Ian Anderson believes the era of great musical invention is in the past, and insists anyone who's expecting a sonic revolution is mistaken.
But the Jethro Tull mainman – who recently released solo album Homo Erraticus – doesn’t think younger musicians are to blame.
Anderson tells Something Else: “We’re wrong in expecting revolutionary changes in popular music forms. To imagine that we’re going to have some kind of new form that equals or surpasses the Beatles, or indeed the bands of the 70s, 80s or 90s – it’s a mistake to think that’s going to happen.
“We live in a world of reinvention, of reinterpretation. There’s a bunch of guys out there playing generic music, all of which owes a great deal to what’s gone on before. Very rarely does anybody manage to put a stamp of originality on what they do.”
Anderson thinks he knows why the situation has arisen. “There’s just not a busting amount left to do that hasn’t been done before,” he says. “It’s a lot tougher these days to be original than it was 30 or 40 years ago, when you could just conjure up a few notes and find a way to play them in a way that no one had done before.
“That’s impossible to do now.”
Homo Erraticus, launched in April, is Anderson’s third project to feature his Gerald Bostock character, following Tull’s 1972 album Thick As A Brick and his 2012 solo outing Thick As A Brick 2.
