“It was a touching moment”: The song Ian Anderson always wanted to play live
There’s a lot that can be said about Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull. They’re a band that has never stopped trying to make innovative music and isn’t afraid to dabble in various styles and sounds in pursuit of unrelenting creativity. However, despite the variety on display throughout their discography and their exciting approach to music, they are often pigeonholeed as “The rock band with a flute player”.
Plenty of music has influenced Ian Anderson and his band throughout their time working together, and he isn’t afraid to highlight it. When picking out his favourite albums, he admitted that he doesn’t just look for nostalgia and gateways into specific music when picking what he loves most. Instead, he is constantly on the hunt for something and keeps his mind open to experiencing new music from innovative artists.
That being said, while he is always looking out for something new, some songs and albums still mean more to him than others. For instance, one of Jethro Tull’s biggest hits, ‘Aqualung’, is still one of his favourite songs of all time because of the profound impact it had on him and his entire life.
“It was the most life-changing piece of music for me personally,” he admitted, “It afforded me the opportunity to release even more adventurous albums.”
Anderson has also previously admitted that the song’s timelessness means it has a continued appeal for him. The track was written about societal imbalances, and since then, it seems as though the issues touched upon in the track have only become more prevalent. The more the band continued to play it live, the more he realised the sentiment behind the song was becoming even stronger.
There are other songs that also mean a lot to Anderson, some of which weren’t even written by him. As mentioned earlier, Jethro Tull are often lazily labelled as the rock band with the flute. This is lazy on two counts: the first is that there is a lot more to them than that, and the second is that there were plenty of other rock bands who had a flute player.
While discussing some of these other bands, Ian Anderson thought of Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues, as well as “Chris Wood from Traffic played flute and sax, and there was a guy in King Crimson.” All of these acts managed to work a flute into their unique styles, and all of them had a place in Anderson’s heart, particularly Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues. He covered one of his songs and holds it dear as one of the best live performances he’s ever done.
“Talking of Ray Thomas, his playing wasn’t the most adventurous, but the one thing that was hauntingly beautiful was the flute solo in ‘Nights In White Satin’,” he said, “I always had a hankering to play that, and when Justin Hayward was a guest of ours at Canterbury Cathedral some years ago, we did ‘Nights In White Satin’, and I finally got to play the flute solo. It was a touching moment.”
