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" 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
Pool
Fish
Great
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" It's only the giving that makes you what you are. "
Ian Anderson
Makes
Giving
You
" 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 can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton. "
Ian Anderson
I Wish
Happy
I Can
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Like
Only
Blue
" 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
Great
Nice
Name
" I'm not one for Sudoku or crosswords - the thing that fires my little brain is doing tour budgets. "
Ian Anderson
Thing
Brain
Doing
" 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
Identity
Feel
Will
" 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
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Music
Mind
Art
" I've always been fond of acoustic music. "
Ian Anderson
Always
Music
Fond
" 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. "
Ian Anderson
Think
Grateful
Detail
" 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
Play
Skills
Construction
" 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
" 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
" 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
New
Solo
Generation
" Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise. "
Ian Anderson
Always
Status Quo
Politicians
" 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