A frontman with a flute? I wonder if he’d subconsciously stored an idea of Dixie, the old Blackpool tramp, sat outside RHO Hills playing his harmonica? The full impact of that image, which many of us Blackpool kids had of the sad old vagrant, fully manifested itself on Aqualung the band’s 1971 meisterwerk. Famously our Ian decided that he wasn’t going to play the guitar like Eric Clapton so what could he do? On a whim, he traded his electric guitar for a flute thinking no rock bands at the time had a flute player.
The original line-up was comprised of schoolmates rehearsing in front rooms quietly trying to perform soul and blues standards.
Anderson had met John Evan at the same school some eight years previously and the idea of a band was first mooted. When Tull were in the top ten in 1969 with Living In The Past I remembered our Latin master at Blackpool Grammar School eulogising about the days he taught Ian Anderson.I was only aware of pop music as something ace that came out of the radio or Top Of The Pops back then. I felt like an older brother had given me his blessing and went about my drunken session with mates dining out on the story. Of course he never did, but I felt pretty chuffed that a big famous rock star had a minute or two for a kid like me. He said hello, asked where I was going even said he’d pop round. When I was a young protest singer walking down the street in Blackpool in 1975 with a guitar in hand I spied a long haired man polishing a car. Bob whispered ”Oh really? Where?” Anderson replied, “It’s called Surrey”. Anderson said he’d bought a little place outside of London. When Bob Harris was interviewing Anderson at the height of Tull fame in the 70s he asked him where he was living.
I don’t want this piece to be rock crit stuff.It’s more personal than that.
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