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LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS
25 June 1971
JETHRO TULL'S MADMAN PHILOSOPHER
An interview with Ian Anderson
Jethro Tull are crazy. Is crazy? Their concert last Friday night at the fabulous Fortress culminated in a free-for-all fruit fight through the dressing rooms and backstage corridors. Except for the music, it was a better show than what had been seen on stage a half-hour earlier.
Musically, the group is tighter than ever. The addition of new drummer Barrie Barlow (leaving Ian Anderson the only remaining original member of the group) seems to have given the quintet a much-needed rhythmic lift. During the opening song, 'My God', when the band come in during Ian's acoustic solo, you get the distinct feeling that Jethro Tull has finally become a group instead of Ian Anderson and some backup musicians.
But Jethro Tull is still a very theatrical group, and the star of the show is still Ian Anderson. The mad, tragi-comic fool that he has created for his stage performances has almost become a burden to the music rather than an aid to its enjoyment. And the lunacy, apparently encouraged by audience response, has now spread to the rest of the group — particularly the already partially demented John Evan (many of you will remember the John Evan duck saga of last winter, but how many know about his pet (stuffed) monkey named Hemmeroid?). If Ian feels all the theatrics are necessary, he is setting himself up for a fall. It is simply not necessary to push an audience that hard into accepting your music.
In brief, the Jethro Tull concert was excellent to a fault. There was just a bit too much of everything. The instrumental solos were all just a few minutes too long — particularly Ian's flute barrage during 'My God'. After all of the tricks he pulled out for the opening number, there was virtually nothing new for him to do with his flute for the rest of the set. The show became a series of climaxes and deficient anticlimaxes, the overall excellent quality of the music sustained the evening. It would seem to me that, with Ian's flare for theatricality, he could find a better, more exciting way to pace his performance. He certainly has the material, talent and personnel to do it with.
During my interview with Ian immediately following the June 10 Denver incident (see page 43 of last week's Freep), we spoke about theatricality and music, among other things. We pick up the conversation exactly where we left it last week.
* * *
You've been know to speak out against raucous audiences before in a concert situation.
"I won't stand for people being rude or impolite to me personally when I'm on a stage, just in the same way I won't stand for somebody who's rude to me in the street. That's just the sort of indignity of being slandered, as it were. Very often you get a handful of people right at the front, and they're making a hell of a row, and you're in the middle of trying to play something very quiet, and it totally obliterates any of the sound that you can hear yourself. All you can hear is the noise of people, and they're totally absorbed in their own loud discussion. If that occurs, I stop in the middle of the song and get very angry and walk over to them and threaten them. I've done that in extreme anger.
"Or if somebody's knicked [sic] my flute, which has happened a couple of times; somebody's made off with it from the front of the stage. In that situation, if I caught the guy, I would physically attack him; 'cause that's not souvenir hunting. That's just plain stealing. If they were to steal it at the end of the show, I could understand that; they then realize I don't need it anymore. But to pick it up in the middle of a song, they know that without that instrument I'm done for the rest of the show. That's like stealing somebody's air supply when they're under the water, really. That's how it feels.
"Then you have the problem of the crowd coming down to the front of the stage. In that case you sort of have to apply simple logic to the crowd tactics of public speaking. Logic doesn't always win; sometimes you have to use a bit of power to shout people down — literally. But those are just the everyday games you play — hopefully toward presenting your music, which is fundamentally the most important thing. Anything that interferes with that, you obviously try to control. Even if it involves theatre — for want of a better word. One hopes that the end justifies the means of doing it, which is sort of unpleasant at the time.
"A situation like tonight, where kids in the audience are being systematically beaten over the head and carried out to waiting prison vans, this is obviously not affecting me personally — only as much as I see it happening and feel a bit upset."
Tonight was bad, and you've played other similar situations. Other places are being closed down. It's almost impossible to have a festival anymore. What's going to happen when people like you have no place left to play? And I think that could become a reality.
"Well, that particular reality is I think a long way off. I do believe it will be very difficult to ban pop or rock concerts in theatres or halls where they have a formal atmosphere."
It's been done.
"Well, it has been done, but this is because audiences are still in the throes of the open air thing, of the freedom of moving around and leaping about and so on.
"But my own idea of playing to an audience is in a formal atmosphere. In most ways, I'm probably a very formal person; when it comes to writing and performing songs, everything is done with a certain amount of understanding and analysis of the situation. I try to do things in a way that bears up to my powers of objectivity — of making things work for the end result. Whatever high aims you have for art or music, that is what you're going for; and everything else is towards that end."
Are you saying indirectly that all of your performances, the gymnastics and theatrics, are planned?
"No, it's not planned. But I understand why I do it and to what extent it's necessary. I don't do it if I don't have to. This is the point, the very reason I'm adamant about it not being an act. And that is that I do understand why I do it when I do it. I understand what use it is — when it is helpful to the music. And I also understand when I'm doing it unnecessarily, perhaps just to be theatrical or show off or to appear greater in stature as a performer or something. Sometimes I do that when it's necessary to make an impression; sometimes by making that impression, your music can then get greater acceptance. It is occasionally the case that that happens, but more often than not it is just truthfully a belief on my part that what I am doing physically is something that helps me to express the music that I'm playing. With me, the more I'm physically involved, the more I can become musically involved."
But what you're saying is as much of a reflection on the audience as it is on you, because if it takes that theatricality to get an audience to listen to the music some communication is missing.
"I'm not trying to be hypocritical about what I'm saying, but there are occasionally times when I do use theatrics for what they are — as a means of getting attention for something. But I only do it then when it's a means of getting attention for the music — for the effect of the music. Most of the time it isn't a theatrical thing; I have to be honestly involved in the music to be able to do that at all. Otherwise I'm only doing myself harm, because then I'm pretending something I'm not feeling; and to do that just makes you feel bad afterwards. I have done it occasionally when everything's wrong, but those gigs are the ones you never forget. They're the ones that really leave nasty tastes in your mouth for a long, long time. You just went on, and the whole thing was a lie; that's all it amounts to. But you had to go on."
Do you think the audiences understand your music?
"Well, I think they do; but I'm sure they don't understand it in the way I do. I say this because I know that the rest of the group are not going to understand the same thing as me about a piece of music that I write. We don't all see things in exactly the same way, and I know that audiences, apart from having musical training, must invariably see it again in a different way. And the way that they see it, the nearest I can get to that is by trying to look at the way that I listen to other people's music.
"I'm not very often moved to sort of leap around when I listen to music. I generally tend to actually sit down and listen to it. But I think I can still feel what it is that moves an audience — the basic sort of unconscious effects of certain rhythms, certain melodies, certain harmonies — and I'm aware of that in the songs that I write. So I can understand that. But at the same time, I know that there's a whole wealth of greater and deeper experiences to be gained from listening and trying to extend yourself beyond the basic sort of just letting it happen to you. And to do this, you have to become something of a musician. And really part of my aim of playing to people is to get them to play music themselves.
"Just before I left England, I was on a television program there, and there was this Japanese fellow called [Shinichi] Suzuki who has put forward a philosophy which struck me as interesting, because it was something I've been harping on about for quite awhile. He believes that most people are born with an intuitive sense of musical appreciation and ability, but in the formative years this tends to be obliterated through embarrassment and self-consciousness or people telling you you don't sing well. I do know this for a fact. I know that I did this at school. When I used to sing, I used to sing very badly, because I didn't want to be pushed into a choir — the embarrassment of having to stand in front of an audience, and so on. And that happens to most people; they have a similar kind of experience that puts them off.
"The point is that in most people there lies this dormant opening for deeper musical involvement. And it's never allowed to be awakened for one reason or another. It's sad. If people could realize that they like listening to music — that they like listening to rock groups — they could be doing it themselves after two or three years or the time they would spend at university. They could be rock stars after that time.
"You take Jeffrey. He's only been playing with the group about five months. After about a month, he was playing on the road with us and he made a record with us, and before that he couldn't play a note. He's just an average guy with an average musical ability; and yet with a bit of encouragement and a bit of application on his part having to face up to the big responsibility of having to go on stage and not letting them down, he had to force himself to play. And his being able to do that is something other people should take heart from."
Did you talk Jeffrey into joining the group?
"Not really. I just asked him if he was interested, and he said yes, and we started to work things out."
With all the personnel changes that the group has been through, it's evolving to the big band that you used to play in with John Evan. I'm sure it's not a planned move —
"Yeah; it's a bit difficult, because to a lot of people it must seem planned. The point is that when the other members of the group left for the reasons they did and because I haven't made very many friends of musicians because I don't know very many people in the music business, the only people I could turn to were the people that I've played with before. So those were the people I asked — the people who were the obvious choice, really.
"It's rather sad, because I know it does seem a bit planned — like it's a question of having achieved some success and then having to get rid of the guys that are with you and then get back the people whom you're friends with. But it really wasn't like that; it was a question of necessity."
Why don't you have any friends in the business?
"I don't know. I think that perhaps with musicians — or whatever branch of creative sports you indulge in — they are mostly the kind of people whose emotions tend to be close to the surface. Their whole sort of drive is something which is very easily upset. To get on well with somebody, he would have to be doing the same kind of thing as you. I can talk more easily to people in the street than I can to other musicians, because I'm a bit suspicious of them and why they're doing what they're doing."
Is it possible that you're also suspicious of yourself?
"Oh, certainly. That's a full-time occupation. But it's one of the best ones; it really is. To be suspicious of every motive you have. To figure it out and figure out why it is. To decide whether it's good or bad in terms of your scale of absolute right and wrong, goodness and badness. And putting things into these categories is sort of a mental judgement on everything you try to do, is really a very good thing. It's a good thing if you can balance it with a sheer kind of emotional expression which you obviously have to employ in playing music.
"I don't want to make it sound too calculated, because it isn't. It's just a balance between these two things, the formal, clinical way of putting things together and looking at them, and also the sheer sort of jumping into them head-first as a sort of emotional expression. The balance of those two things is what makes the music, really. And neither of those two things is worth anything without the other. The point where they balance is where it's working out front as music."
But the thought that is crossing my mind is that Aqualung, as a suite or whatever, seems more calculated.
"But this is probably because of the desire on the part of our record company and management to promote the album as being something bigger and better than the things before. The result of this has been to call it a 'concept' album, and it really isn't."
Is it just coincidental that the songs are related?
"It's coincidental in as much as, over a period of a year, several songs that I wrote happened to be similar in feeling or similar in the kind of thing they were getting at. But the point is that I put several songs on the album that had nothing to do with the God concept or the God-within-Man concept. I mean, you can fabricate concepts about it, and this is okay. It's probably the job of the critic to do that. But from my point of view, it wasn't nearly the concept album that people imagine it to be. Creating a concept is an afterwards thing; it didn't all come from one point."
Did you go through some religious experience that gave birth to those songs?
"Not really. Most of the things the songs are about are things that have been on my mind since the first time I went to Sunday School, and I was about eight. But being basically a cautious fellow, I stayed well clear of the involvement of making generalized statements about things — even though they're only a reflection of personal feelings — until a time came when I thought I could do those feelings justice in terms of song.
"I think I know enough to talk authoritatively on certain aspects of religion. I mean, I think I know enough to talk openly without being flattened. But the point is, to make a record you can't do that. You've got to generalize; you've got to make it a purely personal thing; you've got to say things simply in songs of four or five minutes length. And when you're doing this, you're actually leaving out a whole lot of important things which you would really like to say."
When you're writing like that, are you conscious of the entertainment value of the material?
"Not really, no. I'm only conscious of it in as much as it's got to entertain me.
"This is the thing about writing music that has commercial value — or that appeals to other people. It's really just a question of luck. I happen to like, broadly speaking, the same things that they do — albeit for different reasons when you go into it deeply. But I do actually like the same kind of music that most of those kids that were there tonight like. So obviously something that I do, if it appeals to me, it's a fair likelihood that it's going to appeal to them, too. Right now it's fairly easy going: I don't have to go out of my way to make things acceptable to other people. I'm just doing things that I find acceptable and being constantly amazed that other people like it as well.
"I obviously always think that I like something, but perhaps it's not really what other people like. Or perhaps they only like it because it's Jethro Tull. We gain more acceptance simply because we already have this authoritative standpoint as far as making music is concerned. You've already got it made, and you can sell your wares more easily in terms of the business sense of things. But so far, in the final analysis, I think people actually do like the material."
What kind of material can we expect in your next album?
"In actual fact, the next album is not a proper album: it's what I call a 'Record Company Album'. It'll be a double album consisting of a lot of unreleased material, selected album tracks from all the albums we've made, and also some live things and probably some new things as well. It will also contain photographs from the whole three-and-a-half-year period we've been together and a fairly detailed biography of the various members of the group including the true story of why Mick Abrahams left or was sacked. That'll be out in the autumn.
"The next sort of new album proper, the next really new thing is something which I've only just started to write. I have it fairly well set in my mind that I'd like to compose a piece of music — I'd like to make a twenty-minute composition. The problem with doing this is that it mustn't come out as being too lavish and pretentious in lyrical content or musically. It's got to be entertaining to me, first of all; and I can't take things like the Moody Blues or the other so-called musical concept albums. They really rather bore me. I mean, they're nice; but they tend to become Muzak rather than being able to involve me all the way through. But it will be a thematic album or half-album, but by taking a musical theme and using it to its extremes in different levels of intensity and different levels of instrumentation."
Is Jenny going to be doing any more writing with you?
"I don't know. That was just a one-shot thing. It's one of those things that works rather well if it clicks. It's rather like making love, I suppose. Writing songs with somebody else has to be a spontaneous thing. I attempted to write with Mick Abrahams, but I couldn't do it at all. I can do it to some extent with John, as far as composing little bits of music. I might write again with jenny, but it'll be when it happens in a natural, evolved way. I'm really not into a sort of Paul-and-Linda or John-and-Yoko kind of stunt, because that's really pushing it."
What has been your musical background and influence?
"Well, it's really vague, because I've never had any formal musical training, nor have I ever been interested, to the exclusion of other forms of music, in any one thing.
"Listening to big band jazz when I was a kid was the first kind of contact with music that I ever had. A little later on, I was aware of the early rock thing in England — second-hand Presley imitators and that sort of thing. And then at the age of fifteen, the Beatles and Rolling Stones and the sociological aspects of music. At that point, one did it because one wanted to be like the Beatles and Stones rather than wanting to make music.
"A couple of English papers have crudely put down as my reasons for making music that I once said that I wanted to be a musician because I'd be in more of a position to chat up young ladies. Which was part of it — it was the glamour thing — it was only the beginning. As soon as I actually got involved in it, I discovered that it was like math or chemistry; and the chemistry becomes a sort of mental chemistry. And you get involved with ideas and abstract things that you have to learn to put into musical notes which you can feel. At that point you start to forget about what it means to be a musician; you just get on with the job of being one."
Which means you take your music a lot more seriously than most.
"Well, yes. But in taking it seriously, I think it's very important to be able to stand back from time to time and see it from the other point of view as being very inconsequential, very much a joke. Which is why on stage some of the gestures, some of the things I do are really sort of me laughing at myself — really being a caricature of myself and what I'm supposed to be in the eyes of the people out there. I feel it's really necessary to go that far to be really honest about the rest of it and to be really understanding about what its place is. You have to stand outside and really make a joke of it all.
"Although I do believe in the possibility or really being an artist one day, I think it's very dangerous in this point in time to say rock music is art — or is culture. I think you've got to start off from the opposite end of the scale. If it is art, it'll stand for that in the years to come. But right now you mustn't start making the assumption that it already is something of such a high status. I don't think that's the way to get at it. Right now you must sort of laugh at it and consider it something like third-class entertainment. If it becomes art, it will be anyway. You don't have to make it; it's going to be that, if it is. Maybe we won't know about it, but perhaps our children will."
Don't you view yourself as an artist, though?
"Not really. I'm just an art student. That's really how I think about it. It's not really working towards an end, but just getting on with being a musician and trying to learn and improve. And trying to satisfy your ego is a large part of it, as well. You've got to come to grips with it and make your ego work for you and not get disillusioned about why you're doing what you're doing. I mean, I know how much of it is being able to get on a stage and show off to people. Part of it is that. But that part of it I understand; I can keep it in its place."
Have you ever wanted to stop doing it?
"Sometimes, yeah. But that's a good thing, as well. When you get in that mood, after a few hours you start thinking about why you wanted to stop. And you start working it all out and reevaluating the whole thing. And hopefully at the end of that time, you've regained even more enthusiasm than you had before. You can turn the depression of not enjoying something to your advantage by making it become a kind of constructive, analytical thing. I go through that quite often, I suppose."
Have you set any goals for yourself?
"Only sort of personal ones. Probably first and foremost is just carrying on; I'd hate to stop now, because I think there's a lot to be done — a lot that I would like to do.
"Very often you get sidetracked by success — 'success' meaning success in the way audiences would tend to measure it — what you must be and what you must want out of it all. It has nothing to do with how many encores you get — only the go part of it; and that's something you forget as soon as you get off stage, because you're just Joe Bloke again who wears a guitar for an hour and a half. It has very little to do with that or how famous you are or how much money you have or how often you get recognized in the street. Those are things which are just more of a problem than anything else — and also very embarrassing sometimes.
"Mostly it has to do with the kind of success you learn to equate with your own particular standards of what you're doing and what it's worth, how far you can go, what you ought to be going towards. And I think it's the individual's right to ascertain exactly what these things mean to him. And success is when you're still climbing. Success isn't when you get there, 'cause you shouldn't ever get there.
"It sounds a bit trite to say it, but I don't feel a great deal different now to how I felt a couple of years back. I really don't. It's just like walking up stairs, really. You stop for breath every now and then and have a look to see how far you've come; but you can't see the bottom anymore, 'cause you've come quite a long way. And the top is even further away, so you just keep on plodding. It's the act of just going that is more important than getting there. If you get there — Well, I can't understand what it would be like to get there. It's just going — moving is the most important thing.
"I feel rather the same thing about the idea of God being a personal search. And to be looking for it is far better than ever getting there; because if you do get there, then ten-to-one you're not there at all. That's the basic thing I feel about people who go to church. When I see kids of eight or nine at church, I know for sure they don't know why they're there. When I see people of my age at church, I have grave doubts about their ability to assess the real value of being there. When I see people of forty or fifty, I might allow them a little bit more respect; but I still think, broadly speaking, they're either geniuses or fools.
"Again, the quest — going there — is the all-important thing. I almost think we shouldn't ever get there. I don't think it's important to get there. It's more important to be questioning and evaluating everything you stand for and everything other people stand for. I mean, I'm only twenty-three, and I don't know a quarter of the answers. It's trying to find out that makes you a spiritual kind of person as opposed to a guy who just sits down and dwells on material things. It's all-important to be always carrying on — and always changing your mind. I mean, be a Jew one day and a Roman Catholic the next, but don't ever get bogged down before you're a hundred and twenty-five.
"And music is the same sort of thing. It's an art. And I think that God and art must be either interchangeable or the same thing, or really heavenly twins. They're two intangible things to which we can apply the process of going there. The all-important thing is to have been going all through your life. You might die tomorrow — I might die tomorrow in a plane crash — but I'll be as good tomorrow as I will be thirty years from now, because I'll be going at the same rate as when I'm thirty years older. I mean, I'm going now at the same rate as someone who's fifty years older with a lot more conviction. I may not be doing it quite whole-heartedly, but I'm plodding up those stairs at a fair rate all the time.
"And that has to be the all-important thing, because I may buy it tomorrow in the airplane. I may do that. I suppose because I travel a lot and I'm in a little bit more of a risky position than other people healthwise. I have thought about what would happen. What does dying mean? At least a couple of songs in the last album are actually about dying. It's something that I'm not actually preoccupied with, but it's something that does go through my mind a lot. Just putting that into terms of what does it mean in terms of life, I suppose.
"Someone once said, 'If you're living, then you must also be dying.' But you're still only on the way somewhere."
CHIS VAN NESS