Jethro Tull’s frontman Ian Anderson has no doubt what he is most famous for. He describes himself as “the guy who stands in the middle playing the flute while standing on one leg”.
But this isn’t something he ever planned on doing. It just sort of happened.
When Jethro Tull formed in 1967, Anderson had been in various blues bands as a singer, guitarist and harmonica player.
As he recalled to Classic Rock in 2020: “We came out of that period where to get a gig – let alone get a record deal – you had to be in a blues band or an out-and-out pop group.
“But on the periphery there was Captain Beefheart and The Graham Bond Organisation – very different to purist black American blues – which was important to the development of Jethro Tull.
“And that signpost got bigger in the summer of ’67 when Pink Floyd had The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and The Beatles had Sgt. Pepper.
“Those records energised me – you could step outside the comfort zone of twelve-bar blues or pop music and you could do something different.”
It was in this moment of anything-goes experimentation that Ian Anderson made a life-changing decision on a whim.
“I’d been playing guitar and harmonica,” he said, “but as a guitarist I was never going to be as good as Eric Clapton, simple as that.
“So I parted company with my Fender Strat, whose previous owner was [future Motörhead leader] Lemmy Kilmister, who was then the rhythm guitar player for the Rockin’ Vickers, and I bought a flute, for no good reason. It just looked nice and shiny.
He admitted: “At first I couldn’t get a note out of it. I put it back in its case and never touched it again for six months, until somebody said to me: ‘You don’t blow into the hole, you blow across it!’ Oh, okay.
“Suddenly I got a note, then another and another. Within a week I was playing blues solos and it became part of our gig.
“That was the beginning of the Jethro Tull with the guy who stands in the middle playing the flute while standing on one leg.”
And it was always the same leg.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Ever since I started playing harmonica at the Marquee club I’ve always stood on the right leg.”
This has been the subject of great interest among Tull fans for decades, as Anderson explained when he discussed recent solo tours in which he has enjoyed some amusing exchanges with the public.
“I’ve done some solo tours in small theatres,” he said. “So there’s chat and a bit of music and a Q&A where we invite the audience to try to pin me down and see what a slippery character I am.
“We did a couple of tours in America, called Rubbing Elbows With Ian Anderson, and it’s a lot of fun, and you do get a few rather wacky questions.
“A woman asked me, ‘Does standing on one leg mean that one leg is stronger than the other?’
“I stood up said, ‘Does one look bigger than the other to you?’
“She said, ‘Yeah, your right leg looks a little bigger.’
“I said, ‘That’s an astute observation, but unless you had a tape measure with you…’
“She put her hand in her pocket and produced a tape measure. So I invited her up on stage to measure my thighs!”
Anderson also revealed the greatest hazard for the one-legged flautist.
“The worst thing is a carpeted floor,” he winced. “Your foot doesn’t turn as it would on a wooden floor, and you twist your knee."
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
