The vocal legend Ian Anderson was depressed watching: “A sad and profound experience”
While Ian Anderson was a naturally gifted frontman and flautist, displaying all of his talents as the bandleader with Jethro Tull, it’s not something that everyone is blessed with for the whole of their lives.
Where other instruments still require you to have the use of certain body parts, the strain that is put on your vocal cords is arguably going to cause greater discomfort for vocalists early on in life, and with the voice being used for communicative purposes on a day to day basis, you’re going to have to look after it in order for it to remain intact and not deteriorate.
Anderson may have managed to get a lengthy career out of his voice, but in recent years, he’s succumbed to various health problems that have limited his capacity to sing in the same way.
This decline is bound to happen to most people, but yet, you don’t expect it to happen to some of the greatest voices of all time. In this instance, I’m not specifically referring to those in the rock and pop world, but instead the voices of opera singers, who have to be able to project as part of their performances.
Anderson was never performing on this level, but he was heavily inspired by classical music throughout his career, and was fortunate enough to see some of the finest performers of the late 20th century. However, even being a trained opera singer doesn’t make you exempt from experiencing this very same decline, and in a rather unfortunate way, this is how Anderson would experience seeing two icons of the art form performing in the mid-2000s.
During a 2014 interview with Gary James of Classic Bands, Anderson spoke about his gut-wrenching experience of seeing two of the Three Tenors live, and how he felt a sadness rushing through him, witnessing both Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras towards the ends of their careers. While he noted that old age can catch up with people when put in a high-pressure environment, such as being on stage, this was still not what he expected from two of the most formidable voices in history.
“The spotlight and pressure is truly on you,” he began. “I was with Pavarotti at the last public concerts he did on a TV show in Germany, and it was really a sad and profound experience watching him struggle along with José Carreras, who wasn’t doing much better at the time, to get through a rehearsal. Your heart went out to the man who was there honouring a commitment, but clearly knowing that he could never do what it was that people expected of him any longer”.
Adding, “That’s a sad place to be. I hope that I don’t get to that point, at least not in the next couple of weeks.”
Even though it’s doubtful that someone of Pavarotti’s level of talent would ever allow his voice to slip in his later years consciously, it’s clear that from Anderson’s experience, he wasn’t able to keep things going to the same degree as he’d previously been capable of, and for someone who was a big fan of him, that was a deeply upsetting experience.
