Entertainment

Published: Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009

An unusual combination: Playing rock music on the flute

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull bought his first flute on a whim and gained a signature sound

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It is a little odd to hear flute in a rock song, Ian Anderson admits.

“The flute is an alien instrument in the world of rock music,” he said. “It’s an acoustic instrument that doesn’t really make a lot of noise. It’s difficult to amplify, difficult to integrate. It can become pretty annoying after 2-1/2 minutes.”

Yet, for more than 40 years, Anderson’s flute has provided Jethro Tull its signature sound — that odd, Medieval-meets-prog-rock style that’s a little bit Led Zeppelin and a little bit Pied Piper. While other rock songs have featured the instrument— Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” being one example — Jethro Tull is practically synonymous with it.

“I wasn’t the first person to have a flute in pop and rock music,” Anderson said by phone recently. “It was there, and people did it. But nobody really did it in a big way.”

Appearing as a solo act with a six-piece band, Anderson will perform acoustic versions of Jethro Tull songs at Cal Poly on Saturday. It marks the first of two local Tull-related shows this month. Next weekend, Tull’s original bass player, Glenn Cornick, will perform with a local band—normally called Shameless, but going as Locomotive Breath for this gig — at the Cambria Pines Lodge.

Through the years various musicians have been with Jethro Tull, which was named after an 18th-century agriculturist. But Anderson has always been the driving force, with his flute, vocals and songwriting leading the band. (Guitarist Martin Barre has also been a longtime member, though Anderson is the only founding member remaining.)

An impulse buy

While Anderson is an accomplished flautist, he’d never played a wind instrument until 1967, when he traded his guitar in for a flute and a microphone.

“I had no idea what I was going to do with the flute,” he said. “It was an impulse buy. It just looked nice.”

At first, Anderson regretted the purchase. But as Jethro Tull neared the recording of its first album, he went back to the flute.

“Before Christmas in ’67, I picked up the flute for the first time and attempted to play it,” he said. “And by February or March of the next year—some three or four months later—I was playing it onstage every night.”

A few months later, he would record flute on Tull’s first album, “This Was.”

In the studio, Anderson’s flute would give songs like “Locomotive Breath” and “Living In the Past” a mysterious, old English sound. On stage, Anderson wielded his instrument like a baton, sometimes suggestively. Always one for theatrics, Anderson’s dramatic expressions, eccentric attire — first raglike outfits, then more elaborate costumes — and one-legged flute playing prompted critics to describe him with words like “wildman sage” and “crazy jester.”

“They wrote about me in a larger-than-life kind of way,” Anderson said.

The expressive man onstage wasn’t a persona, he said — just a different version of himself.

“I always think I’m the same guy when I get on stage as I am when I’m sitting in a rental car or in the shower in the morning,” he said. “It’s just that we have different facets of our personality — all of us do.”

Rubbing elbows

As Jethro Tull became a huge draw, it had interactions with other famous bands of the day. The group toured with Zeppelin, appeared on “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus” with The Who, John Lennon and Eric Clapton, and appeared as the main act on a tour with The Eagles.

Meanwhile, Anderson continued to baffle critics with albums like “Thick as a Brick,” which consisted of one 43-minute song, and “Passion Play,” another single-track album that explored the afterlife. Still, there were always hits that generated plenty of radio airplay, including “Bungle in the Jungle,” “Teacher” and “Aqualung.”

In 1989, more than two decades after forming, the group pulled off an upset, winning a Grammy in the Hard Rock/Metal Performance category, beating Metallica.

At 62, Anderson has aged well, but the wild long hair is gone and the outfits are much more tame. He speaks with a proper English accent that makes you think he’s doing the interview with a pipe in his mouth — something he used to do before giving up smoking, his only vice, 20 years ago.

While some may think he looked like he was on drugs in the 1970s, Anderson said he never got into them. When other bands were destroying hotel rooms after concerts, Anderson was retreating to them, reading books and watching TV.

“Lots of people I stood on the same stage with, they aren’t here any more,” he said. “For me it’s just like one of those really rather pragmatic realities —why do something that is distinctly dangerous?”

Reach Patrick S. Pemberton at 781-7903.