Ian Anderson felt ‘desperation’ to create new Jethro Tull album

Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson said he felt a sense of “desperation” to create new music as he was growing older, ahead of the band’s latest album release.

The rock band’s new album, a nine-track record titled Curious Ruminant, will be released on March 7.

Speaking ahead of the launch, Anderson – the group’s lead vocalist, lyricist and flautist – said that creating a new album usually came “out of the blue” when “the time was right”.

On the inspiration behind Curious Ruminant, Anderson told the PA news agency: “It’s a mixture of desperation, in the sense of growing much older and knowing that if I don’t crack on with it now, there might not be a second chance.

“So there is a sort of feeling of desperation to get another creative moment – squeeze it out of your inner soul and present it to the world, then that’s kind of a desperate act.

“The second, a rather exhilarating and rewarding sense of engagement, because making a new record is something that comes usually out of the blue and you just know when the time is right – today I’m going to start work on a new song, and then it just feels right, and then it organically grows in the next days weeks, and builds a huge momentum.”

Anderson said the latest album “evolved into being”, and that he wrote all of the lyrics within the space of a few weeks “one after the other”.

He continued: “I like to paint musical pictures of people in an environment, people doing something, and something that interests me about people in a context.

“But on this album, I do, obviously some of that comes into the lyrics, but it’s also expressing more of my personal thoughts and views.”

The first song Anderson worked on for the new album originated from a demo of a flute duet he originally created in 2007 with then-keyboard player for the group Andrew Giddings, he said.

He continued: “So this demo just was just sitting there on the hard disk of a computer that we used back then only for music work and my son found the computer and then decided it would be good idea to destroy it because it’s just lying around and so he was going to smash up the hard disk.

“But before he did, he noticed there was some audio files on there, multi-tracks, and he said, ‘Do you want to keep any of this?’”

Anderson said he did not know what the files contained and so his son sent them over to him.

“When I heard it, I thought ‘Well, this is something really too good to just throw away’, and it would be nice for me, and nice for perhaps for other people to have it completed and brought the into the real world,” the songwriter added.

“And so I wrote the lyrics for that, and melody and various things to go with the two flutes.”

Of the band’s early days in London in the 1960s, Anderson said he “caught people’s attention” because he played the flute which was “a bit unusual in pop and rock music at the time”.

The musician went on to describe the group as “a little bit of a quirky, odd band” and said his work ethic comes from a sense of competition with himself.

He said: “Every time I record a new song or get on a stage to perform, I’m competing with whatever reputation I’ve had in the past, and therefore that’s what motivates me, is to try and do what I do well, but I’m not in competition with other bands.”

Among musicians featured on Curious Ruminant are former keyboardist Giddings and drummer James Duncan, along with the current band members David Goodier, John O’Hara, Scott Hammond and guitarist Jack Clark – who is making his recording debut with the prog rock group.

Jethro Tull landed their first top 10 on the Official Albums Chart in 50 years in 2022, with The Zealot Gene entering at number nine.

Their last top 10 appearance was 1972’s Living In The Past.

Formed in 1968 in Luton, Bedfordshire, the band have released some 30 albums and had hits including Aqualung, Locomotive Breath and Cross-Eyed Mary.

The pop and rock group cite many musical influences including folk, classical, blues and jazz.