The one singer Ian Anderson never wanted to talk to again: “He wasn’t fun”
Ian Anderson didn’t ever like to mince his words whenever it came to rock and roll.
He already had a much different way of looking at his music compared to the other prog rock giants, but when you look under the hood of a lot of those Jethro Tull songs, it’s not like he was trying to rewrite Shakespeare every single time he made one of his records. A lot of those songs are pretty straightforward once you break them down, but Anderson could be a lot more direct when talking about the more unsavoury characters that he found out in the wild.
Then again, rock and roll isn’t the kind of business that anyone joins to try to make friends. Even though it’s a joy to play music with anyone and everyone whenever you make a new record, the entire point of making music can be more than a little bit vicious when you’re competing with some of the biggest names in music for a position on the charts. It’s not easy for most musicians, but it’s not like Anderson was out there for the trophies.
Tull was able to get more than a few accolades during their time together, but Anderson would sooner have forgotten some of them in order to make the records that he wanted. He didn’t consider himself to be a prog rock god every single time he made a new record, and Thick as a Brick was pretty much one of the first times where he seemed to acknowledge that the genre could disappear up its own ass more than a few times.
It’s nice that he could have seen the funny side of it every now and again, but there were certain artists who definitely didn’t have the same view as he did. Some of the biggest prog rock bands of all time didn’t really care about having a sense of humour at the time, which made it all the more funnier when the pink regime came in and made them look like some of the most pretentious bands to ever exist.
But whereas some bands are more focused on making art than anything, there are also those that are just plain mean with no real reasoning behind it. There are endless stories about how some of the biggest stars of all time can be more than a little bit of a diva every single time they make a record, but Anderson didn’t really expect to get the same kind of vitriol from Van Morrison when he met him later in life.
The Irish songwriter seemed to be totally professional when Anderson first met him, but those warm feelings quickly eroded after he kept getting ignored by his friend, saying, “We befriended at a time when he was really down in the dumps in Montreux. My wife cooked dinner for him and his girlfriend because he was really in a depressed state.”
Adding, “We were all nice to him, and he wasn’t exactly fun and joy to be with. But you know, he was OK. But subsequently, he really snubbed me. All it takes is just to say ‘Oh, hi’ and then you’re on your way. He just snubbed me in a not-nice way, and that happened to me two or three times only in all my musical life.”
But don’t take Anderson’s word for it; just listen to the kind of songs that Morrison has been cooking up these days. Nothing that he ever does will be able to dull the amount of shine on an album like Astral Weeks, but when you listen to a lot of his lyrics these days, he tends to come off like a disgruntled old man that’s pissed off at the entire world, whether that’s him talking about social media or peddling nonsense about how vaccines are dangerous for the world.
Any artist is in danger of reaching that senile milestone at some point, but while Anderson is more than happy to keep his spirits up however he can, it makes sense why he wouldn’t want to be in close contact with Morrison for anything. One can only take so much cynicism at a time, and anyone who gets the chance to talk with Morrison nowadays is running the risk of having their expectations shattered.
