Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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

Performance

Audience

Live

Related Quotes:

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

Ian Anderson

Lost

Other

" 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. "

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

" '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. "

" 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. "

" I think I've owned all the models of iPods so far. And these days between my iPod, iPhone and my personal laptop computer, I'm someone who is very, very grateful for all the ways to listen to music and completely switch off from people around me and listen to the music in detail, which is very hard to do if you're in a room with other people. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It's only the giving that makes you what you are. "

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

" I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

Community

People

" In writing lyrics - well, for me, anyway - it's about getting into character, you know? 'Who is writing this?' In the case of the original 'Thick As A Brick,' supposedly a precocious, very young child who's fantasizing about his future and the context of all the confusing elements to which school boys are subjected at that time. "

" When I was in my teenage years, I went to sign up as a cadet entrant to the police force but was at the very last moment rejected, just as I was about to sign my name on the dotted line. I won't get into why that happened, but it was a moment where it could've been predetermined then that I was off to become a policeman. "

" 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. "

" I was quite keen on silviculture, the growing of trees, and that was something I gave a lot of thought to. Maybe I could've gone in that direction. But it just so happened that while I was trying to make up my mind, I enrolled in art school, and there I began to develop my interest in music, parallel with my interest in the visual arts. "

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

" 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've always been fond of acoustic music. "

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

" 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. "