{"id":805946,"date":"2020-04-01T14:20:38","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T20:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=976708"},"modified":"2020-04-01T14:20:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T20:20:38","slug":"social-distancing-with-jethro-tulls-ian-anderson-face-masks-farming-and-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/social-distancing-with-jethro-tulls-ian-anderson-face-masks-farming-and-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Distancing With Jethro Tull\u2019s Ian Anderson: Face Masks, Farming and Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As the world fights a pandemic, we reached out to some of our favorite artists with three questions about these unprecedented times. Here\u2019s what Ian Anderson<\/a> of Jethro Tull<\/a>, who is currently in the midst of rescheduling tour dates, had to say.<\/p>\n

What are you doing with your unexpected time at home?<\/strong>
I\u2019m actually really busy because we are in the process of rescheduling all of our shows. In terms of manpower and hours, it\u2019s probably taking twice as long as it took to set up the shows in the first place.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fortunate, you know \u2014 I can understand this would probably annoy a lot of people, understandably, who are locked down in the apartment or the city-dwelling with nowhere to go. I\u2019m in touch with a lot of them friends and acquaintances and other musicians who simply can\u2019t leave their homes. I\u2019m fortunate to live in the countryside; we live on a working farm. So, we have a few hundred acres of fields of woodlands and no shortage of space to enjoy the hopefully imminent spring. So, that breaks up the day \u2014 taking the dogs for a walk or taking the cat for a walk and generally enjoying where I live.<\/p>\n

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I suppose it\u2019s given me the opportunity to think about how lucky I am and not to take for granted that I live in a nice house in this part of the world. I\u2019m learning to appreciate it perhaps in a way that I don\u2019t usually do when I\u2019m constantly jumping to drive to the airport and jet off to somewhere else to do my work. So, this is a good time to be a little more reflective.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s the opportunity to really renew close bonds with family and friends. Just before I sat down to call you, my wife called me over because she\u2019d had an email from an American actor called Norman Reedus who sent a video of his little baby saying how they were all well and hoping we were well, too. A lot of people you don\u2019t normally hear from are suddenly on the phone or sending an email checking on how you are. I\u2019ve done the same thing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a mixture of saying, well, yeah, you know, the world is a better place if you look at certain aspects of society. We are generally speaking more supportive of each other. We\u2019re certainly reducing our global carbon footprint by a big, big margin. So, there\u2019s a lot of positive things out there. We are learning to do without public transport. We learning, I think, in a very positive way that we can carry on without necessarily taking for granted the unfortunate effects of too many people on a smaller planet with finite resources. That\u2019s the bottom line.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to play the blame game, but you know, we should be also learning about the perils of eating stuff that had a face on it. The ridiculous reliance on flesh-eating, which is so prevalent. I am not a strict vegetarian or a vegan, but most of what I eat probably comes under the vegan classification, just because I like that stuff.<\/p>\n

You know, it\u2019s not my business to tell you what to eat, not my business to tell you how many babies to have. But I would like people to try to work it out for themselves, come to their own conclusions and think responsibly about themselves, their children, their grandchildren, their neighbors. And those of us who share this finite and fragile resource, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink. People have to come to responsible conclusions themselves.<\/p>\n

What music do you turn to in times of crisis for solace and comfort, and why?<\/strong>
I\u2019m not really a music listener; it\u2019s what I do. I think if I was a 747 pilot, I would probably not fly 747s on the weekends. I tend to listen to music sometimes on an airplane because I\u2019m a nervous flyer\u2026 so I wouldn\u2019t make a very good captain of a 747. But it\u2019s kind of, you know, musical aspirin to keep my mind off what\u2019s going on around me.<\/p>\n

I stopped listening to music in my early twenties, just because I thought I\u2019ve heard enough. I think you get the point, you know, when you\u2019re traveling around \u2014 especially as I did around the USA so often and for so long \u2014 hearing incessant music in hotel lobbies, in elevators and cars and buses, the constant sound of popular and rock music. When you do it yourself for about four hours a night \u2014 intense musical experience, that \u2014 [that\u2019s] your sensible ration of musical noise in any one day. If I do listen to music, it tends to be mostly classical music. Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, interspersed occasionally with ZZ Top.<\/p>\n

What about books or films?<\/strong>
Well, I read a lot, you see, and I read a lot of topical stuff in terms of politics and current affairs. Occasionally, I read a novel, you know, for entertainment, something that is fiction. But the reality is at the moment the days fly by because I\u2019m really very busy trying to sort out our 2012 tour.<\/p>\n

I was talking to my American agent last night and he said, \u201cI\u2019ve got 750 shows I\u2019m trying to rebook for the artist I represent. I\u2019ve got artists who are telling me, \u2018Oh, can we reschedule to October?’\u201d<\/p>\n

And he said, \u201cIf that\u2019s what they desperately want to do, that\u2019s what I will try to do. But I really want to tell them to reschedule to March or April in 2021 because you\u2019ll only have to reschedule tour yet again.\u201d<\/p>\n

My own gut feeling is that you\u2019d be very, very optimistic to reschedule anything in the later months of this year. If you\u2019re going to do it, you don\u2019t want to keep doing it, because that will piss people off.<\/p>\n

Anything else you want to say to your fans right now?<\/strong>
Well, there\u2019s a lot of people in the world of entertainment, pain-in-the-ass people, who come out with really tacky videos saying all the obvious things. I personally think my fans are too intelligent to want to receive a video of me sitting in a bathtub telling them how I\u2019m feeling great and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n

Of course, I am. No one will imagine for a minute that I\u2019m not well protected, well looked after. I bought my face mask four years ago; I have an underlying respiratory disease. I always have to face masks in my hand luggage; this is nothing new for me. Face masks are common sense.<\/p>\n

We tend to be a little hostile about people wearing face masks. And I can understand why. But hopefully, once frontline medical workers and hospital staff and care home staff are suitably equipped with adequate face masks, they will become much more available to the general public.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the advice that you were getting in your country until yesterday. You were being told that face masks are a waste of time. Don\u2019t bother having them. The reason in part, I think, is both your government and our government realized there were not enough face mounts to go around to the people who really need them. I think we should be always told the truth. It may cause momentary panic, but I think most of us are much more resilient than that. Give us the truth.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a cautious supporter of the Gaia theory. The idea that the planet behaves almost as if it was a living organism. And I rather like that, that uniformity of everything. Everything that lives in a precarious world, we\u2019re all interconnected. We\u2019re all part of a global life form that goes beyond how many eyes you\u2019ve got or how many legs you\u2019ve got. We\u2019re all part of that great living mess that is planet Earth. I\u2019m quite attracted to the idea that the planet is almost self-regulating.<\/p>\n

This is the time for reflection. I think people should invest in understanding and learning to handle the truth. And the truth is not pretty, but in a way, you know, I\u2019m an eternal optimist. I think we will get through this, but I hope we\u2019ve learned some positive lessons along the way and that a year or two years from now that we look back on this and say, \u201cHey, you know, let\u2019s continue to curb our relentless consumption of resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the world fights a pandemic, we reached out to some of our favorite artists with three questions about these unprecedented times. Here\u2019s what Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, who is currently in the midst of rescheduling tour dates, had to say. What are you doing with your unexpected time at home?I\u2019m actually really busy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 13:54:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}