Top 55 Ian Anderson Quotes
#1. Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.~ Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson
#2. A guy called Arthur Brown ... was a big influence of mine ... and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.
Bruce Dickinson
#3. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame traditionally has had a management style that is very supportive of American talent, first and foremost, over everything else. And I think that's right and proper.
Ian Anderson
#4. 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.
Ian Anderson
#5. 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.
Ian Anderson
#6. 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.
Ian Anderson
#7. 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.
Ian Anderson
#8. 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.
Ian Anderson
#9. It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose.
Ian Anderson
#10. The original Jethro Tull was a 19th century English agriculturist who invented a seed drill you see ... the first automatic process where by small holes were made in Mother Earth and even smaller seeds were deposited one at a time and neetly covered over as a cat does after having being naughty.
Ian Anderson
#11. My old black cat, he passed away this morning. He never knew what a heartache was. Woke up late and he danced till noon. If questioned why, answered just because. He never spoke much, preferring silence. Eight lost lives was all he had.
Ian Anderson
#12. 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.
Ian Anderson
#13. 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.
Ian Anderson
#14. I'm really terrible with small children; they're small, noisy, irritating, damp and soggy.
Ian Anderson
#16. 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.
Ian Anderson
#17. As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.
Ian Anderson
#19. 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.
Ian Anderson
#20. 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.
Ian Anderson
#21. Question all as to their ways and learn the secrets that they hold
Ian Anderson
#22. It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now.
Ian Anderson
#24. A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.
Ian Anderson
#25. Touring is what you make it. I like to organise as much as possible myself.
Ian Anderson
#26. The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.
Ian Anderson
#27. Oh father high in heaven - smile down upon your sonWho's busy with his money games - his women and his gun.
Ian Anderson
#28. It's only the giving that makes you what you are.
Ian Anderson
#29. 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.
Ian Anderson
#30. 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.
Ian Anderson
#31. Prog didn't really go away. Just took a catnap in the late Seventies. A new generation of fans discovered it, and a whole new array of bands and solo artists took it on into the new millennium.
Ian Anderson
#32. 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.
Ian Anderson
#33. I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics.
Ian Anderson
#34. Not to be mean about it, but some great rock and rollers, like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, are pretty one-dimensional.
Ian Anderson
#35. 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.
Ian Anderson
#36. I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, first of all, has got to be put into the context of being an American cultural showcase. It's there to be a museum showcase of all that's great about American music.
Ian Anderson
#37. 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.
Ian Anderson
#38. 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.
Ian Anderson
#39. 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.
Ian Anderson
#40. I'm very much an observer and a conduit of thoughts and ideas.
Ian Anderson
#41. 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.
Ian Anderson
#42. 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.
Ian Anderson
#43. I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.
Ian Anderson
#44. Walk the lines of nature's palm crossed with silver and with gold.
Ian Anderson
#45. 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.
Ian Anderson
#46. 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.
Ian Anderson
#47. I am not afraid to appear in Israel, although when I come to a place like Israel, I know it's not a picnic by the Thames. I am aware of the tension and it saddens me.
Ian Anderson
#48. Bring me a wheel of oaken wood A rein of polished leather A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky Brewing heavy weather.
Ian Anderson
#49. I accidentally brought my graphing calculator camping.
Ian Anderson
#50. Cafe society is as old as the hills. Starbucks and its imitators are the coffee face of the new man in a hurry.
Ian Anderson
#51. I'm not one for Sudoku or crosswords - the thing that fires my little brain is doing tour budgets.
Ian Anderson
#52. Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise.
Ian Anderson
#53. I'm all in favor of banks that play their part in community endeavors, private individuals looking for loans, people who want to start up a little business, and that's what banks are for.
Ian Anderson
#54. Come with me to the Winged Isle- Northern father's Western child Where the Dance of Ages is playing still through far marches of Acres Wild.
Ian Anderson
#55. Why do the faithful have such a will, to believe in something? And call in the name they choose, having chosen nothing ...
Ian Anderson
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