My admiration for all things Jethro Tull is well known. There is a magical air about Ian Anderson and even in these older days his live shows are incredibly engaging. I would have love to have seen him as that jaunty piper ‘back in the day’ but I was not disappointed when I saw him a few years back- he still got it.
He took to Pollstar to discuss the new album another epic event (does this guy ever just throw down some tunes and walk away?) The new release Homo Eraticus is ‘written’ by fictional character Gerald Bostock, the kid from Thick As A Brick. If you’re not a huge fan of Tull… you have no idea what that means. The best part is- you dont have to know the back story to appreciate the release. Heres his talk with Pollstar.com
istening to the new album, it’s rather Joycian and quite daunting. What’s the feedback been like?
If you’re going to do stuff that is sometimes quite heavy and has serious imagery attached to it and conceptually is a bit out of the comfort zone for a lot of people, whether it’s in Latin or in English … you have to make it entertaining. You’ve got to draw people to it. …
If you’re going to go see a new movie, it’s got to be entertaining. People rarely go to see a movie they’ve seen before. They’ll possibly watch it if it happens to be on television … but generally speaking you don’t get out your house, drive your car, park it and pay the money to see something you’ve seen before.
But in rock music, that rule doesn’t seem to apply. If the Rolling Stones came out with a new album and played it in its entirety on stage, it would be a very prolonged pee break for most of the audience. People don’t want a new album from the Rolling Stones; they want a new old album. They want a clone of Exile On Main Street or something. Frankly, you can’t do that. It’s 30 years too late.
So you’ve got to make it seem like it’s a new movie. That’s what my job is. By making it entertaining theatrically and visually, hopefully I can keep people’s attention for an hour then, after a 20 minute break, play an hour and 15 minutes of the best of Jethro Tull. It may seem like an award for their patience but, in its own right, it’s a lot of fun for me to do. I enjoy the second half of the show just as much as the first. In fact I might enjoy the second half more because it’s easier to play (laughs). There’s much less concentration. There’s not as many lyrics to remember, and the flute playing is easier. I can relax a bit more knowing that in an hour and 20 minutes I’ll be back in my dressing room and … enjoying an ice-cold beer.
There are a lot of lyrics in Homo Erraticus. I would assume that even though you’re familiar with them, it would be difficult for you to keep them all straight!
It’s easy to get tongue-tied. There are a lot of words and syllables and pronunciations. And diction is important. I think it’s true that I will stumble over something every night. Hopefully, the audience won’t know. It’s not so much forgetting a line of lyrics. It’s more stumbling over words because they are fast and furious in places, and you’ve got to make them short and sharp. And you’ve got to enunciate them clearly [so] they can be actually be understood, if the acoustics of the venue permit. It’s quite a challenge to do, but that’s what life is about for me. It’s certainly, at this stage of the game, more important for me to rise to the challenge than settle into the comfort zone and wrap everybody into my cozy, blue comfort blanket that might serve the purpose but wouldn’t achieve anything hugely rewarding for me.
