Ian Anderson on the band that “meant more” than The Beatles
There aren’t many facets of rock and roll that The Beatles haven’t tried on for size at least once. Although they have had some of the greatest hits of all time and have come close to being overrated for most people, it’s hard not to see them as properly acknowledged as one of the finest bands to ever make it big in the industry. For those more interested in progressive music like Ian Anderson, life was always about more than simply the Fab Four.
Granted, anyone who has gone through albums that are all about sweeping solos are usually hesitant to listen back to those old Beatles records. The band’s first few albums are still a good time to listen to, but there’s a good chance that they aren’t going to satisfy people who freebase artists like Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree every time they want something a little bit more intricate.
But are we going to ignore the fact that The Beatles unintentionally invented progressive music as well? The entire concept of people branching outside the norm in rock and roll began when they started viewing the album as an art form and looking at what they achieved when working on projects like Revolver is enough to make even the most jaded prog fan marvel at what they had done.
Jethro Tull was always a bit of a different beast, though. They certainly had the melodic framework that made some of those Beatles songs so famous, but not many of them were willing to bring in influences from genres like classical music into their sound, even going so far as to cover Bach on their interpretation of ‘Bouree’ on one of their early albums.
That’s because Anderson was interested in something far more mind-expanding, and while The Beatles were certainly close to it on Sgt Pepper, he knew that he was listening to something entirely different with Pink Floyd. Although The Piper at the Gates of Dawn may have been released around the same time as the Fab Four’s magnum opus, it was far more adventurous in terms of song construction, with ‘Astronomy Domine’ sounding like it was from another planet entirely.
Even though Anderson had to acknowledge what The Beatles brought to the table, he knew Pink Floyd had a more prominent space in his heart, saying, “For me, the Pink Floyd album had more meaning. The Beatles were a pop group, so I thought their stuff was a bit contrived, a bit twee. I liked the singer-songwriter element to Floyd more. Syd Barrett’s songs were strange and funny, and they perfectly complemented the radical, druggy instrumental stuff the band did.”
Barrett might have set the tone for prog-rock a bit better, but there was still a lot to get out of The Beatles’ later material as well. Sgt Pepper might be the unofficial masterpiece of their catalogue, but listening to the back half of Abbey Road was the blueprint for what Anderson would be doing years later when making the massive prog-rock masterwork Thick As A Brick.
So even though Pink Floyd and The Beatles have felt like mainstays of two completely different facets of rock music, it’s alright to see them both as innovators in their own right. And considering how forward-thinking The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was, fans couldn’t have imagined what they had to be preparing for when The Dark Side of the Moon came out.
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