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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" '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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

Only

Blue

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "