Ian Anderson Interview 

Ian Anderson is the leader and founding member of the British Rock band, Jethro Tull. Often known as the man who introduced the flute to rock, Ian has sold over 60 million albums and enjoyed a long career traveling the world with Jethro Tull and more recently under his own name. A prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, we spoke to Ian about the tools of his trade, touring and his plans for 2015.

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Super Strings: Ian, let’s talk about Acoustic Guitar Strings.

Ian Anderson: Well, I suppose over the years, depending on the instruments that I’m playing, I have used a number of different manufacturers of strings. I used to use a model of a guitar from 1972 onwards called the 'Martin O-16 New Yorker' which was a small bodied single O-size Martin, a latter version of the Parlour Guitars of the 1920’s and 30’s. It was assumed that this would be the folk guitar of the 60’s and 70’s and became a not terribly popular basic model of Martin which performed best with silk and steel strings from the point of view of intonation. It didn’t like contemporary steel strings because the bridge and saddle were positioned really more for a nylon string kind of guitar.

SS: What gauge silk and steel were you using?

IA: From memory they probably would have been about a 10-52, something like that. Unfortunately it was necessary to change them almost every night, they just wouldn’t last the course. I mean they would be soaked with sweat and therefore completely dead the next day or at least the G string to low E string were completely unplayable by at most two nights.

I was often traveling with two or three guitars with different tunings so I wasted so many hours of my life just changing guitar strings which kind of prompted me, in the latter part of the 70’s, to have my single ‘O’ Martin guitars slightly rebuilt. I sent three of them off to Martin to be reconfigured to have slightly shallower necks with a truss rod and a repositioned, more angled bridge which allowed me to use contemporary strings. I then used Labella Strings for probably ten years which most often would be in the 10-52 or 11-53 gauge, that sort of range of strings. But after a while D’addario had got friendly with me and suggested using a range of strings which were supposedly coated to last longer. I had tried, with a very small bodied travel guitar, using Pico strings which were coated and kind of ok, but when I started playing guitars of my own design, the kind of ¾ size parlour guitar that I play today which were made by Andrew Manson, and being slightly shorter scale those require a slightly heavier gauge string: 12-53, I use the coated variety.

SS: Would that be the Phosphor Bronze EXP16 set?

IA: Mostly the phosphor bronze, I have tried other varieties but that probably works out best. It has a slightly warmer sound to it and they last pretty well. Sometimes I get through an entire tour without changing my strings if I’m not doing an awful lot of acoustic guitar songs in the show and if I’m in cooler, air conditioned climates. But if I’m playing a bunch of outdoor dates in the summer I might get through 4 or 5 shows. If I’m on an air conditioned theatre tour I might get through 10-15 shows without changing my strings so things have improved hugely in that world but also bearing in mind that I probably don’t play more than 3 or 4 songs using the acoustic guitar in the current set. If I’m out on a tour where I’m playing a lot of acoustic guitar then it all has a direct bearing on how many hours per week I’m putting my sweaty digits on the guitar. But I’m a feverish hand washer! I learnt a long time ago that neither guitar strings nor flutes appreciate chip butty fingers and I think the basic premise is; keep your hands clean for a lot of different reasons apart from personal hygiene, you don’t know who or what you’re going to touch and your instruments are probably your most precious appendage in that regard. So I tend to keep clean fingers. I wash my hands immediately before I go on stage, I wash my hands in the intermission, I wash my hands again when I come off stage because I have to pack up and clean my instruments, and flutes, being very precision built little wonders of engineering, you really do want to keep them free of greasy sweaty fingers so they require a lot of cleaning. Guitars are relatively forgiving but giving your strings a wipe after the show is probably a good idea.

SS: From the early 90’s your guitar sound changed. Was that because you stopped using the Martin, I think you were using Guild Guitars for a while?

IA: Well, a little while but it was the advent of more practical transducer under-saddle pickups of that era. So from the earliest days of Barcus Berry stick-on pickups in mid 70’s, that was…..you know….. it was better than nothing at all. It was better than sticking a microphone in front which was pretty inaudible most of the time if you were playing in a rock band. Then the Barcus Berry stick-on versions were ok, they were a transition to the under-saddle pickup which of course was a more efficient design but produced that rather dead, kind of rubber band sort of sound that didn’t have life to it. You could make it sound better with a considerable amount of acoustic shaping from devices like the early zoom preamps which I started using right from the beginning of that company’s advent into that area. In fact to this day I still use a long since discontinued model of zoom preamp. I’ve scoured ebay for the last surviving versions of it but I tend to use that for my acoustic guitar which offers some settings that give you something a little bit more like an acoustic sound. I switched from using under-saddle transducers, mostly I was using Fishman for 20 odd years, but these days I tend to use a magnetic pickup on my small bodied acoustic guitars which has that sort of quality of sound that does require some acoustic shaping from some more sophisticated form of preamp. It’s not just about EQ, it’s also about the gadgetry that gives it a kind of space sense that tries to recreate the sound of a microphone placed two or three feet away from the guitar. So you’ve got to use all the tricks in the book to get something that sounds right and people do often comment that I play these rather small girly acoustic guitars that no self respecting country and western singer would go near let alone people like Greg Lake who have these huge big guitars round their necks. But I find that it gives me a big sound with very little feedback problems, even when I used to use transducer pickups because you just simply don’t have those resonate frequencies built into the body of the guitar by virtue of construction. So I’ve always got a pretty loud, clear guitar sound. I suppose for the last 20 years I’ve tended to use Fishman pickups and D'addario strings who are obviously two companies that are very helpful, cutting edge, who listen to what their customers say and I think are always out there trying to improve the experience both for the performer and perhaps more importantly for the audience too who after all these years usually get to hear the acoustic guitar in a band whereas for so many years in the 60’s and 70’s they could see people feverishly strumming and not actually hear what they were playing.

SS: And what Capo do you use?

IA: I used to use those kind of elasticated awful things back in the 70's but since the advent of the Shubb Capo, the sort of levered capo of today, that’s the one that I tended to use. I periodically try something else on the market that looks like it might work but I still tend to use that initial design of Shubb capo with a lever which allows you reasonably quickly, depending on your guitar, to get a comfortable balance of tension to stop any string buzz. But at the same time you don't want to exaggerate the tension apart from the fact that you’re likely to cut deeper grooves into the rubber part surround that sits over the bar. The other issue really is if you’re changing tunings you don’t want to have too much pressure on because you’ll find that even the best made guitar, even a zero fret guitar, will still end up getting sharper pitches with your capo than you will with open strings. I usually tune with my capo around the third fret, I get that in tune and then carefully change the tension a little bit to the 1st or 2nd fret or the 5th fret or wherever I might be playing on the guitar to try to introduce sharp and flat elements into the tuning. It’s like any instrument, it’s a compromise. No musical instrument other than the mathematical certainty of the hammond organ or a contemporary synthesizer is going to be perfect tuning. With a flute or guitar you are forced into a degree of compromise. Therein lies the expertise of knowing your individual instrument because they all behave a little differently from each other and those superheroes of the guitar and rock band world who go on tour with 10 guitars and have their personal roadie tune their guitars, I’m afraid I yawn with boredom and disbelief that he should allow somebody else to touch his personal side arm. If I was a policeman or in the military I wouldn’t let anyone else clean my gun and load it for me if my life depends upon it and so it does with my flutes and guitar.

SS: I always imagined you’d have somebody to change your strings, Ian?

IA: Ah not me, no no, that’s the other guy. No I don’t have anybody touch my instruments other than they are allowed, in the case of the guitar, to carry it onto the stage for practical reasons in its stand and don’t touch the strings! It’s a bit like my kitten, when he gets out the cat litter tray I don’t particularly want him to put his paws in my mouth and I don’t particularly want one of my road crew to be touching the instrument which I have to put my own hands on. Or in the case of the flute, I get fairly intimate with so when it comes to that sort of stuff no, I’m absolutely clean fix and maintain my instruments myself. I really, really wouldn’t let somebody else do it, not because they might learn to do a good job but none the less I don’t think you can expect people to be responsible for something that is so much a personal issue where each instrument is a little bit different. So just tuning because you have an electronic tuner and tuning everything that way will not necessarily result in an in-tune instrument throughout the range of the instrument. On a guitar you’re probably going to have to reduce the tension of the B string by two or three cents in order for it to be in tune throughout the range. Quite often the lowest E string on the guitar will also resonate sharper. The harder you whack it the sharper it goes and the same thing with the flute. If you blow harder the sharper it is so you’ve got to be in control of playing your instrument. But you also have to remember that there are certain tuning compromises that you have to make in order to allow for the fact that under duress you will play it a slightly more aggressive way perhaps. I have to go on stage with my flutes slightly under tuned in order to allow for the fact that I’m probably, without wishing to, going to be over blowing at a concert where the acoustics are different, I’m going to be pumping a little bit more into it than I ought to. And certainly with the guitar, if you can’t really hear what you’re playing, you whack it hard instinctively, but in so doing you will almost certainly send notes sharp, particularly in the lower strings.

SS: When travelling on airlines do your instruments go in the hold or with you?

IA: Mine all travel in the hold, since the advent in the music industry of a range of polypropylene cases made in Italy by Peli Case and more recently by Storm. The two now are combined. They are the cases of choice for BBC cameramen and self respecting musicians who want a heavy duty case that they can put electronics, or in my case guitars, into. The Storm and Peli Cases were introduced some years ago but they did a double rifle case which just happened to fit my scaled down acoustic guitars. So for many years my guitar has traveled in a storm double rifle case which of course occasionally gets noticed in countries where game shooting is prevalent like in the USA or in parts of Europe where customs officials will say “what you got in there?” and I say “well that’s my guitar and my spare flute and some bits of electronics”. They say “got a gun?” and I say “No, no, but well spotted, it is indeed a double rifle case that I got online but it just happens to fit my guitar like a glove”.

SS: At this stage in your career, where do you get the energy to keep going and go out on tour as long as you do? How do you keep fit?

IA: Well I try and rest up a bit between touring engagements. I don’t spend my time competing in half marathons or going down to the gym but if I am preparing for a tour I do have to make sure physically I get into shape. This time of the year is always a bit of a dead spot because between the days before Christmas and February there is going to be a period of 4 to 6 weeks when I just don’t actually play a concert and that’s something you’ve got to be prepared to work up to. I’m about ten days away from playing a concert in Istanbul and so for the next ten days I’ll progressively increase the amount of time I do some rehearsal, not just from the point of view of memorising notes and arrangements but just physically getting back into it and trying to do a bit more aggressive walking and breathing exercises and things that will get me into shape for a show. But once you’re on tour, once you’re in the swing of it playing on average 2 or 3 shows a week, sometimes 5 or 6 shows a week, then it takes care of itself because your best preparation is the 3 hours that you spend on stage everyday. One hour at sound check and two hours of show time. So it's like going out to do aerobics at the gym for 3 hours a day which I guess not too many people do. It’s what I do because that’s what I do for a living. Once I’m on tour it’s self sustaining and you stay at a level of fitness. Maybe toward the end of the year you might be flagging a bit, it’s because of repetition and the fact that you perhaps don’t quite have the adrenalin rush towards the end of the year. The final few concerts you’re actually welcoming the break. When I was in Australia and New Zealand just before Christmas I was having to push myself a bit harder than I would normally do because it was the final two weeks of a year of touring, but you don’t want to have to slow down just before the finishing line, not an option, you’ve got to keep peddling right through.

SS: I’m 28 years younger than you, Ian, and I wouldn’t have half your energy!

IA: I’m 67 and I don’t have half my energy! (Laughs), but the half that I’ve got gets me to the finishing line just about. But of course it gets a lot harder as you get old, there’s no way you could disguise that fact. You’ve got to just be aware that you have certain resources….I suppose it’s a bit like an electric car, you’ve got a range of 100 miles but back in the old days when you didn’t worry about carbon emissions you could be driving around in your Porsche and it didn’t really matter. These days you perhaps think a little bit more sensibly, economically, responsibly and you pace yourself that bit better I guess. I think as a musical performer that’s what you have to do. I mean Bass players! God bless them! They’ve got it pretty easy! But you know, drummers, flute players, singers, we really do have to keep working a lot harder in terms of our physical effort and our aerobic ability much later in life. You know, if you’ve got 4 strings to play and you’re just going to stand around looking, sort of vaguely attractive in your spandex briggs……….

SS: Ian! You’ve just alienated our entire Bass Playing customer base!

IA: Oh dear, sorry about that! But you know, I seriously thought about being a bass player when I first started thinking about being a musician. I thought, God! Watching Paul McCartney on whatever precursor of Top of the Pops there was, I thought “that looks incredibly easy”. You know….Boom, ba-boom, boom, ba-boom…..it just looked so ridiculously easy and I thought “well that sounds like a better idea than working in a bank or a shoe shop”. (Laughs) But the first time I actually gave it any serious consideration I thought this is a bit limiting and whilst being a Paul McCartney kind of bass player might have seemed like an easy road to success you’ve actually got to have the huge musical talent and songwriting skills of a Paul McCartney to be able to achieve success. His technical ability on the bass was really not the important thing. (Laughs). And when you get down to the nitty gritty, playing a bit of piano or 6-string guitar is kind of easier when it comes to writing songs and thinking your way through the prospects of music in a bigger way. I don’t think I ever thought, beyond the first few weeks or months of taking up a musical instrument, seriously about playing a bass guitar. That’s not to say that bass players of course come in all sorts of shapes and colours and dear Jack Bruce who passed not too long ago was one of those guys who gave the instrument huge credibility in the early days of Cream and made it almost a solo instrument.

But just as we’re talking about roadies doing everything for you, I had the honor of being Jack Bruce’s bass roadie. A few years ago when we were doing some German TV show together, Jack arrived in the hotel and his bass was just sitting in the middle of the hotel lobby and he walked out to go to the gig just assuming that some person would appear to carry his guitar for him to the van and take it to his dressing room and tune it up for him. So I said “Jack, you’ve left your guitar in the lobby”, he said “well, I’m not carrying the bloody thing” (Laughs)…...I said “oh, fucks sake, Jack! I’ll pick it up and carry it for you!”. He was a bit older than I was so I thought “well you know, young man like me should shoulder the burden.

SS: I believe you’ve been writing this month, for the next album?

IA: Well I’ve had two grandchildren with chickenpox the last few days and I’ve still managed to write two sets of lyrics. They were being particularly unwell and grumpy but yes, I’ve got a little bit to do and by the end of the month I’ve got to finish the written side of the new material, but it’s for a tour that doesn’t start to September so we have plenty of time to do all the pre-production stuff and get in shape and the shows that I have between now and September are just continuations really of what I was doing last year.

SS: Will there be an album this year?

IA: There won’t be an album this year but there will be a couple of albums next year. There’s a string quartet project that I’m working on…..classical string quartet versions of some Jethro Tull material. Well call it quartet because of my involvement but its me plus a quintet. That’s something that we’ll work on this year with a view to it being a 2016 release and then there will be the 2016 release of the project tour. Which, is essentially a lot of reworked old material plus maybe 5 new songs which are part of the 2015 September onwards tour scenario.

But there’s always 3 or 4 projects going on in the recesses of my mind which surface and hopefully come to fruition on target. You know when you’re doing tours you’ve got to book them ahead. I’ve been completing the US tour dates for later in the year and finalising some UK dates for September and we are committed. There’s no get out option. Once you’ve put that stuff in the book it’s there! And right the way through to Christmas this year I know where I’m going to be on almost every day. And that’s a commitment you undertake as a performer, you can’t just say “oh I don’t feel like it, I think I’ll just take a day of work”.

SS: And if you're having a bad day or you’re not feeling well, how do you get up on stage and not let that show?

IA: Well I wish I could claim that I can do that. Unfortunately I’m a bit of a wimp and I probably let it show but I Do try to cover it up, obviously because you don’t want to go out there and engage the audience with the sympathy vote because it doesn’t work essentially. So you’ve got to go out there and try and make it look like ‘business as usual’ but the reality is you know that the mask will slip, that you’re coughing and spluttering. You know, if you’ve got a cold and you’re the bass player, who’s going to notice? Frankly, nobody including the singer or the flute player but if you’re the singer or the flute player and you’ve got a bad cold and you’re coughing and spluttering then everybody's going to notice including the audience. You can’t hide the fact that you’re doubled up in bronchial torture if you’ve got a really bad chest infection. That happens to me every couple of years without fail because I’m on tour quite a lot and if I’m lucky I get through a year without picking up a flu bug or cold or whatever but the chances are on aeroplane flights and the crowded surroundings of people on busses and tube trains you’re going to pick stuff up. Somebody else might just take 2 or 3 days off work but I don’t and therefore sometimes my woes will go on for a week or two. I think later in life actually I’ve tended to get away with it more lightly for some strange reason. Quite often I think I’m coming down with something and 48 hours later it’s gone. But in my 20’s and 30’s I would come down with a cold and it wouldn’t get better in 48 hours, it would actually develop into a severe bronchial infection and two weeks later I would be in hospital having x-rays and checkups because it really did lay me low. But as I’ve got older it's been less of an achilles heel. Tonsillitis was another one I used to get repeatedly as a teenager and into my 20’s and 30’s and then it just stopped happening. One of those things that somehow the body says enough! And the immune system keeps it tamed.

SS: Absolutely loving the remixes by Steven Wilson. Are we going to get Minstrel In The Gallery this year? (Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree has been remixing several artist’s classic albums from the 70’s including to date 5 Jethro Tull albums to critical acclaim)

IA: Yeah, we’ve done the Minstrel In The Gallery stuff and Steven seems keen. I do say to him “when you’ve had enough of this don’t feel embarrassed, don’t feel obligated, just say, ‘sorry I’m going to be washing my hair that month’ and turn it down”. But I suppose his era of influence when he was a lad growing up was the music of the 70’s. So I’d kind of like to get through to the end of the 70’s. And I think thereafter he was a working, performing musician and therefore that doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for him once we crossover that boundary into the then new decade. Steven’s been a sort of a stalwart and a supporter of many of the bands of the 70’s who were part of the influence that he as a young person growing up felt were important to him. I guess it’s a legacy that he feels he can impart his influence to preserving it for the future. I mean happily there are people like Steven Wilson or, running a little bit parallel to him, Jakko Jakszyk who also has done some work for us in mixing and remixing.

SS: Didn’t he mix your last studio album, 2014’s Homo Erraticus?

IA: That’s right, he’s also finished doing the live Jethro Tull material which is part of the Minstrel In The Gallery collectors edition package which was a live show from Paris. He’s been working in parallel with Steven doing the studio remixing and he’s done the live stuff. Jakko also did the live Thick As A Brick II in Iceland DVD.

I mean these are people that I work with that are a bit younger than me with slightly younger ears and the enthusiasm for working with old material. There are folks like me who are happy to pass it onto another generation of musicians to work with the repertoire. There are other people like Zappa, famously before he died who was just so hands on, I guess control freak about his music that he spent his final years, knowing he wasn’t going to make it, working and reworking his old material. Umm...Jimmy Page, who I ran into a few months ago in an airport, he’d just finished working on the remixing and mastering of a Led Zeppelin album which involved some additional material and studio out-takes and so on and I said “Jimmy, we have this asset that every so often we take it out of the vault and we polish it up all sparkly and present it to a new generation of people who didn’t get to hear that before”. I think it is a bit like being a kind of custodian and I think you can do that in a hands on sense if you’re Jimmy Page who quite rightfully takes that under his wing because he was the studio mastermind of the music and he’s very hands on about it. I am less so because I have a job…(laughs)… and when I saw Jimmy at the airport he was off on holiday for a couple of weeks and I said “well, lucky you, I’m off on tour”. In a way I could see Jimmy’s wistful expression because I was actually going out to do some gigs and he doesn’t quite have that luxury because as he put it to me once he said “Whoo you’ll have to speak to the singer, he doesn’t want to do it”. So yeah, Jimmy would be out there doing what I’m doing now I’m sure if Robert was up for the Led Zeppelin story part two. But you gotta respect Robert Plant who’s gone on to do great stuff on his own and knows when to accept that that time had come and gone. But I know Jimmy Page misses it hugely and would love to be out there doing it. I mean not because of the money, he doesn’t need the loot, he just wants to do it because he loves those songs and to get out there and play them again to a bunch of people who probably never heard of Zeppelin or were even born when Jethro Tull was the support band for Led Zeppelin back in 1969.

SS: Well, it’s been an absolute honour to talk to you, Ian.

IA: Well, if its helping you educate and give information to a generation of musicians who need to figure out where the hype and the advertising end and some reality begins. Somebody’s got to make up their own minds, there’s no point in believing what you read in a glossy brochure whether it’s a string manufacturer or the new Audi E-Tron hot sporty hatchback. I say that only because I was looking it up this morning, I’m determined to ween my wife away from a Lexus.

SS: Lexus, that’s Toyota’s posh end isn’t it?

IA: Well, that’s right it is. You know I don’t drive, I’ve zero interest in motor cars but I suppose the Lexus is sort of comfortable, cosy, not exactly luxury, but mid market. There’s a little bit of the Jeremy Clarkson in all of us, we all kind of hate the Prius and the Lexus and we’ve been owners of both but I just think it’s time, before you die, if she’s not going to get back behind the wheel of a Porsche turbo then at least it might be a BMW or sort of hot hatch or something else that’s a bit more fun to drive. But it still has to fit in the garage of our tiny London house when we go there and it still has to obey the politically correct C02 emissions and pass the test in a variety of ways. I enjoy reading the brochures and bullshit along with everybody else. But when it comes to the final choice, just like choosing your guitar strings you’ve actually got to get out there and try a few and see what works for you.

You can find all the details on Ian, his latest projects and tour dates via www.jethrotull.com

Ian's Equipment Includes:

• D'addario EXP16 Coated Strings. Previously La Bella Strings in the 80's/90's. Silk & Steel in the 70's
• Andrew Manson Guitars.
• Fishman Rare Earth Humbucker Pickup
• Zoom Preamp
• Planet Waves Cables
• Shubb Capo

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