IAN ANDERSON
Telephone interview by Andy Bassett, May 1996
Jethro Tull played a one-off gig in New Plymouth in 1994, invited over by the Magog Motorcycle Club. In May 1996, the band were due to tour NZ again, including a return to New Plymouth, and Ragtime assigned me to interview founder and frontman Ian Anderson. He rang me on a Monday night and talked for nearly an hour. I then had three hours to edit it down and fax it through to Ragtime! The transcript below has been edited together from two published segments - the second article running after the leg injury he refers to in the interview led to the tour being cancelled two weeks later.
AB: Jethro Tull's been going 28 years now. What needs does it fulfil in your life?
Anderson: I think it's not so much a need as a reflection of what I do. I'm a working musician. I wake up in the morning and I go to work. But I have a better job than most people. It involves different kinds of challenges -practical, physical, as well as artistic aspects. There's no point in being coy about the artistic side of it. That is the pay-off. It's about music as an art form, it's not about being a pop star.
Presumably it's not about the money anymore either. You have a successful fish farming business.
Well, I've never drawn a salary from my operations up there. One day it will probably pay me off handsomely but at the moment 450 people go to work every day up there, not as musicians but as fish farmers and fish processors. It's an operation that's designed to take up very little of my time these days.
Your audience obviously expects to hear its fair share of older material and you still make it sound fresh every time. How do you maintain enthusiasm for "Living In The Past" or "Locomotive Breath," which you must have played thousands of times?
It's difficult to maintain enthusiasm if you play it too often. It's OK bringing it into the show every few years for a month or so. On the other hand, there are some pieces that are slightly more interesting, or fun, or difficult to play which I do enjoy playing virtually on a nightly basis. Jethro Tull has about 260 songs to choose from. Well, realistically, let's say 100 to choose from as, out of that 260, some of them are either unplayable on stage or just crap. So of the 20 or so that are in any one set, if a song comes back into the show after four years of not playing it, it's like meeting an old friend. For the next few months, you meet that old friend every night - same place, same time tomorrow. It's fine but you part company again and say 'See ya.'
Do you ever get taken aback by the fact that in every country you go to there are thousands of diehard Jethro Tull fans?
Yes, that is one of the great joys of this band. Jethro Tull is not hugely successful anywhere but it's moderately successful everywhere. And I prefer it that way. I wouldn't like to be someone like Chris DeBurgh, who has huge success in some places and couldn't get arrested in others. I like to be part of the big picture. We can go to La Paz, Bolivia, and sell out a show there. No-one else has ever been there but we went because the offer was there.
You recently injured your leg. What happened?
I had an accident in Lima, Peru, about seven weeks ago and tore some ligaments in my leg. At the moment I'm in physiotherapy and learning to walk again - in all seriousness. It's going to be about eight months before I'm properly mobile. The interim is a really crap time! I did a bunch of shows in the States in a wheelchair and that was great, because you have to try give it the energy and physicality in order to convey the music.
Apart from anything else, I need both my hands to play guitar and play the flute and I'm much to precarious to risk being unsupported on two legs at the moment. But I could never do the show just sitting on a barstool. So for me it's a difficult interim period between the wheelchair existence, which I've outgrown in my day-to-day life, and the kind of show that I would want to do on two legs. I'm kind of in the middle of all that at the moment.
But as I say, I have four out of five limbs in working order, so nothing compromises my performance onstage!
(At the time of this interview, Anderson felt cancelling the tour would be a weak thing to do, particularly as it would mean letting down a lot of people.)
It's not just the audience who bought tickets. There's the musicians and the crew, all of those people depend on me to do their work. Between now and the end of November, we have about 120 shows to play and that's about the timescale of my recovery. So to cancel Australia and New Zealand - you might as well cancel the European tour, cancel the US tour.
I have to say I've gone through moods like I've never done before. I just get very depressed and frustrated. And in a sense, when nine o'clock comes around and I get on stage, it's like a black cloud lifts, because I'm back in control for a couple of hours. It feels so good when the thing that you can return to is the thing you enjoy and have confidence in. But the rest of the day is shit! It's so depressing. However, that's what I'm paid for, so I shall be showing up for work tomorrow.
You probably get asked this by every journalist in the world - the "Too Old To Rock'n'Roll, Too Young To Die" question. Do you think it will ever apply to you?
It's inevitable that Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Ian Anderson and a few other people who've made their reputation on the basis of a very physical performance, will come to the point where that is not achievable. And I know that Tina Turner is paving the way for disappointing people by saying that she's got to concentrate on the vocal performance and less on the dancing around. She's a great singer and she's got that to fall back on. Mick Jagger is not a great singer and when he stops dancing around I think it will be all over. I like to think of myself as having a few years' extension because my performance as a musician ought to get me some measure of support when the physical performance goes.