“Ah, yes. The old rock riddle: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians? A drummer. But why the flute? In the Sixties and Seventies, everyone (including me) wanted to play the guitar. In my childhood, I heard the flute at Orange marches when I visited my grandmother in Glasgow or when the BBC televised the Proms and some lady in evening dress waggled it around to no particular effect. Ian admitted that he, too, wanted to be a guitar hero but he played the instrument badly as a teenager. When Eric Clapton appeared “as THE gunslinger guitar hero in 1967”, Ian “part-exchanged my Sixties Fender Strat (worth a good £25,000 today) for a £30 student flute and a microphone. I played the flute but still thought guitar.” He was self-taught on what has to be one of the least likely rock instruments, but adapted it for rock.”

“I wasn’t the best flute player in town, by a long way, but I was probably the loudest.”

Ian Anderson interviewes i The Independent

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