By Shawn Perry
Already in the can for 2025 is a new crop of nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s great to see Bad Company, Fats Domino, and Joe Cocker on that list. We could spend an eternity about who should and shouldn’t be in the hall. Indeed, real rock artists from Grand Funk Railroad to Foghat, Iron Maiden to King Crimson, and so on and so on are regularly passed over.
One glaring omission is Jethro Tull, though the band’s leader argues it has more to do with a focus on American music, or in the case of British bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who, the influence of American music. Over the course of the dozen interviews I’ve had with Ian Anderson, I brought up the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame once before. And his answer hasn’t really changed. Each time, I fail to remind him that Tull started out as a blues band — blues as American as apple pie. And as usual, he believes, with good reason, a band like Tull doesn’t belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“Bear in mind that before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened its doors in Cleveland,” he tells me, “they asked me to provide some memorabilia and I sent them some clothing; I sent them a flute; I sent them the master tape of the Thick As A Brick album. We were right at the very beginning and they were desperate for anybody to give them stuff so that people would pay money to come through the door. I complied with that. I didn’t really know what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was going to be about. Then it became, I think, fairly obvious. This was the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was something that I think quite rightly celebrates the great history of American music. I personally don’t feel that I’m a part of the great history of American music. I think I’m a part of the great history of British and European music because that’s where I’m from.”
At this point in their career, Jethro Tull are unquestionably the quintessential British and European band. On Curious Ruminant, Jethro Tull’s 24th release for 2025, Anderson is an astute auteur who casts his keen eye far and wide over the old continent — be it “Dunsinane Hill” (a hill of the Sidlaws near the village of Collace in Perthshire, Scotland) and its Shakespearian metaphors or “The Tipu House,” which references Sant Jordi’s (aka St. George’s) Day, a festival in Barcelona, Spain. After laying out what I think the general theme of the album is, Anderson gives me his take.
“It’s an album that’s more personal, in terms of lyrics and my own thoughts, feelings, and impressions about a number of different subjects. Usually, my songs are a bit more objective. They’re more social realist people in a landscape. The first lyrics I wrote, which was back in May of last year, and I wrote the lyrics for a previously recorded demo called “Drink From the Same Well,” and from that moment on, they followed a general pattern. The next song I did was the title track, ‘Curious Ruminant.’”
I ask him about the autobiographical nature of “Curious Ruminant,” a contemplative piece with a few unresolved questions. He agrees, then adds: “It’s about life’s big questions and not being afraid to think. A lot of people probably have that undercurrent of being aware of questions of who we are, why we’re here, what we do, but maybe they’re a little embarrassed to ask themselves or to think about it or to discuss it with other people. It’s a bit of a taboo subject for a lot of people, particularly those who do not follow more spiritual affairs.
”Since I was a teenager, it’s been generally for me, a fascinating subject for me over the years, from time to time, to look at and read a lot about it — in terms of comparative religions and more philosophical discussions and assertions. So maybe it’s a little odd to have that in the lyrics of a song, but for me, it’s just one of the subjects I chose to address. It’s a little bit tongue in cheek because most of my lyrics are. I don’t think it should be taken as high intellectual prose or lyric writing. It is just musing on a topic.”
We move on to another song on Curious Ruminant, and Anderson, in his own inimitable way, susses out the essence of “The Tipu House” for me.
“I was actually on vacation for three days in the south of Italy and my first thought was that maybe this should be set in India. Then I had the thought after I had left Italy the next day — I think when I got home — maybe I’ll set this in Italy. Then I started writing lyrics and I started to edit and develop the lyrics to the point where I was really having to make some references to more definitive elements in the song. And I decided to make it Spain Catalonia.
“Therefore, the reference to the Day of Books and Roses, the celebration of St. George’s Festival in Catalonia, where girls give their boyfriend a book traditionally, and the boyfriend gives the girlfriend some roses. It’s just a nice thought, but it’s a romantic thought. When I’m talking about the more basic coupling of people in a poor quality apartment building, and it with very thin walls and hearing the noises of sex through the walls, then it’s throwing the idea of romance out of the window. That was that reference.
“I then actually went to Barcelona. It wasn’t necessarily to be set in Barcelona. I looked on Google Maps to try and find a suitable site, looking at aerial views of different cities in that part of Spain, to try to find an apartment block with some play area outside where children might kick a ball about and with trees for shade. And the place I found ironically just happened to be about 80 meters away from the hotel that I often stay at when I’m in Barcelona to work. It was really kind of on the doorstep to go and take that photograph for the album’s 36-page booklet.”
At once, We leave Europe and head over to the Middle East, specifically Israel and its capital city. “Over Jerusalem” brushes over the current state of affairs in what Anderson calls “a city of wasted opportunity.” He’s prompted to go into detail.
“Jerusalem, for 5,000 years, has changed hands many times and been the scene of bloody battles, siege and dreadful acts of inhumanity and effectively what you would call ‘ethnic cleansing.’ So it’s a city that has a very troubled history and, in a sense, a wasted opportunity because it is today the city that more than any other epitomizes the presence of the Abrahamic religions, the prophetic religions. So Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all very much at the root of different parts of society in Jerusalem. Far from the opportunity to show respect and dignity and acceptance of other people’s cultural background and religious habit, it is as divided and quite frightening on occasions as it ever was. That hasn’t really changed since 1948, a year after I was born, when the modern state of Israel was founded and it came in with a bang, literally in terms of, what you can only call terrorist bombs in this case. It was liberation forces, the Zionist forces of early Israel blowing up a part of a hotel in a demonstration against the occupational British forces who were there trying to maintain peace between Palestine and the newly forming Israel.
“It’s just a terrible waste. It’s so ridiculous because whether they accept it or not, these three world religions represent the same God. Nothing would persuade me otherwise. But they want to make that God their own property. So they refuse to tolerate the fact that other people also worship that God, whether you call it God or whether you call it Allah, whether you call it Yahweh, it’s all the same God of the Abrahamic religions. That’s why it’s a wasted opportunity. It could be showing the rest of the world that this is a place where peace can survive a mutual benefit, and where people can come on their pilgrimages to visit the seat of those three religions. So definitely a wasted opportunity.”
At this point of the conversation, the mood lightens and we talk more about the aforementioned “Drink From the Same Well.” The 16-minute epic, Tull’s longest track in 50 years, was developed from a 20-year-old demo. Andrew Giddings, Tull’s keyboardist at the time, is on the session. Anderson had envisioned it as a potential collaboration with Hariprasad Chaurasia, an Indian music director and classical flautist — a master of the bansuri (an Indian bamboo flute). The version on the album includes Giddings and Anderson playing both concert and bamboo flutes. His own mastery of playing the flute remains untarnished.
He tells me the demo was much longer than the 16-minute keeper. It almost got lost in the shuffle of time and circumstance.
“It just ended up on the hard disk of an old computer that my son was about to trash. He was about to destroy it and smash up the hard disc. He found some audio files and said, ‘Does this mean anything to you? Is it something you might want to keep?’ And so he sent me a fader-up mix of the track and I immediately recognized it and was very impressed by something recorded 18 years before. It contained quite adventurous bamboo flute playing. I thought, ‘Wow, it’s a shame no one ever had a chance to hear this, and we never had a chance to play it live. So maybe I’ll write some lyrics and develop this into a finished piece of music,’ which is what I did.”
I assume Anderson has a vault filled with unreleased material, but he stresses that that isn’t the situation at all.
“I was amazed that these things existed,” he reveals, “for most records I’ve made, we’ve only recorded the required amount of material for them. There have been exceptions, like in 1981 and 82 when there was a lot of extra music recorded, and subsequently released on compilation albums and so on and so forth. But by and large, I only record what I need to fulfill the album because it involves rehearsing with the guys and a lot of work and effort. You don’t want to waste it on things that you don’t intend to use.
“I don’t have a lot of unreleased bits and pieces. I’ve been saying that for years and years and years and been proven wrong on many occasions because someone has found something. What’s this? So, it can happen, but I’m very confident the bottom drawer of analog audio has been well and truly plundered. In terms of more contemporary recording in the digital domain, it’s very easily identifiable because it sits in various music files. If there’s anything extra, I think I would know about it, let alone my son finding it on an old computer.”
Before we part ways, I take the time left to ask Anderson about Jethro Tull in general. I recently saw the film Becoming Led Zeppelin and it occurred to me that there’s never been a proper, official documentary made about the history of Jethro Tull (Fish ‘n Sheep & Rock ‘n Roll comes close). I would assume it’s something that’s been discussed, perhaps pitched to him. Once again, he’s ready with an answer.
“There was one made some years ago, which, for whatever reason, the person behind it, the producer and director of it, never signed a contract and did a runner with the Masters, didn’t pay his camera crew, put it out in some form, I think in the USA under the radar. He was a bad man, basically a crook because he ripped off a few people. He did a few documentaries of people around the same period of time, going back 15 years or so. I think I’ve seen it. On the whole, it was OK. But a number of people in Jethro Tull took part in the documentary and in good faith, they too should have been part of the financial deal where they would’ve been paid some money for taking part. The guy did a runner. He went off with the master tapes and was never seen again. We were trying to track him down, of course. He may have been in Spain. He may have been in the USA with his wife, his girlfriend, whatever she was. But he was never seen again. And it’s sad that was done back then.”
But what about making a new documentary?
“The idea of doing something now is really going over a lot of ground, bearing in mind some of the people who have been an important part of Jethro Tull either wouldn’t want to take part or can’t take part because they’re dead or not feeling very well. So, I think it would be quite difficult to do the kind of documentary that I think people would want to see and perhaps deserve to see because it wouldn’t feature everybody who I believe is very important to the history of the group. I know at least two or three of them, or three or four of them, just wouldn’t take part. They wouldn’t want to do it. They’ve been difficult enough to get them to offer a couple of lines for a re-released or compilation album. They just put it behind them and they don’t want to revisit any of that. So it wouldn’t be inclusive of all the important people or even some (who) were only in the band for a year or so. They deserve their place in the sun, too.”
We’ve covered a lot and my time is running out. Still, I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t ask Anderson about the Jethro Tull box sets of all their albums. Well, all up through 1982. Anderson assures me there’s more in the works.
“There are three targeted. The one that’s coming out shortly is the Living In The Past album from the 1972 compilation album with some live music as well. And some additional stuff with surround sound mixes, followed by Under Wraps, which is going to be re-energized. The primitive drum machine is being replaced. That will be next year. Crest Of A Knave is under discussion as well.
“That will continue on whether Steven Wilson will do it or whether it’ll be Jakko Jakszyk of King Crimson, who’s done remixes for us, and Bruce Soord, who has done remixes and surround sound mixes more recently. We have various people we can ask.”
The Jethro Tull box sets that feature 96/24 LPCM stereo and DTS and Dolby 5.1 surround mixes are an audiophile’s wet dream, expanding the spacial spectrum of the music to other dimensions. When I spoke with Anderson in 2006, he was adamantly opposed to surround sound. Even with the bulk of Tull’s albums subsequently available in the latest HD formats, he hasn’t changed his mind. He doesn’t even own a system to play it back.
“I don’t have a listening room that I would want to invest with the kind of technology and the cost of that technology just to do the audio proofreading as it were of an album because I don’t really listen to music a great deal. I stopped listening to contemporary music largely back in the mid 1970s. So I’m not a music fan as a listener. I do it for a living. To me, if you’re used to flying an F16 or F35, and the weekend comes around, you don’t want to take to the skies.
“It’s rather like that being a working musician, performing and recording, you’re on the front line of something. Simply listening to it doesn’t seem, for me, particularly exciting. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’ve heard surround sound when I’ve been working with surround sound mixing engineers. And going back to 1974, I mixed some albums in Quadraphonic, which was the precursor to the 5.1 surround we know today. I’ve been involved in it since 1974. It has its place, but it’s just not something that I particularly am encouraged to incorporate into my home. Somewhere in the house, I have a record turntable. I haven’t plugged that in for about 30 years.”
Before he runs off, I ask Anderson if Tull plans to visit the United States any time soon. Ever the British and European band, their current touring schedule for 2025 looks to be filled with dates only in Europe.
“I have no plans to visit North America,” he says before adding, “I don’t have any plans not to visit North America. This year it is very unlikely because we have a pretty full date sheet already.”
As for what happens after that is anyone’s guess. Over the course of his entire musical career with and without Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson has steadily made albums and toured behind them. Oftentimes, he’s already at work on a follow-up while promoting a new album. This time, however, he seems more inclined to slow down the pace.
“It would be foolish to suggest that something else was on the cards,” he admits. “I do have some time in the summer of this year, as I did last summer, since I’m doing very few concerts in this summer due to the uncertainties of heat. It’s a little dangerous for me at my age to be risking 35, 40 degrees (Celsius) on stage. I’m fairly selective about where I’m playing.”
After adhering to the album and tour cycle for so long, it’s understandable Anderson would want to take a break. But if there’s ever a stir in his ever-curious mind, he’s more than willing, as long as he is able, to take action.
“We’ll see if the Muse cares to visit,” he laughs. “Best to make an appointment in advance. But if she does turn up with some urgent suggestion, I will pay attention to it. And who knows, I might embark on something else. I think the feeling is when that time is right, you know the time is right and it’s best to crack on with it because I may not get a second chance at my age. I should be taking advantage of anything that’s a creative urge while I’m still capable of following up on it.”
