In a new interview with Phil Aston of Now Spinning Magazine, JETHRO TULL leader Ian Anderson, who will turn 78 in August, spoke about the physical demands of his live performances and the increased difficulty in playing a full-length concert with his bandmates. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It depends what you do. You can be physically animated, but there’s a degree to which you can only do so much if you’re playing a flute. If you are [THE ROLLING STONES‘] Mick Jagger and you’re just running around with sort of shout-out vocals, then, yeah, no disrespect, but Mick Jagger didn’t set the bar very high in terms of vocal skills right from the very beginning. So he’s a shouter, and he doesn’t have to really hit the notes or necessarily be terribly great on intonation or phrasing or anything. He’s a shouter, and he runs around in a very animated way, and that’s great for someone who’s — whatever — a couple of years older than me, or three years older than me. That’s fine. But it’s not that easy if you’re trying to play a flute, which is in itself quite a… You have to really try and maintain a lot of balance and a very, very delicate touch with the instrument and the contact with your mouth… So there is a limit to what you can do. And it tends to be that if I’m not playing the flute, I’m singing. I don’t have a lot of time off in between the elements of what I do and then having to start again. So it’s two hours of aerobics. In that sense, it’s good for health to carefully increase the pulse rate, carefully increase your respiration rate. And I seem to have overcome my problems with finding out late in life that I was asthmatic. That is now virtually completely under control and it doesn’t cause me problems at all. In terms of physical prowess, I am currently — well, I have an appointment with a surgeon on the 5th of August to discuss whether or not I’m gonna have to have a knee replacement because the wear and tear to my right knee is quite considerable and I’m frequently in quite a lot of pain now, which I wasn’t… A year ago it was episodic; it wasn’t constant. Now it is constant. And so I am gonna have to look at that and see what options there are. The options, if it’s knee replacement, according to the book, it’s a 12-week recovery period, and I don’t have 12 weeks, as far as I can see, either this year or next year where I have that time. It will mean having to make time, presumably early next year, if I have to do that. But it may be there’s some — there is a new wonder injection, which is long lasting, which I’m hoping I can arrange to get. But as to whether it’s applicable in my case remains the subject of further X-rays. But it’s something I’m gonna have to do and have to face up to the fact that there are these physical limitations that…”
He continued: “Luckily, I’m not in a position of poor old Ozzy Osbourne or equally poor old Phil Collins, or Billy Joel or a whole bunch of other people whose performance has been essentially terminated forever because, although they’re still alive [Editor’s note: the interview was conducted shortly before Ozzy‘s July 22 passing.], they’re not physically capable of doing concerts. And that’s hopefully a way off in my life. But you’ve gotta face reality. I’ll be 78 in a couple of weeks’ time. And that’s bringing with it a few issues. Well, when I say a few, actually only one. But there are other things that I’ve had — wrist problems and other knee problems and ankle problems and back problems — but they’re all fine at the moment except for one knee, which is annoying.”
Anderson also talked about the importance of early detection in preventing serious health issues, including various types of cancer. He said: “Well, unlike the people that I suppose I’m speaking on behalf of, who actually do have prostate cancer or colon cancer or DVTs [deep vein thrombosis] or whatever, I’m not talking about these things from a personal songbook. I have not got colon cancer, but every three or two or three years, I have a colonoscopy. My brother died of colon cancer and elsewhere it is in the family by marriage. And so my children have a slightly elevated risk of having colon cancer, and I try and persuade them that they should have a colonoscopy every so often. I mean, polyps grow quite quickly, but they may be slow growing beyond that and not necessarily be the cause of death because they may be very slow growing. Even a stage one cancer may still be growing at a slow rate that surgeons will decide that, ‘Look, it’s not worth it, ’cause you’re probably gonna die next year from something else anyway.’ But nonetheless, I think you should be checked out for these things because the statistical risk, as you get older, is considerably higher. And so certainly having a regular… Doctors are increasingly disinclined to do a manual prostate exam, I think partly because they’re just a bit twitchy about sticking their finger up somebody’s bottom. It’s one of those things that I think these days, it’s a difficult thing to cope with. People will react to it in different ways. And so a PSA test is not terribly accurate, but it’s a better indicator than finding out all too late that you do have a full-blown prostate cancer. So, I actually had two PSA tests recently, simply because I feel that one is not sufficiently indicative. And so I had two a month apart to make sure that they were both pretty much the same. And usually once a year I do have a manual prostate check as well, if I can find a willing finger. So, I look out for those things. In terms of deep vein thrombosis, it is potentially a killer and something that, again, that has nothing to do with age, really. I mean, a lot of people who’ve had DVTs, they’re athletes in their early twenties who’ve had an injury and become immobilized for a while and taken a long flight and pay the consequences. It happens to pilots too, who sit down in a seat for hours for the greater part of maybe eight or 12 hours and do it on a regular basis. There is a real risk of getting a blood clot in the lower limbs. So it’s something that people should be aware of.”
Anderson added: “I’m boring enough to, every year… I just had my blood test. Again, I had two separate blood tests a month apart just to make sure that the readings were all gonna be the same. And it’s something I just do every year. I check my blood pressure, I check my pulse rate at different times of the day, and I do it just because I wanna have early warning. If there’s something that doesn’t look right, then you’ve got a better chance of dealing with it if you catch it early. And so far, I’ve been lucky. Other than the inconvenience of a needle stuck into a vein, other than that, or an occasional finger in the bottom, I don’t have any downside to doing that. Of course you get a little tense and a little bit concerned of about the results, but so far I’ve been lucky. But it doesn’t stop me doing it. I don’t think, ‘Oh, well, I’m lucky. I don’t have to do this again now for 10 years or something.’ It’s an annual event for me.”
JETHRO TULL‘s 24th studio album, “Curious Ruminant” was released in March.
“Curious Ruminant” consists of nine new tracks varying in length from two and half minutes to almost seventeen minutes. Among the musicians featured are former JETHRO TULL keyboardist Andrew Giddings and drummer James Duncan, along with the current bandmembers David Goodier, John O’Hara, Scott Hammond and, making his recording debut with JETHRO TULL, guitarist Jack Clark.
