Jethro Tull

The early Jethro Tull released their first Blues-oriented album, This Was, in the latter part of 1968 before moving on to more home-grown and eclectic efforts in 1969 with Stand Up and a flurry of single releases, including Living In The Past, in the UK market.

Benefit, Aqualung, and Thick As A Brick followed and the band’s success grew internationally. Various band members came and went, but the charismatic front man and composer, flautist and singer Ian Anderson continued to lead the group through its various musical incarnations.

Jethro Tull were, by the mid-seventies, one of the most successful live performing acts on the world stage, rivalling Zeppelin, Elton John and even the Rolling Stones. Surprising, really, for a group whose more sophisticated and evolved stylistic extravagance was far from the Pop and Rock norm of that era.
With now some 30-odd albums to their credit and sales totalling more than 60 million, the apparently uncommercial Tull have continued to travel near and far to fans across the world.

After fifty years at the bottom, at the top and various points in between, the Tull repertoire is still performed typically more than a hundred concerts each year by Ian Anderson on his continuing tours throughout the world. Ian remains at the centre of a group of sometimes changing but highly capable – indeed excellent – musicians.

The band continue to delight audiences everywhere and present the ongoing legacy of Tull’s music with its rich variety and depth of expression wherever the fans, young and old, want to hear Rock, Folk, Jazz and Classical-inspired music for grown-ups.

Ian Anderson, known throughout the world of rock music as the flute and voice behind the legendary Jethro Tull, celebrates his 53rd year as a recording and performing musician in 2022.

Ian was born in 1947 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. After attending primary school in Edinburgh, his family relocated to Blackpool in the north of England in 1959. Following a traditional Grammar school education, he moved on to Art college to study fine art before deciding on an attempt at a musical career.

Tull formed in 1968 out of the amalgamation of the John Evan Band and McGregor’s Engine, two blues-based local UK groups.

After a lengthy career, Jethro Tull has released 30 studio and live albums, selling more than 60 million copies since the band first performed at London’s famous Marquee Club in February 1968.

After undertaking more than 3000 concerts in 40 countries throughout five decades, Tull has played typically 100-plus concerts each year to longstanding, as well as new fans worldwide. He continues to celebrate the catalogue of Jethro Tull along with the latest 2022 release, The Zealot Gene, with various dates in the USA and elsewhere in the world.

Widely recognized as the man who introduced the flute to rock music, Ian Anderson remains the crowned exponent of the popular and rock genres of flute playing. So far, no pretender to the throne has stepped forward. Ian also plays ethnic flutes and whistles together with acoustic guitar and the mandolin family of instruments, providing the acoustic textures which has been an integral part of most of the Tull repertoire.

Anderson has so far recorded seven diverse solo albums in his career: 1983’s “Walk Into Light”, the flute instrumental “Divinities” album for EMI’s Classical Music Division in 1995 which reached number one in the relevant Billboard chart, the acoustic collections of songs, “The Secret Language of Birds”, and “Rupi’s Dance”. In a more progressive rock context he recorded “Thick As A Brick 2” in 2012 and “Homo Erraticus” in 2014. Released in 2017, the classically inspired album “Jethro Tull – The String Quartets” with the Carducci Quartet reached number one in the Billboard Classical Charts.

Anderson lives on a farm in the southwest of England where he has a recording studio and office. He has been married for 42 years to Shona who is also an active director of their music and other companies. They have two children – James and Gael – and three grandchildren.

His hobbies include the growing of many varieties of hot chile peppers, the study and conservation of the 26 species of small wildcats of the world and the appreciation of mechanical watches, fountain pens and vintage cameras. He reluctantly admits to owning digital cameras and scanners for his work on the photographic promotional images related to Tull as well as his solo career.
In 2006, he was awarded a Doctorate in Literature from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, the Ivor Award for International Achievement in Music and, in the New Years Honours List 2008, an MBE for services to music. In 2011, he received another Doctorate in Literature from Dundee University.

Ian owns no fast car, never having taken a driving test, and has a wardrobe of singularly uninspiring and drab leisurewear. He still keeps a couple of off-road competition motorcycles, a few sporting guns and a saxophone which he promises never to play again.

He declares a lifelong commitment to music as a profession, being far too young to hang up his hat or his flute, although the tights and codpiece have long since been consigned to some forgotten bottom drawer.