What does it take to play guitar for Jethro Tull? It’s a fair question, so we asked the man in charge—who’s out front with a flute and, sometimes, one of his rare, vintage Martin acoustic guitars—one Mr. Ian Anderson.
And he gave it to us straight. First up, the 77-year-old tells Guitar Player, “I don’t think I would want to have a guitar player whose sole interest and influence was Black, American folk music.”
That checks out, given that this is the same fella who penned “Aqualung” and “Locomotive Breath,” which saw him handle the bulk of the rock tune’s guitar duties with a Les Paul But early Tull recordings—specifically the ones with Mick Abrahams, who went on to form the blues-laden Blodwyn Pig—were, well, bluesy, though Anderson notoriously clashed with Abrahams over that sound.
“You might call it the blues,” Anderson says. “But to me, it’s cultural misappropriation.”
As for what that means in layperson's terms, Anderson says: “I am not Black. I am not of the cultural background or experience of a Black American. I love to listen, and still do today, occasionally listen to some of the great Black American blues artists that I grew up with as a teenager; it was an opening of the door for me.”
History dictates that Anderson saw to it that Abrahams made his way out of Tull, leading to Tony Iommi’s brief pre-Sabbath stead. That didn’t work either, but soon, Martin Barre came along, and his open-minded approach did. “Musically speaking,” Anderson says. “I used the blues to open doors into the music business and to be able to get an audience… and a record deal.”
“I never felt that’s what I wanted to do with my life,” he says. “So, the guitar influence in Jethro Tull went toward European classical music, and obviously, English, Scottish, and Irish folk music. That’s the way I saw the band from 1969 onward.”
Anderson feels so strongly about the anti-blues guitar approach inherent in Tull’s prog-rock soup that he goes as far as to say that “for Jethro Tull to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is missing the point, really, because that’s the celebration of all the great music in America. I don’t feel we’re really that way. Not much of what we’ve done is influenced by American music.”
Post-Abrahams fallout, and after Iommi skipped out on him to form Black Sabbath and essentially found heavy metal music, and despite the fact that Martin Barre was nothing short of an iconic tone hound of the highest order, Anderson has kept a lowkey stranglehold on Tull’s guitar-related actives in the modern day, which includes keeping a watchful eye over Florian Opahle, Joe Parrish, and now, Jack Clark.
Asked if he goes as far as to tell his guitarists, such as current Tull six-stringer Jack Clark, what to play, and when, Anderson shrugs: “Well, they’re not writing the songs. They’re coming up with parts and some improvised solos based on what I outline to them.”
That kinda, sorta sounds like Anderson tells his guitarists what to play, but he says it’s not that simple. “The outline might be a starting point for their approach,” he says. “As a record producer, I have to draw from something that is cohesive and works with the song.”
He explains: “So, I will give them, in varying degrees, some input to help them along the way. Maybe I’ll show them something in rehearsal, or they’ll send me a demo as an email attachment, and I listen to what they’re thinking, and we fine-tune it to get the right result.”
That sounds a little murky if not altogether controlling, but Anderson insists that “95% of what Jack does straight away is usable, and the right thing.” He adds, "It’s usually the right thing for the record and the way that I think it should be.”
Still, given Anderson's level of oversight within the Jethro Tull universe and the depth of his songsmith, one wonders why Anderson doesn’t play most of the guitars himself. But as it turns out, on the band’s latest record, 2025’s Curious Ruminant, Anderon put down his flute (at times) and picked up his trusty six-string.
“The guitar is obviously a very important instrument in the band,” he says. “Alongside the instrument I’m most well-known for, which is the flute! That interaction between the very, perhaps, shrill, bird-like quality of the flute and more sonorous, full-on chordal guitar stuff is the starting point for how people see our songs.”
Speaking on the matter of his own playing, Anderson reveals: “I would probably describe our music as ‘acoustic music,” which is nearly always me. Whether it’s Thick as a Brick or this new album, if it’s an acoustic guitar, it’s me playing it.”
But don’t expect Anderson to try to imitate Martin Barre or replace Jack Clark anytime soon. “I think of myself as a guitar player,” he says. “But I’m not a soloist. I’m not an upfront, flashy player. I am there when I need to play a part, sometimes, in an acoustic context.”
“It’s just me and the guitar,” he says. “Though sometimes, it’s me, my guitar, and the rest of the band being well-behaved and not too noisy. [laughs] That’s the way it works. And the guitar I tend to play is quite an old guitar: a C.F. Martin from around 1880. It’s a small-bodied, nylon-string guitar. I take a lot of pleasure in having an instrument that’s that old and letting it have a voice in something that’s from the new millennium.”
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