Why Jethro Tull turned their noses up at Woodstock
Ask any band working right now what they’d do if they had a time machine, and a standard answer will likely be, “Play Woodstock”. In all of musical history, there is no one event with the level of allure that this festival has garnered. It was mythologised from the moment it happened, as if the final chord of Jimi Hendrix’s closing performance instantly wrote it into history. But before that, when bands were first invited to play, the reality was the opposite. While bands now would do anything to be there, bands at the time, like Jethro Tull, wanted nothing to do with it.
Woodstock is remembered as the pinnacle of the 1960s, the ultimate music experience—but it could have been so much better. When the organisers began planning it, they were bold with their invites. They tried their luck with anyone who was anyone at the time, sending offers to play to all the biggest acts around. In an alternate timeline, The Beatles said yes to their invite and played the festival. The Rolling Stones, too, The Doors would’ve been there, Joni Mitchell would’ve been there, Bob Dylan would have put his grudge aside and been there. Sure, the lineup they got was incredible, but, like I said, it could’ve been even better.
However, no one knew how big the event would end up being. There was no real reason to trust the organisers at all as they were new to this world, and Woodstock was a brand new event. For acts with other offers from more established places, like the Isle of Wight Festival, the draw to turn that down in favour of what was, realistically, a risky first attempt, simply wasn’t there. That was a major reason why Woodstock received so many rejections.
But some of them were less logistical than that. In Jethro Tull’s case, their no came from a moral standpoint. “Will there be lots of naked ladies?” Ian Anderson asked their manager when the offer came in, “And will there be taking drugs and drinking lots of beer, and fooling around in the mud?” Because rain was forecast. When the answer came back a resounding ‘yes’, given that the festival was shaping up to be the ultimate countercultural happening as hinted at by the location, the organisers and the acts they’d already secured, Anderson wanted no part of it, stating simply, “Right. I don’t want to go”.
It’s ironic to be a progressive rock idol but also so unprogressive. Despite undeniably existing within the counterculture, Anderson didn’t want to mix with it. “I don’t like hippies,” he said, “and I’m usually rather put off by naked ladies unless the time is right.”
It’s perhaps the exact opposite of what you’d expect to hear from a rockstar, for one, but especially from a man who plays experimental flute for a living. But Anderson stood his ground.
“I knew it was going to be a big deal,” he told Songfacts, making it clear that this didn’t come down to doubt in the festival. He simply didn’t want to be amongst the riffraff.
