EXCLUSIVE: Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson is a musical purist who hasn't listened to music on the radio since 1973
Legendary Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson waxed eloquent on his tastes in music, how he listens to music nowadays, and the exacting standards he adheres to when he does listen to music in an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW).
It's no wonder the man is such a celebrated musical icon — he is a true purist in every sense of the word! Part two of the Ian Anderson interview series continues below:
"I don't really listen to music on the radio. I listen to politics, current affairs, things to do with the world we live in, but I don't listen to music," said Anderson, when asked for his opinion on the current music climate.
"I haven't been listening much to music since 1973, when I kind of stopped listening to pop music and rock music on the radio. I heard enough. And I didn't really want to be influenced by other artists that were around at that time. I just thought, 'Nah, I think I'm going to live in a different world.'”
The Jethro Tull frontman elaborated, "So, if I listen to music, I usually listen to some classical music or occasionally some folk music, but it's music that I listen to in private. I don't listen to the radio, never listened to music on the radio."
He then clarified that he did still listen to some contemporary artists, however, "the music that I do hear is usually when somebody asks me to perform on one of their songs on a record or in concert. So that’s when I’ll have to really listen. Not just as a listener, but listen as someone who is going to contribute some music."
The singer went on to talk about how his creative process usually worked. "I have to try and get inside the skin, get inside the head of the person who's recorded that music in order to understand – 'What is the best contribution I can make?' It must be a positive addition to their music and not something that is not in keeping with the spirit of what their music is about. So then, I really have to listen, and that's different. It's not like listening recreationally, just hearing music playing in the background somewhere," he explained.
He also revealed that he was still, unsurprisingly, a bit of an old-school musical purist. "I mean, if I'm sitting in a car, I really don't want to have music on in the background. It's polluted by the ambient noise of car tires, wind, engine sounds, and so on. It's no longer music then, it’s music with a lot of audio interference, and I think a lot of people do hear music that way, but they're not really listening to the music, they're just hearing it along with a whole bunch of other conflicting sounds that are in the ambient orbit of the medium they’re listening to," said Anderson, who clearly has earned the right to have strong feelings on the subject.
He also expressed his disdain for today's modern earphone technology. "I've listened to music on one of those earphone devices and if you’re in a car or at a train station or in an airplane... I mean, you're hearing this rumbling and other noises around you. The music is polluted. It is not pure music. So, when I listen to music, I want to listen to it undisturbed by any other audio influence. So I either wear specially designed tight-fit earphone monitors, or I listen in a room that is acoustically dampened with no other conflicting sounds to interfere with my experience," concluded the musical legend.
He also explained to MEAWW that he has rather exacting musical boundaries and limitations nowadays. "Almost every day, I'm spending about three hours of my life working in music. You know, rehearsing, doing soundchecks, performing in concerts. I think three hours of music is as much as a human being can take, pretty much. Any more than that would just be an overload," he admitted.
Anderson did, however, have a soft spot for some still-tolerable noises. "For the rest of the day, the only sounds I want to hear are the sounds of the birds singing, or the rain against the window, or my wife screaming at me from the kitchen to come and have my dinner. That's about it for me!" the frontman signed off with a jovial chuckle.
Ian Anderson will be back on the road in 2020 for two major tours, Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull and Jethro Tull: The Prog Years, and has more live shows in the pipeline.