Ian Anderson Quotes

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Ian Anderson

Profession : Musician

Birth : August 10, 1947

Most of what I've written songs about are things that come out of the confusing emotional, spiritual and psychological period of time when you're going through puberty.

Ian Anderson

I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute.

Ian Anderson

I think we always view people who make us feel uncomfortable and appear to intrude on our middle-class cozy space, we view them with, if not hostility, at least suspicion, discomfort, embarrassment.

Ian Anderson

The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.

Ian Anderson

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

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

Touring is what you make it. I like to organise as much as possible myself.

Ian Anderson

Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim.

Ian Anderson

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

If you're gonna use simile, analogy, metaphor, be descriptive and have some flowery adjectives and a few odd nouns and some engaging bits of dialogue or sentiment, then you're sort of writing a novel, really. But rock lyrics are not really known for their sophistication.

Ian Anderson

Most people, from their second album on, find it much harder to be as spontaneously creative as they were with their first couple of records, and some people only have one thing that they do.

Ian Anderson

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

Writing lyrics is part spontaneous, intuitive and part really thought through and carefully analyzed as you write it. It's a mixture of two approaches, and I imagine writing anything is like that, really. Some of it just flows, and you just go with it.

Ian Anderson

I've always felt that some of my best lyrics are less than three minutes long, and it's great when you can do that - be succinct and get the message across in a simple, clear idea.

Ian Anderson

A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.

Ian Anderson

I was always more interested in the ultimate live performance rather than the recording for its own sake. And, for the audience too, that thrill of - just being there.

Ian Anderson

I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.

Ian Anderson

It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose.

Ian Anderson

Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.

Ian Anderson

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