The 1969 classic Ian Anderson was never impressed with
The world of prog-rock remains one of the most elusive and complicated corners of music.
The issue with this style is that it’s not really something you can define. It’s basically just regular rock music but with more bits added, and there’s not really any limitation on what those bits can be. You can weave a different genre into your sound, include strange narratives, make songs complex and in multiple sections, use bizarre time signatures, and then some. Because of how much versatility there is within this genre, you struggle to find musicians within such a style who see eye to eye on things.
For instance, Frank Zappa once came up with a pretty solid definition for prog-rock, which even he said was a boundary that the majority of musicians would accept. He basically rephrased the above, but in a way which is much more concise.
“I would presume that people would accept this definition,” he said, “Progressive Rock is anything that doesn’t sound like regular Rock. Regular Rock is everything that sounds like itself. All songs which sound the same, everything on MTV, everything on the radio, that’s Rock. Progressive Rock is stuff that doesn’t sound like that.”
However, while a lot of people might think that this Frank Zappa definition is pretty solid, some of his opinions on prog rock would likely annoy fans of the genre. Despite being such an authority within the style, it’s difficult to accept some of his thoughts, one of which was the idea that Jethro Tull are pretty far removed from prog as a whole, and shouldn’t have the label slapped upon them.
It seems that Ian Anderson was well aware of this critique, as he previously spoke about how disappointed he was that Zappa wasn’t a fan. That being said, he also didn’t think it had anything to do with music, and instead came from a jealous part within the musician, given so many British bands were making money in the States, meanwhile he wasn’t.
“Sadly I never got to meet Frank Zappa, we nearly did,” said Anderson, “And I actually read that he didn’t like Jethro Tull at all back then in the ’70s. He rather resented the fact that us British bands Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and so on. We were going over there [United States] and making tons of money. Seemingly while he was struggling to run his band”.
“So he was rather unkind to some of us in the press. [It] was a shame because I was a big Frank Zappa fan at that point.”
Anderson was a fan of Zappa, but he preferred him as a big picture kind of musician, rather than as someone who was good at one individual thing. He spoke about the album Hot Rats specifically in this regard, a 1969 release which many call Zappa’s very best, or at least a good entry point into the work of Zappa. However, it wasn’t a record that Anderson was particularly impressed with. Despite receiving a great deal of praise from people listening in, Anderson could never get into what is now considered a classic record.
“I guess I was always catching up with Frank Zappa,” he said, “The first album by him that I bought was Hot Rats, and I found that a rather irritating album of not very evolved guitar playing. Frank was a bit of a one-trick pony as a guitarist, but as a musician, arranger and bandleader of the traditional sort, he was at the top of the tree, although he wasn’t unique as a bandleader.”
