Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson Gets 'Bigger and Louder' Onstage

With his bizarre facial expressions, one-legged flute-playing stance and eccentric clothing, Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson was often described with terms like "wild-man sage" and "crazy jester." But while critics suggested the normally mellow Anderson had a stage persona, the Grammy-winner insists he was just being himself.

"We have different facets of our personality -- all of us do," Anderson tells Spinner. "At different times of the day, in different contexts, we behave a little differently."

Back in the day, Anderson wore costumes that recalled Elizabethan times, kept his hair unkempt and performed flute like the Pied Piper, sometimes waving the wind instrument suggestively. His antics on stage contrasted with his offstage presence, during which he avoided drugs and preferred reading books to partying after shows.
"When you push me onto a stage, part of me gets a little bigger and louder and more into your face, and another part of me retreats into the background and switches off for a little while," he says.

Today, Anderson sports neatly trimmed hair and more modest attire. His proper-sounding British accent belies a career as a rock star. While he still uses the one-legged flute stance, his performing face is typically much less expressive than it was in the '60s and '70s. When Tull was in its prime, Anderson says, the media invented the theory that he had some sort of alter ego.

"We're not as one-dimensional as cartoon stereotypes might suggest," he says. "I think we're all a bit more complicated than ''The Simpsons,' however amusing that might be."