The one singer Ian Anderson always wished he could be: “We all envied”
There aren’t too many pieces of rock and roll that Ian Anderson hasn’t been able to cross off his bucket list.
Granted, his definition of being a rock star meant something much different than what the likes of Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page were up to, but you could tell that he was always going to play by his own rules whenever he made a new Jethro Tull album. It was hard for anyone to know what to expect, but even with all of the wild left turns of their career, Anderson felt that there were some people that he would have happily traded places with if he had the opportunity.
Then again, there aren’t that many people who have had the kind of career that Anderson has had. He was always one of the most engaging performers in prog rock when he kicked his leg up and adopted that insane stance when rocking the flute, but that was entirely practical. Any chances of him being a guitar hero were dashed when he heard Eric Clapton, so it was up to him to find something new to work with.
But even when realising his vision, there were even a few surprises along the way that he didn’t imagine would happen. It’s one thing to have Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath among your ranks for a few gigs, but even after he left to form his own outfit, the idea of Tull earning themselves the first era Grammy for a “metal band” was a lot different from what Anderson and anyone with functional ears ever thought of.
Because when looking at his career, Anderson was never comfortable with any singular label for his music. A lot of the best parts of their records were when they defied what everyone expected like on Thick as a Brick, but it’s not like they were the only eccentric characters out there at the time. The 1970s were a time when a new genre was being invented practically every minute, but even in the age when he could run into other legends like Jimmy Page, Roy Harper was living the most intriguing career anyone could have imagined.
Despite never being quite as legendary as his friends, Harper’s effect on the rock and roll world has been strange. He was namechecked in a Zeppelin song and even got to sing on ‘Have A Cigar’ from Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, but his studio albums were always a bit left-of-centre for the rest of the world. But for someone who lived for the more strange entries in rock history, Anderson found a kindred spirit in Harper’s music.
It had been years after both of their primes, but Anderson felt that it would have been interesting to see the rock world through Harper’s eyes, saying, “People looked at Roy Harper as being a bit of a weird new-age folkie, and he didn’t influence any of the other guys at all. We all envied Roy for his simplicity and directness and his meandering, rather chaotic creativity. Life was simple for Roy, he had a guitar on his back and he would hitch a lift to the side of the motorway to go to the next gig, whereas the rest of us had roadies and fans and plane tickets and tour managers.”
At the same time, there are pieces of the rock and roll lifestyle that Anderson might not take for granted when talking about Harper. The extravagant side of living may have been a little bit too much for anyone to take in, but it was all done as a practical means to make sure that the talent were treated right before they even bothered going onstage. Others might see it as pretentious, but Anderson knew that it was better for him to make the decisions that best suited Tull in the long run.
But there is a certain romance to the way that Anderson described what Harper could do. Most musicians would live to be the guitar-toting troubadour making song after song for anyone within earshot, and when looking at the pure experience level of every rock and roll star of the 1970s, Harper might be one of the few people living out the dream that most artists had started with back in the day.
