Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson
Ian Scott Anderson, MBEis a Scottish-born musician, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work as the lead vocalist, flautist and acoustic guitarist of British rock band Jethro Tull. Anderson plays several other musical instruments, including keyboards, bass guitar, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica, and a variety of whistles. His solo work began with the 1983 album Walk into Light, and since then he has released another five works, including the sequel of Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brickin...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionFlute Player
Date of Birth10 August 1947
CityDunfermline, Scotland
I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.
I don't think people really do listen. We plug into music, and we have short attention spans. We tend to download individual tracks from iTunes rather than a whole album. We buy music DVDs and watch them once, and then they disappear into a drawer, or we loan them to a friend, and we never watch it again.
Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.
The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.
If Jesus Christ came back today, He and I would get into our brown corduroys and go to the nearest jean store and overturn the racks of blue denim.
Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise.
Not to be mean about it, but some great rock and rollers, like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, are pretty one-dimensional.
In most cases, my favorite Jethro Tull songs will be determined by how I feel about them as live performance songs, not by the recorded identity.
I've always been fond of acoustic music.
I'm very much an observer and a conduit of thoughts and ideas.
I'm really terrible with small children; they're small, noisy, irritating, damp and soggy.
I'm not one for Sudoku or crosswords - the thing that fires my little brain is doing tour budgets.
Cafe society is as old as the hills. Starbucks and its imitators are the coffee face of the new man in a hurry.
But the tune ends too soon for us all