The band Ian Anderson said made the world a better place to live: “Great tunes, and some innovative playing”
Being a leader in the prog rock boom came with its perks, but for Ian Anderson, it also meant coming to terms with sharing the spotlight from time to time.
“I guess I have a preference for those that aren’t trying to clone early Genesis,” he once said, and while most of his conversations at the time hinged on the differences between the two, and who was better, there really was no sense in pitting them against each other at all. Because while they operated in similar circles, they approached music in fundamentally different ways.
For starters, Anderson reacted to pressure and misinterpretations by raising the bar for himself, taking other people’s opinions and letting them shape his music, whether it was a negative review or a complete misunderstanding about what a record was about (like everybody thinking Aqualung was a concept album, for example). Others might have had the same sorts of knee-jerk reactions, but with Anderson, it was never about proving himself so much as setting the record straight when people had opposing views.
Which is also why Thick as a Brick saw Anderson scrambling to get to the studio to actually create a concept album, one that would settle the “who’s better” debate among their competitive peers once and for all and also make a point when it came to what they were doing and why. As Anderson later explained, “[It was] a kind of spoof, a send-up, of the concept album genre, but Aqualung itself, in my mind, was never a concept album. Just a bunch of songs.”
Most of this drive to make a statement and do something different – even when they were parodying parts of the prog rock circle they were a part of – came from knowing the importance of innovation. Anderson was never that happy being compared to acts like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, because he wanted Jethro Tull to be seen as their own thing. But he did respect how much they did for the genre, if only because they were so intensely different from all the others.
Although never one to shy away from negative criticisms, Anderson once actually said he couldn’t really imagine a world without them. While he reflected on how, while they were making Thick as a Brick, ELP were a bit of an annoying presence because people wouldn’t stop talking about how “pompous” and show-offy they were, they did actually change the game forever.
“I personally think the world is a better place for having Emerson Lake and Palmer and Yes, because their music was quite elevated,” he told Something Else in 2014.
Continuing, “Great tunes, and some innovative playing. But, of course, it was to many people a bit excessive. I think some writers and some musicians found it pompous. Because they were displaying their technical skills as musicians sometimes in way that made them seem like party showoffs.”
This isn’t the first time he’s praised them, either, saying in 2002 that he considered them to be a part of the “big four” of prog rock, along with Genesis, King Crimson and Yes. Looking back, it seems to me a bit like Anderson’s initial dislike for ELP wasn’t just that they were popular for different reasons, or the same reasons. It seemed like a small (or big, depending on how you look at it) part of his dislike came from how he felt about Greg Lake. He didn’t like him at first, which tainted his perception, even if there were parts of their music that he didn’t like to admit he enjoyed.
