Top 40 Ian Anderson Quotes

I don’t think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, ‘Oh, what a clever boy I am!’ I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.

I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics.

We do hear perhaps too many accolades generally aimed at people like Steve Jobs. We have to remember that there are other classic things in life that we undervalue and take them for granted. If you think of the classic lines of the modern jet aircraft, it’s really been there since early World War II.

I’m really terrible with small children; they’re small, noisy, irritating, damp and soggy.

Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.

It’s nice to be recognized, but it’s not great to have it too conspicuously recognized, if you see what I mean. Gold records on the wall, or titles after your name, it’s just not something… I don’t feel that great about it.

If you’re gonna use simile, analogy, metaphor, be descriptive and have some flowery adjectives and a few odd nouns and some engaging bits of dialogue or sentiment, then you’re sort of writing a novel, really. But rock lyrics are not really known for their sophistication.

As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.

I think we always view people who make us feel uncomfortable and appear to intrude on our middle-class cozy space, we view them with, if not hostility, at least suspicion, discomfort, embarrassment.

Writing lyrics is part spontaneous, intuitive and part really thought through and carefully analyzed as you write it. It’s a mixture of two approaches, and I imagine writing anything is like that, really. Some of it just flows, and you just go with it.

‘Aqualung’ marks the point at which I had the confidence as a songwriter and as a guitar player to actually pick up and play the guitar and be at the forefront of the band. It’s also the album on which I began to address religious issues in my music, and I think that happened simply because the time was right for it.

I’m very motivated by the occasional creative payoff that comes when something goes really well, be it a song, a recording or performance. The payoff is enormous – when you get it. Most of the time, though, I’m filled with self-loathing and general frustration at the limitations I have as a musician.

I’ve always felt that some of my best lyrics are less than three minutes long, and it’s great when you can do that – be succinct and get the message across in a simple, clear idea.

There’s always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It’s how you lend some authority to what you write – you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know well, or a little.

A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.

I’m very much an observer and a conduit of thoughts and ideas.

I feel the audience has a right to know if some of the money they’re spending is going to a certain cause, and reassuring them the money is going to where it’s supposed to be going.

The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.

Not to be mean about it, but some great rock and rollers, like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, are pretty one-dimensional.

I don’t think people really do listen. We plug into music, and we have short attention spans. We tend to download individual tracks from iTunes rather than a whole album. We buy music DVDs and watch them once, and then they disappear into a drawer, or we loan them to a friend, and we never watch it again.

Most of what I’ve written songs about are things that come out of the confusing emotional, spiritual and psychological period of time when you’re going through puberty.

Most people, from their second album on, find it much harder to be as spontaneously creative as they were with their first couple of records, and some people only have one thing that they do.

Touring is what you make it. I like to organise as much as possible myself.

I can never make up my mind if I’m happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.

It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose.

I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute.

It’s only the giving that makes you what you are.

Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise.

There seems to be an inclination among rock musicians to be very carefree with money, but I negotiate the best flight and hotel deals on our tours to maximise the band’s income – I don’t want too see too much taken off the top line.

I was always more interested in the ultimate live performance rather than the recording for its own sake. And, for the audience too, that thrill of – just being there.

I’m not one for Sudoku or crosswords – the thing that fires my little brain is doing tour budgets.

Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.

Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim.

If Jesus Christ came back today, He and I would get into our brown corduroys and go to the nearest jean store and overturn the racks of blue denim.

In most cases, my favorite Jethro Tull songs will be determined by how I feel about them as live performance songs, not by the recorded identity.

I think it’s really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I’m just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.

All the time I was playing the flute, the lines, the solos, the riffs, the construction, were based on my guitar skills. I did not play the flute to exploit its natural faculties, but I used it as a surrogate guitar.

I don’t really set out to please anybody, and I don’t think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.

When I was a young boy, I preferred cats to dogs. From the age of seven or eight onwards I just felt more comfortable with cats. And I felt more comfortable with girls, I didn’t really like hanging out with guys. When I was about ten or eleven, I was friendlier with the girls in my school than with the guys.

I kind of like the idea of living a rather ordinary life as a shopkeeper, and I examine that possibility as one of the outcomes of the young Gerald Bostock growing older.