IAN ANDERSON: 'If You're Coming To A JETHRO TULL Concert, You Should Probably Leave Your Phone At Home'

In a new interview with Laura Steele Media, JETHRO TULL leader Ian Anderson spoke about the fact that fans have become increasingly unhinged, annoying and disrespectful while attending concerts in recent years. Asked about the “wide range” of behavior he has encountered at JETHRO TULL live shows, depending on which country he goes, to, Ian said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, I think it’s always bad to stereotype audiences according to nationality, and I can give you an example of how in the London theater these days, I know many actors who are really upset. They walk on stage in a serious play, and there are people getting out their phones and trying to video it or taking selfies in the middle of a serious theatrical drama. And [the actors] get really upset, as I can well understand.

“Anything goes in some people’s minds, but you’ve gotta have respect for the performers and the sensibility of the environment and what it’s about,” he continued. “So, sitting, eating popcorn during a Shakespeare play is really not a good thing to do, let alone getting your phone out and doing whatever. So it does happen, even in London and on the theater stage for serious, traditional and important drama. At concerts, it depends who the artist is and where it is.

“I tend to play seated audiences and I played in the [Royal] Albert Hall [in London] lots of times — I’ve never had people whistling or shouting or being obnoxious in the Albert Hall — but it changes with changing times and changing attitudes towards particularly the use of cell phones and particularly the degree to which people will make a noise of their own, especially in the quiet moments. Brazil, where I was in Brazil last year, and I’ve forgotten just how noisy the Brazilians are and sometimes not in a nice way. They’ll whistle and hoot, and even if you play a song and somebody doesn’t — just one person in the audience thinks, ‘Oh, I don’t like that one,’ so they boo. But people will do that, and it’s really, really not a nice thing to do.

“So I think having respect for the artist [is important],” Ian added. “If you go to see the very final BLACK SABBATH concert this summer where my old pal Tony Iommi will be playing, I expect the audience will be really noisy and loud and shouting, but that’s okay. It’s BLACK SABBATH, it’s heavy metal. That’s okay. But if you’re coming to a JETHRO TULL concert, I think you should probably leave the phone at home or at least in your pocket.”

Anderson previously expressed his dissatisfaction with rude audiences this past February in an interview with Barry Robinson of Classic Album Review. While speaking about the lyrical inspiration for the song “Puppet And The Puppet Master” from JETHRO TULL‘s latest studio album, “Curious Ruminant”, he said in part: “I wanna be free of feeling that I am in any way having to comply with other people’s wishes and other people’s demands. And the more demanding an audience are, by the way, the less I enjoy it, because there are occasions where sometimes you get a volatile audience due to the cultural tendencies in particular places. I could name Brazil, for example, where audiences think it’s okay to whistle and shout and boo and shout out the names of songs they wanna hear. I mean, I actually find it incredibly rude, and I really don’t enjoy that. It’s not every concert I’ve played in Brazil, but I encountered it a couple of times last year when I was on tour in Brazil, and that’s the way they are. There are other national stereotypes where people do behave that way. You will encounter it sometimes in the USA, where people think it’s okay to shout and whistle. It’s not okay. I’m trying to concentrate on playing sometimes quite difficult music, and I don’t like to be interfered with. I like to have the flexibility to be able to do that. And so if the audience set out to somehow manipulate you or influence your way of playing, that’s not good. For me, it is absolutely sufficient, at the end of a song, to see smiles on faces and somebody applauding at the appropriate time. That means everything to me. I don’t wanna be interrupted while I’m performing.

“I’m not complaining,” he clarified. “Things are the way they are. If you’re a performing musician, just as they would be if you were the prime minister at prime minister’s questions — you have to accept that you’re gonna get some bad behavior and some interfering kind of manipulative demands from the backbenchers. It’s the way things are. We have to accept it. But sometimes, as in this case, it becomes a topic of a song, slightly tongue in cheek, and certainly not only applicable to me. It could apply to a ballet dancer or an opera singer or a thespian in the midst of a Shakespearean dramatic play. It happens to all of us. We are controlling, and yet in a funny kind of a way we’re also being controlled by. And in a kind of sadomasochistic way, perhaps we, or at least some of us, might like that. They might like that feeling of having to work within the expectations of an audience and they want to satisfy that, particularly in more popular, big productions. They probably get a little cheesed off if the audience isn’t jumping around and waving their hands in the air and taking selfies and doing whatever. They probably feel they’re being ignored in some way, or it’s not a responsive audience. But since 1969, when I first started playing in theaters in the U.K., I take a different tack. I like a respectful, relative silence until we get to the end of a song. Then it’s time to applaud. And some people might find that difficult to understand or something they don’t particularly like, that I would feel that way, but it’s the way I’ve always been. And the way I am, on the rare occasions I go to a concert, I’m not gonna start whistling and shouting and calling out for songs that I wanna hear. Or booing. What’s the point in doing that? You might as well just leave the venue and get to the pub early.”

After Robinson noted that many of his concert experiences in recent years have been “completely ruined by the sea of iPhones that go straight up into the air as soon as the show begins,” Anderson said: “The first time I encountered that, I suddenly flashed back to playing in a concrete amphitheater in the middle of the woods somewhere in the former East Germany that was actually built for Nazi rallies, and I just thought that it must be like that. There’s suddenly this sea of arms shooting into the air, and you suddenly notice they’ve got phones on the end of them. But we, for some years, have made polite announcements to request that people restrain the use of their cameras and iPhones until the encore, and I get about a 95 percent compliance with that, which I’m grateful to see. Sometimes it is a hundred percent. In Brazil it was about a 50 percent. So, sometimes even with the translation into other languages and making it a little bit light-hearted, not making it sound threatening, but most people will go along with it. It usually gets a round of applause when they hear my voice saying that, because a lot of people feel the same way. They haven’t come to a concert and paid good money for a ticket, only to have to stare at the screen of the person in front who’s holding it up. I mean, I once went to a concert and left early, because after the fourth song, I think, I had to leave, ’cause I just couldn’t face what I was being confronted with. It was embarrassing, because I’d been given tickets by the artist concerned, but I just couldn’t I couldn’t sit there and watch these tiny little figures on a screen and I couldn’t see what was happening on the stage with all the arms in the way. So, yes, I find it particularly irritating.”

“Curious Ruminant” consists of nine new tracks varying in length from two and half minutes to almost seventeen minutes. Among the musicians featured are former JETHRO TULL keyboardist Andrew Giddings and drummer James Duncan, along with the current bandmembers David Goodier, John O’Hara, Scott Hammond and, making his recording debut with JETHRO TULL, guitarist Jack Clark.

“Curious Ruminant” was made available on several different formats, including a limited deluxe ultra clear 180g 2LP + 2CD + Blu-ray artbook and limited deluxe 2CD+Blu-ray artbook. Both of these feature the main album, alternative stereo mixes and a Blu-ray containing Dolby Atmos and 5.1 Surround Sound (once again undertaken by Bruce Soord of THE PINEAPPLE THIEF),as well as exclusive interview material. The limited deluxe vinyl artbook also includes two exclusive art-prints. The album was also made available as a special edition CD digipak, gatefold 180g LP + LP booklet and as digital album (in both stereo and Dolby Atmos).