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" 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
Blue
Back
Go
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" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Green
Thought
Myself
" 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
Musicians
I Am
Time
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Character
Child
Future
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Song
You
Creative
" Not to be mean about it, but some great rock and rollers, like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, are pretty one-dimensional. "
Ian Anderson
Great
Mean
Pretty
" When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute. "
Ian Anderson
Time
Music
Rock
" I'm not one for Sudoku or crosswords - the thing that fires my little brain is doing tour budgets. "
Ian Anderson
Thing
Brain
Doing
" 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
Best
Money
Rock
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Cats
Hanging
Young
" 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
Always
Space
Think
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Think
Friend
Music
" 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
Engaging
You
Dialogue
" 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
People
Artist
Think
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
People
Life
World
" 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
Great
Long
You
" 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
Flute
Microphone
Made
" 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
Audience
Some
Right
" 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
Talent
Rock
Management
" I'm really terrible with small children; they're small, noisy, irritating, damp and soggy. "
Ian Anderson
Small
Terrible
Children
" 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
" 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
Going
You
Emotional
" '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. "
Ian Anderson
Confidence
Time
Think
" 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
Two
Thought
Spontaneous
" It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose. "
Ian Anderson
Me
Lost
Other
" 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
Life
Church
Child
" 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
Radio
Purpose
Play
" 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
Authority
You
Drawing
" 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
Rock
American
Music
" 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
Retirement
Life
Thought
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Moment
Name
Police