5, “is to balance up the toe-tapping aspect of the music, which is just reacting emotionally to the sound of music without questioning or thinking too much, with the more cerebral thought-through part of it.”

“The job of a composer in the rock context,” Anderson explains hurriedly, from his Wiltshire estate, as he both pontificates out loud and manically packs his bags before jetting off on a tour that will wind through Europe and Russia before making its way to Boston’s Wang Theatre on Nov. The British prog-rocker has aspired to do just that ever since. music rag Disc & Music Echo’s March 20th issue said it all: “Good Heavens, Now Ian Anderson Wants Us To Think!” By 1971, upon the release of the epochal Tull album “Aqualung,” a song cycle that saw proto-metal and pastoral folk wrestling for dominance amidst paeans to the failures of organized religion, the headline of U.K. He launched his band Jethro Tull as a straightforward blues project in 1967, only to find himself compelled to guide the group into knottier realms of both musical and philosophical complexity, often in the form of that uniquely ‘70s musical product, the concept album. Ian Anderson is someone who has experience in this endeavor. In spite of, or perhaps because of this struggle, it is occasionally possible for an artist to find an equilibrium sweet spot between the two extremes - although it is even more of an achievement to be able to compel and maintain a sizeable audience for said music over the course of a life’s career.

Within the ecstasy of musical rapture lies a dichotomy between music intended for bodily transport and that which is supposed to stimulate our cerebellum, and resistance is often met by fans of both extremes when an artist attempts to cater to them simultaneously.

(Courtesy) This article is more than 7 years old. Ian Anderson (center) with his touring band (from left) Florian Opahle, Scott Hammond, John O'Hara and David Goodier.

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