JETHRO TULL’s Ian Anderson Explains Why He Changed Guitar For Flute

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In a recent interview for a Neil McCormick’s Needle Time, Ian Anderson said that he became disheartened after hearing Eric Clapton and that it automatically led him to pick up a flute. 

“You just knew this guy was way ahead of everybody else, me included. And also we were hearing rumours of these other gunslinger guitar people like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore. I was fumbling around, relatively speaking,” Anderson admits.

The guitar Anderson owned at the time, a Fender Stratocaster, had belonged to Lemmy Kilminster – a member of Reverend Black And The Rocking Vicars at that time, who later joined Hawkwind and formed Motorhead. He gave the guitar back to the music store and instead took up a flute that was hanging on the wall, and there was a Shure Unidyne III microphone, and I said “I’ll have those two and here’s the guitar back.“

You can watch the whole interview in the video below.

On June 30th, Ian Anderson will be performing the Jethro Tull’s classic “A Thick as a Brick” in its entirety at Royal Albert Hall, before kicking off the world tour.

(via Telegraph)

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