The bands that Ian Anderson never wanted to join: “I’d get restless”
There’s no sense in trying to categorise anything that Ian Anderson did throughout his career.
Even though it’s safe to call Jethro Tull a prog rock band based on albums like Thick as a Brick, that word was another genre-fied prison that Anderson had to deal with when the band got famous. He was interested in doing whatever he wanted with the pop song format, but compared to every other band out at the time, he did have a keen sense of which sounds he wanted to avoid.
Although most people shouldn’t try to put parameters on their sound by any stretch, Anderson grew up in a much different world than the rest of his blues-soaked peers in the late 1960s. He had the good sense to say that there was no way anyone could beat Eric Clapton, so it was much better for him to make songs that seemed to have no clear genre of origin. Not many people would have found a way to shoehorn in Bach pieces into a rock and roll song or make episodic tunes like ‘Aqualung’, but Anderson was more than happy to throw a few surprises into the mix.
Then again, that kind of music might not have been the greatest commercial prospect at the time, either. Sure, some of their records absolutely killed on the album charts, but prog-rock was never the most commercial genre to begin with. Yes and Genesis weren’t having chart hits with their episodic songs, and for the greater listening public, it was a lot easier for them to throw on whatever rock and roll heavyweights were out at the time.
Even looking at some of the bills that they were on back in the day, it’s not like they were the biggest draw, either. The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus was certainly a fun idea, but when you have The Stones, The Who, and an impromptu supergroup with John Lennon, hardly anyone was going to be paying attention to the guy with the flute. But even after prog was more accepted, there was always punk around to stomp out everything.
Jethro Tull were never considered “cool” in the traditional sense, but even if they were more accepted in an era when Rush and Emerson, Lake and Palmer were hitting the big time, there was hardly anyone who was clamouring to hear what they were going to do next after bands like Ramones and Sex Pistols started making waves. But even if Anderson liked punk, disturbing every other genre, he wasn’t about to take part, either.
As far as he could tell, Ramones deserved a spot next to the Stones in terms of bands that he never wanted to join, saying, “It’s better to [try too hard] and fall on your face once in a while rather than sit comfortably backpedaling in order to keep on an even keel. I’d get restless if I did generic music like the Stones or even the Who, or the Ramones in the world of punk. I feel I’ve gotta get on and do something that allows me to get close to what I think I can do.”
While there are certainly more than a few times when a Tull record has gone in some weird directions, the one thing that no one can say is that they sound boring. Each record was about them reaching for something new, and while they did alienate a couple of fans along the way, the important part was being able to walk out of the studio with their integrity rather than spin their wheels every single time the tape rolled.
So while Anderson may have known what he was getting into with a band like Ramones or The Rolling Stones, he never wanted to dismiss them out of contempt. It wasn’t easy for them to get to the positions they were in, but he also never wanted to join a group where he already knew the musical borders.
