Who: Jethro Tull
When: Tuesday, April 30, at 8 p.m.
Where: Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
How Much: Call 828.259.5544

So this Ian Anderson guy calls me the other day. You might know him. He’s an odd little chap. His trademark is perching on one leg while puffing on a flute with more vigor than Pan with rabies. Some call him rock-n-roll’s antihero, an acoustic musician surrounded by the electric pulse of his band, Jethro Tull.

Of course, Ian can play more than the flute, he is capable on many stringed instruments (six-string, mandolin), and his ability to change night after night is probably why Jethro Tull still captivates audiences in its fifth decade together.

Jethro Tull (which took its name from the 18th-century English farmer who invented the seed drill) was formed in late 1967 in the Southern English town of Luton, Bedfordshire. By March 1968, the group had become a sensation in London’s underground music scene. Tull was different from other regional bands of the time (Clapton, the Yardbirds) because of frontman Anderson. Here was a guy who wore a huge scruffy coat onstage and liked to have his alarm clock go off during one of his band member’s guitar solos. Odd, yes, but no one could deny his charisma or showmanship.

And he has always been the bull’s eye of attention. The performers with him were (and still are) a talented bunch, and the creative process of every album has always been communal. But, when you think of Tull classics like “Aqualung” and “Thick as a Brick,” you think Ian Anderson.

“Aqualung” — which in its 30th year was honored with full articles by Rolling Stone and the Chicago Sun -Times — is still as resonant as it was in 1971. Anderson wrote these songs in a period where everything seemed to be falling apart (insurmountable debt, studio pressure, harsh critics, and the sacking of their bass player, Glenn Cornick). He took all the lyrics from periods in his boyhood, and the end result was the masterpiece that still lingers in ears and radio waves across the world.

It was Ian’s masterpiece, and it was essentially when Anderson took over creative control of the band. The next offering was “Thick as a Brick” (a concept album in reaction to critics who incorrectly thought “Aqua-lung” was a concept album), which cemented Tull as a rock band with cerebral intentions as well as being a band that could sell out stadiums.

Thirty years have gone by, and Jethro Tull can still entertain, thanks to their proclivity for improv, and Anderson’s appetite for new sounds (Tull fanatics should check out his 2001 solo acoustic release, “The Secret Language of Birds.”) They’ve toured incessantly — although Ian was slowed down in 1996 with DVT (deep vein thrombosis) — and the 2002 tour looks like a schedule for wily bands half their age. Their new CD, “Living With the Past” (which coincides with their April 30th Asheville date) captures Jethro Tull in an array of performances and arrangements. In addition to classic songs recorded at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, the CD features an acoustic home session and a one-time only club reunion of the group’s original 1968 line-up.

The DVD, which will be released in May, shows videos of Ian’s guest performances with Fairport Convention and Uriah Heep, photographs by the band members, backstage footage, and a virtual ticket window that allows the user to experience a song from any seat at the Hammersmith Odeon.

Despite the onset of a mega tour, Anderson found time in his frenzied schedule to ramble (“you’ve got anywhere from 3 and a half minutes to 30 minutes,” he told me). He is definitely an interesting fellow, and his sharp tongue and parched wit are a reporter’s dream (even though I had the feeling that a dim-witted question could raise a tempest). Luckily, I got Ian in all his eccentric glory:

SMN: I want to start with your new release, “Living With the Past.” First, how did you select what was going to be on the CD? Was it an autocratic decision, or did everybody have a say so in the decision making?

I.A.: Well it wasn’t so much the guys in the band. They tend to leave these things up to me. But the record company, because of the DVD coming out in May, discussed it with everyone. Part of the CD comes from the DVD soundtrack material and others we took from live performances from concert, radio, and television from the last few years. We tried to make the CD a bit different, so that the real fans that buy both aren’t getting a CD that they’ve already heard on the DVD.

SMN: I liked the acoustic home session on the CD. It had to be nice considering your recent acoustic release of “The Secret Language of Birds.” Was this home session a direct result of your work with “Birds”?

I.A.: Not really. I am an acoustic musician. That’s what I’ve been doing all these years — playing in a rock band with an acoustic instrument like the flute, acoustic guitar, or playing the mandolin, and the other things I’ve been playing since 1968. It’s perfectly normal for me to be playing in that context, but most of the time what I’m playing with Jethro Tull is rock music. And it’s just that I’m usually surrounded by a noisy electric guitar.

SMN: What kind of feelings did you have performing a club reunion with the original 1968 band?

I.A.: It was very odd for me. Although I’ve played with two of those three guys on and off again over the years, being onstage with the four of us together for the first time in 33 years was quite strange. We just played through the music once and then went to camera without a lot of elaborate rehearsal. The guys had done their homework, they listened to the three songs we were going to play. It didn’t necessarily [laughs] come flooding back, but they certainly worked out what the parts were. It was very interesting to do. But it was odd.

SMN: Lack of chemistry?

I.A.: Well, yes. It’s familiarity and the unfamiliarity together. It’s people that you know, but you’re just not used to that musical combination. People are idiosyncratic in the way they play. All the little subtleties make it all very different. You have to find a way to settle down very quickly and understand that subtle relationship that goes beyond words. There is no way to describe something you actually feel, something you intuitively respond with another. It’s either going to happen or it isn’t.

SMN: Live performances: What kind of classic songs really still carry resonance with you?

I.A.: Probably about a hundred of them. Out of 250-odd Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson solo pieces, there’s probably about a hundred that I’m still real happy to play. But [laughs] not all at the same time and not all on the same night. We move the songs around from tour to tour. Songs come and go from the setlists, and sometimes the songs get radically changed.

SMN: It has to be liberating to be able to change constantly and have this improvisation in your set.

I.A..: Well improvisation is an important ingredient in Jethro Tull’s music. It’s not that we jam everything. There are a lot of set pieces, and a lot of written tightly controlled arrangements. But within those is a lot of room for individuals to improvise. That keeps it interesting for everyone onstage because we don’t have to play the same notes every night.

SMN: I read that before and after shows you like to be alone. Why is this important?

I.A.: “Because I’m not very friendly [laughter from interviewer]. And I don’t feel very rock-n-roll most of the time, so I’m not really one for hanging out with the guys. I like the peaceful preparation for doing a concert. I like to have my instruments with me. I don’t let anybody else touch them. My guitars go in and out of their cases. My flutes get polished. It’s me who does it. I don’t ask them to hold my willy when I go to the bathroom and I don’t ask them to take my flute out of its case. There is a very emotional and close tie you have with your instrument. It’s something like a ritual, it’s something you do, and you don’t let other people near.

That’s in sharp contrast to most rock bands because they basically have servants. They have these ... creatures who get the guitars, change the strings, polish them, put them onstage, plug them in, do soundcheck for them. The musicians just huddle up five minutes before the show and get onstage and play.

Sound check is important for the musicians and me so we can understand the venue’s sound, to anticipate problems, and to get used to the size of the stage. These are things I think you need to be there in person to deal with. I need to be there. I need to soak up the atmosphere of the venue. If it’s some old art deco theater from the ‘20s, I want to walk around it. I want to go up and sit in the circle of the balcony and get a feel of the 80 years of history. I need to know what spirits and souls have passed through there and what music and entertainment has floated off that stage.

SMN: I want to go back to your past a little bit. First off, when Jethro Tull began its surge in 1968, why did you decide it was important for you to shy away from being labeled a blues band?

I.A.: When I was 16, I would have killed to be in a blues band. I grew up listening to black American blues — Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Sonny Terry, John Lee Hooker and all those guys. By the time I was 18 and beginning to play music in clubs, I realized that being in a blues band was not easy, because that’s not what people wanted to listen to. They wanted to listen to pop and soul music. For the next couple of years, in order to be a musician, I had to play that other stuff. In 1967-68, (I was 19-20 at the time) blues did become a meaningful commercial reality, at least in the South of England. Jethro Tull was able to form and play as a blues band in those clubs. By then, I suppose I had other tastes in music. I enjoyed blues then and I enjoy it now. But I wasn’t black and I wasn’t American. So I fail on two counts of being authentic. Maybe that isn’t important, but it seemed important to me. I didn’t really feel I could do blues justice. I wanted to try and infuse elements of blues stylings and blues improvisations with something that was a bit more true to my own background. So folk music and classical music became part of the soup I brewed up. I try to get these other flavors, stir them up together, and try and find something a bit more eclectic. Something that would reflect my interest in other music forms. And I started doing that in 1968, which really brought about the end of Jethro Tull as it was. Mick Abrahams, who was the original guitar player, was a blues guitar player. He didn’t want to, nor could he, play anything else. Songs I was writing in 1968 were difficult to convey to Mick, who didn’t really get them. By the end of 1968, Mick was in one place, and the rest of the band was somewhere else. So we replaced Mick with Martin Barre [Barre is still performing with the present lineup of Jethro Tull].

Martin was not a great guitar player, but he was more of an open mind. He was like me. He had an interest in other kinds of music. He was kind of like a blank page, on which I could write my ideas, and he was very eager and worked hard to try and develop his playing. By the time we made “Stand Up” (in 1969), we had a pretty good idea that Jethro Tull could be something more than a blues band.

SMN: I want to talk about your persona during 1968-1969. You used to wear onstage a heavy Dunfermline Curling Club Blazer that your father had given you, and you had invented a device called the claghorn...

I.A.: It was an instrument I had made from a cheap sort of Indian bamboo flute, the mouthpiece of a saxophone and the end of a child’s plastic toy trumpet. I sort of taped these things together with duct tape and it made this godforsaken dreadful sound, kind of like a wounded animal. It was really out of tune and awful, but it had a ruckus, sort of exciting sound. It was only played on one particular piece of music, called ‘Dharma for One.’ It was a short-lived instrument. It fell apart and it was never to be seen again.

SMN: I also read that you had an alarm clock go off during guitar solos ...

I.A.: I used to have it go off sometime during the set, no one ever knew when. We’d be onstage and the alarm would be ringing, and I would rummage through my bag and switch it off. I did it partly because back then blues bands were terribly serious. They were kind of purists. I like to kind of mess around and make people laugh, or at least disrupt. If someone looked too serious, I liked to shake it up a little.

SMN: Do you like to portray this prankster persona anymore?

I.A.: [Laughs] Yes, but I don’t want to be taken the wrong way. I’m 53. I’m not 20 years old anymore. I can’t play the pranks I used to. It would be unseemly of a gentleman of my vintage [laughter on both sides ] to be tossing sanitary towels in the audience anymore.

SMN: Rolling Stone Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times both revisited “Aqualung” (with glowing reviews) last year. Why do you think there’s still a fascination with an album that’s 30 years old?

I.A.: Well, the title track was about something that’s not historical. It’s not about wearing flowers in your hair in San Francisco circa 1966. It’s about homeless people. That’s a phenomena of today, yesterday, and tomorrow as well. It’s a song that’s timeless, and it’s about the guilt, fear, and admiration for the folks who choose to live apart form society. I think they choose because it seems that many of them do have an element of choice. It doesn’t apply to everybody, but there are folks who live the life of homeless people, but with a kind of dignity because they have made that choice.

There was very good movie with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges called “The Fisher King.” That Williams character came alive, and in a sense my emotions came alive much like Jeff Bridges [his character tries to aid Williams homeless persona] — the emotion of distaste and guilt, and companionship. For me, it was very resonant of ‘Aqualung.’”

SMN: You aren’t the usual ‘VH-1 behind- the-story’ rock soap opera icon. When you wrote “Aqualung,” you wrote it from personal boyhood experiences, and not the usual plights of drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. You were 23 at the time when you wrote “Aqualung,” which is from stories of your teen years. How were you able to write accurately about the throes of puberty?

I.A.: A lot of the ideas from the songs, at least from the first three or four albums, were things that came out of my growth years. Songs like ‘My God’ and ‘Windup’ expressed my feelings when I was 14. It’s a very powerful time in your life, all the things you go through and all those things you learn and all those frustrations you lash out at. Powerful chemicals are coursing through your veins at that time. Ideas, philosophies and dreams are all very powerful, and they are all indelibly etched upon your psyche. Then I got to the point in my early 20s where I was able to write this stuff down and put it forward in terms of something creative or entertaining. It’s easy to summon those times. They’re not that far away, and they come flooding back very quickly and authentically in terms of subject material.

But it would be harder for me to do now because I’m a whole lot older. It would be difficult to write a song that accurately reflected my teenage years. But I could write a song through the eyes of somebody else. I’m more of an observational writer now.

SMN: Kind of like a visual artist?

I.A.: Very much so. That’s what I began studying before I became a musician. I was a studying to be a painter, most of my references seem to be quite pictorial. I do try and make songs about visual things. When I’m stage, I’m providing a picture, or a soundtrack to a movie, or the soundtrack to a still picture, or a photograph, or a painting. It’s important to have that reference there because it gives the song some vitality and credibility. I’m not just not singing abstract words or noises.

SMN: This is my last question. I want to read an excerpt from a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone. You said, “I remember seeing ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in 1968 and thinking, ‘God, I wonder where we’ll be in 2001?’ In a strange way, ‘68 having been the year we started, 2001 might be a good time for Jethro Tull to play its last concert. You’ve got time for Jethro Tull to play its last concert. You’ve got every chance of playing until you’re as old as Muddy Waters was — it’s just those of us who, perhaps unwisely, chose a more athletic way of performing music who are really in for a rough final few years.’ Well, Ian, it’s 2002 and you’re still going strong. What do you have to say for yourself?

I.A.: Well it’s one more year [laughs] than I thought would be the case. It’s about the physicality of it. The spirit’s more than willing. The body, however, feels the passing of time. Right at the moment, I’m in fine shape for the next year or five or 10. Of course, this time next year, or next week, I could have fallen prey to some dreadful illness. A couple of guys in the band have had some serious question marks over their careers in the last few months. Martin Barre has to have surgery straight after tour and that was career-threatening. It worked out, but it might not have. That’s one of the reasons we recorded the DVD because he knew he was facing the prospect of not being able to play again. The surgery’s not guaranteed, but he seems to be doing fine, and he’s playing every day. He’s fine, or so he tells me. I’ll find out that next week [laughter]. Drummer Don Perry had some serious illnesses last year that could have had surgical outcomes, but he’s gotten away with it and he’s in good spirits.

With all of us, it’s happens in every walk of life, particularly where you’re a sportsman, or a musician, or doing something where there’s a danger of repetitive strain type injuries. The good news is what I’ve not had yet is any problem either playing guitar or the flute. Playing the flute’s weird because you adopt a strange posture. But, so far so good. I haven’t had any kind of stresses and strains as a flute player. It’s been so far event free. When I’m not on tour, I try and play flute regularly, but not everyday ... and probably only for a few minutes. I don’t completely get out of touch with the instrument, but I don’t practice, practice, practice. I think there are times when you have to let your muscles do different things. It’s good to let your muscles relearn and let them do something different for awhile ...

SMN: Like building a claghorn...

I.A.: Yes, but preferably in someone else’s backyard.