Prog Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson has never been one to succumb to peer pressure. Still, it was August 1969 – and at that time, when Elvis Presley summoned you, you went. The King Of Rock’N’Roll was in the midst of a lucrative four-week residency at Las Vegas’ International Hotel, where he received a stream of awestruck visitors before and after shows.
No one said no to an audience with Elvis. No one, that is, except Ian Anderson. “We were playing in Las Vegas around the time of the record,” he tells .
"We were dragged by the scruff of the neck to some casino where he was appearing. I was never really a big Elvis fan, but I suppose the first couple of songs that he ever recorded were part of my childhood fascination with music.“ Anderson wasn’t impressed with what he saw: “I was just appalled by the commerciality and the triteness of it all.
And he was clearly out of his box. He was slurring his words; he didn’t know where he was. He would stop the band halfway through his song.
It just wasn’t the way to see Elvis.” But the King had heard that this hotshot new Limey band with crazy hair and a flute were in the audience, and he wanted to meet them. Or at least that was the message Anderson got from the Elvis camp.
“They said, ‘Elvis would like to see you in his dressing room. I replied, ‘Tell Mr Elvis that it is a really great honour to have been here tonight, but we've got a show tomorrow, we’re a bit tired and we need an early night.’ “And they said, ‘No, you’re not listening – Elvis see you backstage in the dressing room.
’ I thought, ‘This is not an invitation; it’s a fucking instruction.’” He would have had absolutely no idea who we were Anderson is many things, but a victim of bullying isn’t one of them. His heels were dug in so deep that not even the Memphis Mafia could strongarm him into meeting the King in his court.
Sign up below to get the latest from Prog, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! “I think a couple of band members were miffed,” he says. “But I felt so embarrassed for Elvis and I didn’t want to make things even worse. And obviously he would have had absolutely no idea who we were – no matter what they said.
” It was a typical Anderson reaction. Tull’s leader has built a career on confounding expectations, turning left rather than right, marching to no beat other than his own. It’s an approach has served him well during his band’s 50-plus year career.
And never more so than on their second album, : a transformative record and a key point in the band’s 50-year journey – which marked the beginning of the band as we know them now. is Tull’s first masterpiece – and it’s certainly one of the singer’s favourites. “It’s the first album that I felt creatively responsible for,” he explains.
“It was a first wet dream involving somebody else at the same time. It’s incorrect to say that we wouldn’t have carried on without it, but things could have been very different for us.” Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s.
During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on and , Associate Editor on magazine and staff writer/tea boy on , not necessarily in that order. He has written for , the and the totally legendary . He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.
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