Ian Anderson

Did You Know?

• Anderson appeared on the cover of Time in 1973 for an article about new directions in early 1970s music.
• He was awarded the 'Prog God' award at the 2013 Progressive Music Awards.
• Anderson is a director of four companies: Jethro Tull Production Limited, Calliandra Productions Limited, Ian Anderson Limited, and the Ian Anderson Group of Companies Limited.

Career

While still a teenager, Anderson worked as a sales assistant at Lewis's department store in Blackpool and as a vendor on a news stand. In 1963, at age 15 or 16, he formed The Blades from school friends, a soul and blues band in which he sang and played guitar and harmonica; he had not yet taken up the flute. The group played its first show at the Holy Family Church Hall in North Shore. By late 1967, Anderson was still working a day job cleaning the Ritz Cinema in Luton, including the toilets, which he said took him half the day.

He took an old, chipped urinal from the cinema storeroom and kept it for a time after leaving the job, though it was not the urinal that was bolted to John Evan's Hammond organ on stage during early 1970s Tull performances. Anderson abandoned his ambition to play electric guitar, allegedly because he felt he would never be as good as Eric Clapton. He traded his electric guitar for a flute and, after some weeks of practice, found he could play it fairly well in a rock and blues style.

According to the sleeve notes for the first Tull album, This Was (1968), he had been playing the flute only a few months when the album was recorded. He continued to play acoustic guitar as a melodic and rhythmic instrument, and later added soprano saxophone, mandolin, keyboards and other instruments.

Musical collaborations and other work

Ian Anderson has been a busy collaborator over the years. He produced Steeleye Span's 1974 album Now We Are Six, and also produced and appeared on Maddy Prior's first solo record, Woman in the Wings, from 1978, with most of the instrumental work coming from Jethro Tull. In 1985, he guested on the Honeymoon Suite song "All Along You Knew" from their album The Big Prize, after the Canadian band had opened for Jethro Tull on tour the previous year. Also in 1984, Anderson joined Martin Barre, Dave Pegg, and Peter-John Vettese to record A Classic Case with the London Symphony Orchestra, a set of Jethro Tull tunes. He later hosted his own two-hour radio show, Under the Influence, on Planet Rock. In May 2010, he shared the stage with Joe Bonamassa at the Hammersmith Apollo to play the Jethro Tull track "A New Day Yesterday."

Anderson's flute work appears on Men Without Hats' "On Tuesday" from their 1987 album Pop Goes the World, and on Blackmore's Night's "Play, Minstrel, Play" from their 1997 debut Shadow of the Moon. He also played flute on Roy Harper's 1998 album The Dream Society, and has cited Harper as a major influence. He appears as a special guest on two Uriah Heep live albums from 2001, Acoustically Driven and Electrically Driven, performing the same two songs on both: "Circus" and "Blind Eye." On Fairport Convention's 2001 album XXXV, he plays flute on the track "Portmeirion," and has performed with the band at their Cropredy Festival multiple times since the mid-1980s, a period when their bassist Dave Pegg was also in Jethro Tull.

For the 2005 all-star tribute album Back Against the Wall, which covers Pink Floyd's The Wall in full, Anderson played flute and sang lead on "The Thin Ice." In April 2011, he performed a flute duet with astronaut Cady Coleman while she was aboard the International Space Station, marking the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first crewed spaceflight. He played flute on The Darkness's "Cannonball" from their 2012 album Hot Cakes, on Renaissance's "Cry to the World" from their 2013 album Grandine il vento, and on the title track of The Tea Party's 2014 album, "The Ocean at the End."

Family and personal life

Ian Anderson is the youngest of three brothers; his eldest brother, Robin, took on the role of administrator for Scottish Ballet in 1973. His first marriage, from 1970 to 1974, was to photographer Jennie Franks, who helped write the opening lines of the song "Aqualung." In 1976, he married Shona Learoyd, who Rolling Stone once called a beautiful, convent-educated daughter of a wealthy wool manufacturer. She had trained in ballet for a decade and was working as a press officer for Jethro Tull's label, Chrysalis Records, when they met; she later handled the band's on-stage special effects.

The couple spent many years living in a 16th-century redbrick farmhouse on the 500-acre Pophleys Estate in Radnage, England, and at Kilmarie House on their Strathaird Estate on the Isle of Skye, with a brief stay in Montreux, Switzerland. Today, they reside in Wiltshire, England, and own a second home near Montreux. They have two children: James Duncan Anderson, who is also a musician, and Gael, who works in film and is married to actor Andrew Lincoln, known for The Walking Dead.

Anderson survived deep vein thrombosis and has recorded public service announcements to spread awareness about the condition. His personal interests include Indian food, rescuing wild cats from harsh captivity, and collecting Leica cameras. He describes his religious outlook as somewhere between deist and pantheist. Politically, he opposes prejudice, xenophobia, and hard-right conservatism, but also criticizes "wokeness," calling it a trendy, overworked viewpoint that can stifle open dialogue.

A committed environmentalist, he believes in human-caused climate change and grows hardwood trees on his farm to offset his carbon footprint.

Solo discography

Anderson's solo discography includes Jethro Tull – The String Quartets (2017) with the Carducci String Quartet. He has appeared as a guest on numerous recordings. He plays flute on Roy Harper's "Home" from Flashes From The Archives Of Oblivion (1974), on Honeymoon Suite's "All Along You Knew" from The Big Prize (1986), and on Men Without Hats' "On Tuesday" from Pop Goes the World (1987). He appears on The Six and Violence's Lettuce Prey (1990) playing on "Bursting Bladder" and "Theological Guns".

He plays flute on Blackmore's Night's "Play Minstrel Play" from Shadow of the Moon (1997), on Roy Harper's "These Fifty Years" from The Dream Society (1998), and on Uriah Heep's "Circus" and "Blind Eye" from Acoustically Driven (2001). He plays flute on James Taylor Quartet's "Free" from Room at the Top (2002), on Magellan's "Family Jewels" from Hundred Year Flood (2002), and on Silverwood Quartet's "Bourrée" from The Classic Rock Album (2005). On Billy Sherwood's Back Against the Wall (2005), Anderson plays flute and sings lead vocals on "The Thin Ice" and plays flute on "Is There Anybody Out There?".

He plays flute on Toto's "Hooked" from Falling in Between (2006), and on various artists' Asia and Progressive Rock Friends (2008) he sings and plays flute on "The Thin Ice". He plays flute on Eric Brooke's "O.K.(Live)" from The Road to Here (2011), on Saori Jo's "Fairy World" from Home 2.17 AM (2012), on Unnur Birna's "Sunshine" (2013), on Anna Phoebe's "A Moment's Deception" from Between the Shadow and the Soul (2014), on Boris Grebenshchikov's "Любовь во время войны" from Salt (2014), on Renaissance's "Cry to the World" from Symphony of Light (2014), on Tiles' "Midwinter" from Pretending 2 Run (2016), on Helen Andrews' "Behind the Glass" from Circling Highs, Unravelling Lows (2016), on John Cooper Clarke & Hugh Cornwell's "MacArthur Park" from This Time It's Personal (2016), on Tim Bowness's "Distant Summers" from Lost in the Ghost Light (2017), on Tinkara's "Maldamore" from Cuori di ossigeno (2017), on Steeleye Span's "Old Matron" from Est'd 1969 (2019), and on Heather Findlay's "Winner" from Wild White Horses (2019).