempo changes . . .
ANDERSON One of the failings of the
band is that we’re sometimes overly enthusiastic about music we’re working
on. There’s always another thought that occurs, another layer that you
want to add to the onion. And sometimes it gets too dense. And when
you listen to it a couple of years later, you’re aware of how dense
it really is, how a little bit of space in the music would have been
much easier on the ear and the intellect. It’s a bit like packing a
suitcase. You should pull out all the things you want to pack into your
suitcase, lay them out on the floor, and then take half of them. That’s
a good lesson to learn about packing a suitcase, and it’s also a good
lesson to learn about writing music.
You’ve occasionally collaborated with other people on songwriting,
but only rarely. Doesn’t that tactic work for you?
ANDERSON I’m very bad at doing that.
On the very first album, This Was, there were one or two songs
Mick Abrahams, the original guitar player, and I sort of wrote together.
It’s happened on various pieces here and there. There are times when
someone’s made a contribution that’s definitely of compositional value.
They don’t necessarily get individually credited on that song, but they
get paid for it. If somebody writes ten seconds of music in a four-minute
song, they’re going to get paid on that percentage. I’m pretty much
a stickler for making sure everybody gets remuneration if they come
up with an idea.
I’m a bit of a loner. I tend to work in the studio a lot on my own.
I find it difficult to play and sing with other people sitting there.
And I just hate being out in the studio behind this glass window where
there’s somebody sitting behind the mixer and talking to you in double-talk.
I know, having spent so many hours behind the mixer as an engineer/producer.
There is a way you have to talk to people when you’re trying to get
something out of them, when in fact you want to go out there and kill
them [laughs]. You tend to become the archetype of a politician.
I don’t care to be in that position. I just do my vocals and flute and
guitar parts alone. I sit in the control room with a microphone, and
I control the equipment with a couple of buttons at my feet. I prefer
to be on my own rather than have somebody sitting there looking at their
watch going, "Oh God, he wants to do another take."
I understand that the band works together on arrangements. I’ve
heard, for example, that Thick as a Brick, with all its complex
pieces, was put together fairly quickly.
ANDERSON We did it, actually, quite
quickly. I would write music in the morning, and I would then take that
piece of music in at lunchtime. We met up in the Rolling Stones’ rehearsal
room down in Bermondsey in south London, where we would rehearse in
the afternoon and the evening. We would then go home, and I would write
something else early the next morning and bring it back in. We’d just
add on the next piece of music. Most of this was rehearsed in a period
of about ten days. We went in and recorded the whole thing quite quickly,
because we had learned it all.
So you rehearsed and arranged the album as it was being written?
ANDERSON I would go in with some basic
idea. Maybe I would play it on the acoustic guitar or just talk them
through it in terms of chord progressions. Sometimes I’d go in with
a very sketchy idea, but the other guys might have thought I had it
all worked out. But until I heard how they reacted, I wouldn’t know
which way to go. And sometimes they would have their own ideas as to
how the arrangement should build up. That’s how it’s supposed to be:
a mixture of different input from different people.
There are still some folks who believe the album cover news story
asserting that the lyrics were written by an eight-year-old boy.
ANDERSON I was very surprised that
people believed it even then. Thick as a Brick was written as
a spoof, as a send-up of a concept album. The record preceding it, Aqualung,
had been viewed by some critics as a concept album, which I disagreed
with, although there were three or four songs that kind of hung together.
So I said, "OK, let’s give them the mother of all concept albums." An
integral part of that was to pretend the lyrics had been written by
an eight-year-old boy, a preposterous, sort of precocious child who
came up with these convoluted and vague-sounding lyrics all set to a
continuous flow of music. It was a lot of fun to do. I wasn’t trying
to deceive people. I just thought everybody would get the gag. These
were the days of Monty Python. It was quite a successful album. The
only frustrating thing was playing it live, because there was all that
acoustic stuff in it.
How did the band manage to pull off such a great mix of acoustic
and electric guitars in live performance?
ANDERSON It was very difficult up
until the mid-’70s when the first transducers came along. After that
you still had to struggle to be heard, but at least you had some chance.
But in the old days, I guess up to ’73 or ’74, it was just putting a
microphone close up to the soundhole. The volume of the group was determined
by the amount of volume you got from the acoustic guitar, which meant
that some of the songs sounded quieter and the audience might get a
little restless and start shouting. It was a great struggle.
I understand that Jethro Tull started out as a blues band. What
caused you to change your direction?
ANDERSON The blues band was just an
entrée into making a living as a musician. Through the simple
vehicle of blues I also had an opportunity to learn some elements of
improvisation on an instrument [flute] that was completely new to me.
I never saw myself as a long-term blues musician. That was not the game
plan.
I was interested in music of other cultures: Asian music, North African
music, the classical music of northwestern Europe I couldn’t put a name
to. It was little things that I heard, you know, and they’ve been with
me ever since. I’d go into a music store, like I did yesterday. I was
walking through and saw a section on Eastern music. So I picked up an
album of Egyptian flute music, and I listened to it this morning. I’ll
probably never listen to it again, but it was something that just reinforced
all these little notions. Some things just stay in my mind, and I know
that later on they will become part of the complex, detailed psychology
of how I write a song.
Excerpted from Acoustic
Guitar
magazine, November 2000, No. 95. That issue also contains a transcription
of the Jethro Tull classic "Thick as a Brick."
Read about Ian Anderson's guitars, mandolins, flutes, and gear in the
What They
Play department.
