‘Life Is a Lemon…’: The classic rock epic Ian Anderson wished he wrote
In the decades that Ian Anderson has been making music, he has never been one to shy away from dishing out praise and critique where necessary.
He always comes across as a musician who simply wants the best for the art form, which means celebrating the artists who do good things for it and holding those who drag it down accountable, and you’ll never find him assuming the role of arrogant God-like genius, as he is well aware that music is bigger than him. He is merely a cog in the machine, and were it not for the turning of others, so too would he remain stagnant.
Take Led Zeppelin, for example. Given Jimmy Page’s outfit and Jethro Tull’s dabble in the worlds of hard rock and prog, you would be forgiven for thinking that there could potentially be some kind of rivalry there, but that’s not what happened. Instead, the two bands toured with each other, and as a fan, Anderson observed what Zeppelin were doing and decided to try to learn from their music. He admitted that the band are somewhat responsible for showing other musicians the way forward when it came to making music that expanded beyond the standard parameters of rock.
“I think what they showed to all their peer group as musicians was that there was, first of all, a very powerful and dramatic way to perform simple, direct rock music and also to introduce elements of more eclectic music,” he said. “Because Zeppelin, near the beginning, there were a lot of elements of folk music, and Asian music, and African music that crept into their stuff.”
Jimmy Page used to call Led Zeppelin’s music a combination of “light and shade”, and I suppose you could say the same descriptor can be used when discussing Ian Anderson’s comments on music. Where he was happy to shine a light on the artists he was a fan of, he was also willing to cast shade on those he thought could do better. The rock singer Meat Loaf found himself in the latter category, as Anderson admitted that he wasn’t a fan.
“Ever since I’d been aware of Mr Meat, I’d not been a fan at all,” he said. “I thought he was bombastic, loud, churlish, arrogant – there was nothing about him that appealed to me, including his overtly showbizzy operatic voice. I’d never been a fan…”
Ever the open-minded musician, though, Anderson was happy to have his mind changed on the artists he didn’t like, and that’s exactly what happened with the operatic rock star. While he was never the biggest fan of Meat Loaf, when researching songs that contained a written narrative, he came across a Meat Loaf tune that he felt a real connection with. It wasn’t just an anomaly; it was a song that Anderson grew jealous over the fact that he didn’t write himself.
It was his wife who originally introduced him to the song. “I was looking for examples of people who told authentic observational tales, and I was stuck,” said Anderson. “Then my wife called to me from the other side of the office saying, ‘Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back’. I said I was terribly sorry to hear this, and she said – ‘No, the Meat Loaf song, ‘Life Is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back)’ – although Jim Steinman actually wrote the song.”
The rest was history after that, and Anderson found himself becoming a bit of a fan, particularly of that one song. “I think it’s a great song, and it just happens to be on this album. I’m not saying I enjoy the whole album or most of Meat Loaf’s work, but that is a very good track,” he concluded. “As soon as I heard it, I told my wife, ‘Damn, I wish I’d written that’, which is probably the biggest compliment anyone in my position can pay to somebody else. In fact, I think that should be the epitaph on my gravestone.”
