Quote

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

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Ian Anderson
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: August 10
Composer
Flutist
Guitarist
Saxophonist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Ian Scott Anderson
Happy
Wish
Mind
Clapton
Make
Flute
Never
Flutes
Eric
Player
Happiness

More quotes by Ian Anderson

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Walk the lines of nature's palm crossed with silver and with gold.
Ian Anderson
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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
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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
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Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.
Ian Anderson
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It might work with one orchestra, and the next orchestra - the oboe player might not get it. It's different every time, but some of the orchestras do end up enjoying it and having a great time.
Ian Anderson
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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
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Bring me a wheel of oaken wood A rein of polished leather A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky Brewing heavy weather.
Ian Anderson
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I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.
Ian Anderson
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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
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It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose.
Ian Anderson
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I feel the audience has a right to know if some of the money they're spending is going to a certain cause, and reassuring them the money is going to where it's supposed to be going.
Ian Anderson
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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
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As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.
Ian Anderson
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Why do the faithful have such a will, to believe in something? And call in the name they choose, having chosen nothing.
Ian Anderson
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I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics.
Ian Anderson
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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
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The original Jethro Tull was a 19th century English agriculturist who invented a seed drill you see. The first automatic process where by small holes were made in Mother Earth and even smaller seeds were deposited one at a time and neatly covered over as a cat does after having being naughty.
Ian Anderson
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I'm very much an observer and a conduit of thoughts and ideas.
Ian Anderson
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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
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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