Ian Anderson Biography

Ian Scott Anderson (born August 10, 1947 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland), is a Scottish singer, songwriter, guitarist and flautist, and is best known as the head of the rock band Jethro Tull.

Ian Anderson was born the son of a hotel manager. He spent the first part of his childhood in the Scottish capital Edinburgh, an influence which has dominated his artistic output ever since. He would return much later in life to live in Scotland for several years.

His family moved to Blackpool in the north of England in 1959, where he gained a traditional grammar school education before going on to study fine art. Much of his work referring to this period suggests a somewhat turbulent upbringing.

While a teenager, Anderson took a job as a sales assistant at Lewis' department store in Blackpool, then as a vendor on a newsstand. He later said it was reading copies of Melody Maker and the New Musical Express during his lunch breaks that gave him the inspiration to play in a band.

In 1963 he formed The Blades from among school friends: Barriemore Barlow (drums), John Evans (keyboards), Jeffrey Hammond (bass) and Michael Stephens (guitar). This was a soul and blues band, with Anderson on vocals and harmonica - he had yet to take up the flute.

By 1965 the group had turned into the John Evan Band, comprising a larger line-up. It broke up within a couple of years, by which time Anderson had moved to Luton. There he met drummer Clive Bunker and guitarist and fellow vocalist Mick Abrahams from fellow blues band McGregor's Engine. Along with Glenn Cornick, a bassist he had met through John Evan, he created the first incarnation of the band with which he was to stay for over 40 years: Jethro Tull.

At this time Anderson abandoned his ambition to play electric guitar, and as he himself tells it in the introduction to the video "Live at the Isle of Wight", he traded it in for a flute which, after some weeks of practise, he found he could play fairly well in a rock and blues style. According to the sleeve notes for the first Tull album, "This Was", he had been playing the flute only a few months when the album was recorded. His guitar practice was not wasted either, as he continued to play acoustic guitar, becoming one of the few recording artists outside the classical realm to use the nylon-string acoustic guitar as a melodic, rather than a rhythm instrument. As his career progressed, he added soprano saxophone, mandolin, keyboards and other instruments to his arsenal.

His famous tendency to stand on one leg while playing the flute came about by accident. As related in the "Isle of Wight" video, he had been inclined to stand on one leg while playing the harmonica, holding the microphone stand for balance. During the long stint at the Marquee Club, a journalist described him, wrongly, as standing on one leg to play the flute. He decided to live up to the reputation, albeit with some difficulty. His early attempts are visible in the "Rock and Roll Circus" film appearance of Jethro Tull. In later life he was surprised to learn that iconic portrayals of various flute playing divinities, particularly Krishna and Kokopelli, show them standing on one leg.

While Anderson has recorded a small number of critically-acclaimed projects under his own name, and frequently makes guest appearances in other artists' work, he has been identified in the public eye as the frontman of Jethro Tull for over 40 years. He is often mistakenly referred to personally as "Jethro Tull" as if that were an alter-ego similar to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.

This is undoubtedly because a signature motif of Anderson's career has been a highly distinctive stage image, which has often been counter to the prevailing rock music culture. While he has habitually drawn inspiration from British folklore - at different times deploying stylistic elements of Medieval jester, Elizabethan minstrel, English country squire and Scottish laird - at other times he has appeared as astronaut, pirate and vagrant. His personae often involve a large degree of self-parody.

Reviewers past and present have invariably chosen to hone in on the following adjectives to sum him up: mad (due to his vigorous on-stage capering and bug-eyed facial expressions); one-legged (from his penchant for adopting this pose when playing); bearded (often grown to extraordinary lengths; he has never appeared in public clean-shaven) and flute-player.

As a flautist, Anderson is self-taught; his style, which often includes a good deal of flutter tonguing and occasionally singing or humming (or even snorting) while playing, was influenced by Roland Kirk. In 2003 he recorded a composition called Griminelli's Lament in honour of his friend, the Italian flautist Andrea Griminelli. In the 1990s he began working with simple bamboo flutes. He has become highly proficient at using techniques of over-blowing and hole-shading to produce note-slurring and other expressive techniques on this otherwise simple instrument.

Anderson is proficient on several other musical instruments, including acoustic and electric guitar, bass guitar, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica, and a variety of whistles.

He has recorded several songs on which he plays all the instruments as well as carrying out all the engineering and production (such as 1988's Another Christmas Song). His earliest foray into one-man recording was apparently on the popular Tull piece "Locomotive Breath". Unable to get his ideas across to the rest of the band verbally, he laid down percussion and guitar tracks himself before adding vocals and then bringing in the others, at a time when tracks were usually recorded with all band members in the studio. Ironically this is one of the most vital pieces on the album and is a mainstay of Tull's stage show.

As a composer Anderson has successfully fused very diverse styles (folk, jazz, blues, rock and pop), creating a decidedly personal sound. His lyrics are frequently complex, being one of the reasons behind the popularity of the band. The most frequent topic of his compositions is a (mostly) tongue-in-cheek criticism of the absurd self-imposed rules of society and/or religion (Sossity, You're a Woman; Hymn 43; Thick as a Brick). Frequently he combines such lyrics with other themes and motifs: folk, mythological, fantastic (The Minstrel in the Gallery, Jack-in-the-Green, Broadsword and the Beast). In recent years, Anderson has favoured capturing verbal snapshots of his daily life (Old Black Cat, Rocks on the Road).

Anderson is a successful businessman away from the music industry, whose past frequent appearances in top ten lists of the wealthiest rock stars was invariably greeted with surprise by journalists.

He currently owns a group of companies which reported a gross profit of £1.8 million in 2004, when the Sunday Herald newspaper reported:

Anderson married Shona Learoyd in 1976, described by Rolling Stone magazine as a "convent-educated daughter of a wealthy wool manufacturer" [3]. She had studied ballet for 10 years, though Anderson met her when she was working as a press officer at Jethro Tull's then record-label Chrysalis Records. She later became involved with the band's on-stage special effects.

The couple have lived in a 16th-century redbrick farmhouse on the 74-acre Pophleys estate in Buckinghamshire, England, and in the Western Isles of Scotland. They currently live in Wiltshire, England.

They have two children: James, also a musician, and Gael, who works in the film industry and is married to the actor Andrew Lincoln.

In recognition of his life-long contribution to popular music, Anderson received two honours in 2006: the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement and an honorary Doctorate of Literature at Heriot-Watt University, on 11 July 2006.

He remains widely regarded as the man who introduced the flute to rock music.

For his records with Jethro Tull, see Jethro Tull Discography