In this exclusive interview I sit down with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull to discuss the brand-new album Curious Ruminant, its musical and lyrical inspiration, and the creative process behind it. Ian shares insights on his hands-on approach to album artwork and design, the importance of lyrics in storytelling, and the upcoming plans for Jethro Tull’s reissue program. Hear firsthand how old demos, world events, and personal reflection shaped the band’s latest music.
Whether you’re a lifelong Tull fan or discovering their progressive sound for the first time, this conversation offers a rare glimpse into the mind of one of rock’s most enduring and innovative artists.
Phil Aston (PA):
Hello and welcome to the Now Spinning Magazine podcast with me, Phil Aston, and on this episode, I’m delighted to have with me Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull. You’re just about to release a new album called Curious Ruminant, which is your literally third album in three years. It’s like the old days—it’s like the ’70s, an album every year!
Ian Anderson (IA):
Well, it’s three albums in four years, but if we actually look at the origins of the recordings, it stands quite a bit beyond that because the first of those three albums, The Zealot Gene, that began in 2017, I think. Yes, although it wasn’t released until 2022, partly because of the COVID hiccup. But, yes, in terms of release dates, it’s three albums in three and a half years, let’s say. So, yes, a bit busy, but not unusually busy—just back to the ’70s. You know, we were on tour a lot and would sandwich a new recording project in whenever we could.
And literally, it was really very stressful, because by the end of the ’70s there was quite a bit of burnout from all of us in terms of personal relationships, musical relationships, and it did take its toll a bit—just too much and too often. So things became a little more sporadic during the ’80s and ’90s. Although there have been lots of album releases during the ’90s and the new millennium, they were frequently solo albums. And of course the relatively new emphasis on reworking old catalog into remixes and surround sound mixes and box sets and so on, which is something, you know, I feel pretty good about doing, because it’s nice to have the feeling that your old, your back catalog, is being recognized and revered both by record companies—who actually have a tangible physical sale in which they can make a bit of profit, as opposed to streaming where none of us get anything other than a few pennies—and it’s an important part of fitting in the release-date schedules. You don’t want to release all these things in the same couple of months, because of course, people only have finite funds to spend. So you have to try and make sure that all your releases are set with a good six months between them.
And that, again, is one of the issues, as well as producing in vinyl these days, which means you—I mean, I finished the Curious Ruminant album… it was recorded in May and June, mostly in June and July, of last year. I did the mixing and mastering in August and into September, and then the surround sound mixes were done. All the album artwork had to be done and delivered in booklets of different formats. And then, having finished it, you wait for nine months because that’s the minimum time it’s going to take to actually get it manufactured and released. Sometimes it’s a year. We were lucky we jumped the queue a little bit, because Sony Records have enough clout. Sometimes some of their artists don’t deliver on time, so you manage to jump in, jump the queue a little bit, and get their slot for manufacturing.
But yes, it’s a long time to wait. It seems like an old album already. And when I get around to playing a couple of songs from it from April onwards this year, it will be like going back and relearning the music from something I recorded in 1968. It would present the same kind of challenge: to go back and think, “What notes am I playing here? How do I do this on stage in terms of changing from flute to guitar? Where am I going to be on the stage so the lighting director can program all the lights?” You have to start looking at the music in a completely different way when it comes to doing it live.
PA:
Do you, because I know that you’re very involved beyond the music in things like the cover design and stuff like that—were you involved in this the same? Did you have, you know, visually…?
IA:
Yes, I write every word in the 36-page booklet that goes with the deluxe pack, and do all the photography and the general layout. Fine-tuning of it all is done with a graphic artist in Germany, but he’s following some pretty detailed notes from me in terms of what goes on what page, what page is it, and so forth. So, yes, people come up with little ideas of their own. He came up with a couple of good ideas. A couple of other people in the record company said, “Well, how about doing this and how about doing that?”—just fine-tuning the images.
I’m always quite happy to hear other people’s constructive views, but it’s a lot of work to do, and it comes with part of delivering finished product to a record company so that I get a good deal when it comes to royalty rates. I’ve tended most of my recording life to have delivered finished product. I don’t like leaving it to the record company to come up with album artwork and designs, because it doesn’t always work well—it doesn’t always work for me, that’s the important thing.
There have been some occasions when it has been done and it’s been okay, and other occasions when I was disappointed with the end result and thought, “Next time, I’m going to exert a little bit more control.” As a result of having spent some time studying the visual arts in my early years—and photography for that matter—I hate being photographed, and I hate when you employ a photographer to come and do things. Sometimes it’s okay and sometimes it’s not so good. So I think when I’m doing the album artwork, I have a pretty clear idea of the images I’m looking for, and I go and try and find them, armed with my own professional equipment, a tripod, basic lighting as I might need it, to come up with the goods for the end result.
But it’s got to hang together; it’s got to feel like it belongs on the same album. And when you’ve got a lot of graphic and photographic material to put together, you want to try and make sure that it’s all hanging together and looks like it belongs on that album. So you’ve got to give it a certain stylistic sense of belonging.
PA:
This album feels like that. I’ve been lucky enough to have an advance listen to it, and it’s a wonderful album. I really, really love it. The way you’re talking about how you’re so involved with the visual aspect and the whole storytelling… there’s three tracks in particular, “Tío House,” “Savannah of the Paddington Green,” and “Stitched in Hand.” They flow next to each other on the album, and they remind me a bit of Baker St. Muse, that sort of storytelling. But my feeling this time—and I could be wrong—is that, where that was looking in from the outside of the storytelling in the lyrics, this feels more like you’re in the story. They do seem connected to each other lyrically.
IA:
They’re like little theater pieces. The three that you mentioned were all written actually within the same week, I think, in terms of lyrics and music ideas, and certainly recorded within the same two weeks, probably in the final part of the recording process. But I had to wait to finish them because they all involved input from the other guys in the band, and some of them were not available to come and do drums or do whatever they were doing at the time I wanted it.
Yes, although musically they perhaps have a slightly different feel from some other tracks, they do derive from my determination to put an acoustic guitar—well, a couple of different acoustic guitars and a mandolin—in front of me and say, “Right, I’m going to use these things for a change on these songs.” There’s quite a lot of acoustic guitar elsewhere on the album, just hanging in there as part of the arrangement, but in this case, I wanted it to be the instrument I was using to write the songs.
And the use of “I” and “me” in the lyrics of this album generally is intentional—that I make it more a reflection of my own feelings and viewpoints. Normally, most often in my songwriting career, I am a more observational writer. I don’t offer too much in the way of opinion about things; I’m just merely expressing in music, song, and lyrics a picture, often a very visual reference. It’s like a painting or a photograph, and I’m turning that into a piece of music and lyrics. It’s social realism; it’s looking at people in a landscape, but I’m not really offering too much of a personal viewpoint.
But on this album, mostly I am saying things from a more personal standpoint, which doesn’t make it a very intimate, heart-on-sleeve album, because in all but one track, the other guys in the band are all heavily involved. I know for a fact they never read the lyrics or listen to the lyrics anyway. I live in hope that they would be glued to read the lyrics and really want to understand what the song was about that they played on, but I’m pretty sure in most cases they don’t. The only cases when they do is when I say, “Can you sing the harmony in this line when we do it on stage?” Then they have to read at least part of the lyrics.
Socially speaking, I think a lot of musicians are like that. They just don’t do lyrics, even the singers of some songs… well, don’t really do lyrics. Jack Bruce didn’t write lyrics, Greg Lake didn’t write lyrics, yet they were prolific in terms of being musical creators and parts of groups that were very creative. But to get on stage and sing lyrics that somebody else has written—whether it was Pete Brown or Pete Sinfield in the case of Greg Lake—I find that a little weird that you could be there. Well, Elton John for that matter. A number of people sing somebody else’s words. I would find that pretty much impossible to do.
Having said that, I’ve done it—not on record, but in live performance. Mentioning Greg Lake, I do “I Believe in Father Christmas” as a tribute to him. John O’Hara and I think we played it with him on a couple of cathedral shows some years ago, not long before he died. So I do that one today as a sort of a little nod to Greg Lake. It’s a fine song.
PA:
I think the lyrics are very important, especially in your music, and especially on this album, because they’re not obvious. I love lines like “the day of books and roses shown firmly to the door.” Was that observational about the way people have kind of moved more to screens rather than books? Because I know you are an avid reader, a lover of taking in new knowledge as much as you possibly can.
IA:
Well, nice idea and nice question, but no. It comes from the tradition in that part of Spain of recognizing that lovers give each other gifts, tying in with what was a religious festival. A guy, most likely, will give a gift of roses to his girlfriend, and in return, she might give him a book as a gift. So this moment of romance between people, showing that spirit of romanticism and generosity—I’m using that as “shown firmly to the door” because so many people are concerned only with the immediate needs of life, growing up in poor circumstances, and being concerned only with either fun and games or trying to earn a living.
So it’s a song essentially about the slightly deprived circumstances of people growing up in an urban center, with children playing outside in the dusty, dirty place in front of a graffiti-covered house and under the shade of the Tío trees, which are grown usually in an urban context as shade in public parks or recreational spaces. It was based on knowledge, information, and some research to try and get it all to hang together. I then, having written the song and recorded it, had to find a photograph for the booklet that was going to be the Tío House. I actually found one right next to a hotel where I’ve stayed in Barcelona a few times. I spent ages on Google Street View and maps, looking for places not just in Spain but in lots of places, and finally came across this one. I zoomed in on it and went there and got some street photographs. Then I realized it was literally two minutes’ walk from the hotel I last stayed in when I was there.
PA:
The title track, which is one of my favorites—this one is about reading and trying to every day gain something new before you go to sleep. I know that one of the ways you’ve said before you like relaxing is watching the news and current affairs programs. I know for me personally, I can’t think of anything less relaxing than doing that at the moment. Does that still…? I know that kind of thing, what’s going on in the world, really inspires you. Is that still the case, or do you hold it at a distance sometimes?
IA:
It doesn’t very often directly inspire me. It’s more a morbid curiosity, but I do it because I like to know where we are today, as opposed to where we might have been 10 years ago, 50 years ago, or a thousand years ago. It’s putting it into the context of updating something that I have a longstanding interest in anyway. Like the song “Over Jerusalem,” I’m talking about 5,000 years of turbulent history and dreadful deeds of intolerance and retribution. You can get emotional about that, but if we’re talking about this week, then it all becomes far more poignant and worrisome.
…(Ian continues discussing current events, world affairs, historical context, etc.)…
But yes, it’s a mixture of me being a knowledge junkie and trying to put that knowledge into a broad context. It doesn’t always specifically feed into every song, because life can intervene and events change. But for something as longstanding as the Israeli–Arab conflict, you can be pretty sure it’s not going away.
PA:
One of the great unifiers is music, because it does bring people together beyond all borders, etc. And I think the epic from this album is “Drink from the Same Well,” which kind of has that feel: we’re all breathing the same air, we’re all on the same planet. But I think what I really love about it is the flute playing. It’s just beautiful—the first two minutes, and then it moves after two minutes into a different feel altogether, almost a question-and-answer between two flutes and the piano. It has an eastern Indian/Bengali/jazz type feel. I understand the origins of this song go back further—there were demos to start with. It’s 8 minutes before the vocals even appear; it’s beautiful.
IA:
It was a demo made back in 2007 for a musical idea to perform with the venerable, historic number one flute player of India, Hariprasad Chaurasia, who has collaborated a couple of times with Western artists like John McLaughlin, but he’s very much steeped in the traditions of classical Indian music with the bamboo flute. So I wrote this essentially for bamboo flute and the Western concert flute. I had the temerity to actually record the demo playing bamboo flute in the key he plays in, so it would be relatively easy for him to translate it into his nuance and style. But for whatever reason, he didn’t care to do that, so it remained a demo with just keyboards and my flute playing. It was a forgotten piece on a hard drive on an old computer, which my son was about to trash.
Before he did, he said, “Oh, there’s this track on here. Do you want me to keep it for any reason?” And I said, “What is it?” He said, “Well, it’s got a title of ‘Drink from the Same Well.’” I said, “I remember doing that. Send it to me.” So he did, ran off a fader-up mix, and I listened to it and thought, “Well, that’s too good, in terms of my flute playing, to not let people hear.” So it was actually the first thing I started working on for the new album. I recorded guitars and added bass and drums and cajón. I kept all of Andrew Giddings’s original keyboard part, rearranged it, wrote lyrics and a vocal melody, and that was that—completed.
It didn’t exactly set the tone in terms of making it a concept album, but it set the mood for something a bit more reflective and personal in terms of viewpoint.
PA:
How does that tie in with you describing yourself as a “destructive recording engineer”? Because obviously, in the ’70s, you had a record label saying, “You’ve got two days left; this is how much it’s costing you.” But now, there’s nothing to stop you doing 65 different takes, so do you personally have a discipline in deciding, “That’s the one. That’s what I can hear in my head, and I’m done”?
IA:
Yes, I hate having extraneous second- or third-grade versions of something—whether it’s a line of music, an improvised guitar solo, flute, or whatever. As soon as I hear them and think it’s not good enough, I delete it. I don’t want to be cluttered with additional audio files I’m not going to use. So I hit the delete button. In fact, the way I record things is like recording on analog tape. If I go back and drop into a certain point to create a new passage, it automatically deletes what I did before. I’m making decisions as a record producer all the time. I don’t regret anything I’ve wiped, because I can’t remember it—and I know it wasn’t good enough if I deleted it.
I end up with what I end up with, and that’s usually going to be on the final mix. The advantage of digital recording is that I can set everything up, memorize it, and keep putting it into the context of how I want to hear the end result as a stereo mix. By the time I finish all the recording and overdubs, it’s just a matter of three hours of fine-tuning balances and effects. Generally, the mix is already laid out in terms of stereo positioning of instruments and relative levels, so once I do that final tweak, it’s done.
PA:
I’m sure some archivist somewhere would love the outtakes for a special deluxe set! I have just a couple more questions. There’s one piece, “Interim Sleep,” which is only two and a half minutes long. But I have to say, Ian, when I heard it for the first time, it almost brought tears to my eyes because of how it made me feel inside. It’s like a poem. This might sound strange, but it’s almost like one of those short spiritual passages you hear sung sometimes in a church or cathedral. The lyrics are obviously about loss, but it’s not depressing. It’s very uplifting and reassuring. It feels really special and comforting.
IA:
Well, that’s exactly what it is. It’s offering comfort to the bereaved, and I guess I’m putting myself in that imaginary scenario of being the person who is about to die or has just died, offering some comfort to a loved one—a family member, a wife—that this is not the end. This isn’t an original thought; it’s been done before. But I try to use my own words to talk about the conviction that death is not final, that there’s the prospect of meeting again in a future life.
So I do that in the sense of, when the time comes for the bereaved person to pass on… we glibly use that phrase “pass on,” which suggests there’s something after. “Snuff it,” on the other hand, is a bit more like, “That’s it.” But “pass on” implies there’s something else afterwards. The idea that you’ll somehow meet and spiral down like two birds in the sky into the twinkling lights of a railway station. You dispense with the baggage of your previous life, board the next train, and begin another journey.
I did two versions of that. I did one where I sang the lyrics and one where I spoke them. I listened to them both and hit the delete button on the sung version because it became too contrived once it was a defined melody. The spoken word gave it more of a quiet authority, I think—the reassurance that the piece is supposed to offer.
PA:
It’s your voice coming from the room next door, almost as if you’re whispering through space and time. Finally, before we go, I just want to congratulate you on the way you’ve managed the reissue program. A lot of what I do is about how people love the big book editions, the design, the level of detail—whether it’s this one I picked up randomly, where not only do we hear about the album, we get mention of the string quartet and what they were doing at the time.
IA:
I have a hand in all of this, but it’s important to remember that the bulk of the work is actually done by record company people. In some cases, it was Warner Music when they owned the rights—the half of EMI that went to Warner is the bit that I’m on. So Warner now have these rights, and EMI had the foresight and passion to do these box sets, starting off with the earliest ones where Steven Wilson was doing the remixing, and then the more recent times with Warner, notably Living in the Past, which is the next one to come out. Following that, the Under Wraps album is now being discussed in terms of how we go about replacing the electronic drums of the original in the alternative mixes and surround mixes.
These things continue, and it’s not like squeezing blood from a stone; they’re there because of the respect and value placed on the historic catalog of artists who are either dead or will be soon! It’s reassuring for both the fans and the artists, or their estate, that there’s a kind of reverence attached to this. As a process, you’re trying to give people a bigger picture of something that might have originally been just a vinyl album, and now you’ve got several different ways of listening or watching it, and a lot to read.
I don’t write all of the material; I’m intensively interviewed and read all the material, maybe have some editorial stance, but it is done by other people who have taken on that challenge as devotees of music, not only representing Jethro Tull—they are people who are passionate about music in a broader sense, passionate about writing about it, or putting together these lavish box sets.
With a new album, like the one that’s going to come out soon, it starts off as did the last couple, because the box set version is part of what’s immediately on sale—the deluxe box with a vinyl record, a Blu-ray disc, the big 36-page book with photographs and text. I do all of that, in terms of the last three albums—the artwork, the presentation. That’s part of delivering finished product. And we’re talking about all these different formats, including surround sound and Dolby Atmos, which I don’t do personally, because I don’t have the equipment or skills, but I pass it along to Bruce Soord of The Pineapple Thief, the mix engineer for the 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos, effectively 11.1. That’s for those relatively few folks who have that equipment in their living room, which I certainly don’t!
Anyway, yes, it’s all very much part of it, and something I take pride in. I hope fans who buy these sets feel they have something they can treasure that sits on the bookshelf.
PA:
Exactly, it all looks fantastic on a bookshelf. And finally, the tour coming up: you start on February 17 and go right across Europe. I guess it’s a set list that covers your entire career?
IA:
Well, from April on, there’s a big change in the set list. We will include some material from the new album and a lot of songs we haven’t played for several years, some of which certain band members have never played at all. So we have rehearsal dates for March and plan to begin in April. In fact, I just signed off yesterday on a UK tour for 2026.
(…Ian discusses how far in advance tours are planned, venues, deposits, etc.…)
Concert live music is very much in demand, which is good. But availability is always a challenge.
PA:
Indeed. I need to let you go—I’ve taken up so much of your time already. Thank you, Ian.
IA:
All righty. Same to you!
PA (closing):
A huge thank you to my guest Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull—that was amazing. I’ve been a fan for decades, so the fact that I’ve just talked to the great man himself is absolutely incredible. I hope you really enjoyed it. The album Curious Ruminant is out on March 7. This podcast and this video will be around for a lot longer than that, so as you watch this, some of you are already listening to it, aren’t you? But I think it’s one of Jethro Tull’s finest albums. Lyrically, they are like little stories for the mind. Some of the tracks, especially the one I mentioned, “Interim Sleep,” is one of the most moving pieces of musical wordology I’ve ever heard. It’s absolutely wonderful. And of course, you’ve got that giant classic track, about 16 minutes long—it’s absolutely wonderful.
Remember, music is the healer and the doctor. Take care, all of you, and I’ll talk to you all very, very soon.
Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine
