Experience.

You have said before that you feel like the essence of a song is contained entirely in a simple acoustic arrangement. Why are the final arrangements of most Tull songs considerably more complicated than that?

For the same reasons as you wouldn’t want to be in my kitchen when I’m cooking dinner. It starts off, usually, with two or three really nice ingredients and then I think ‘what would it be like if I added a little bit of this? Or a bit of that? Hell, why not break a couple of eggs into it as well, and maybe a touch of chilli. By the time I’m finished, I have this big dog’s dinner of a meal which nobody, except me, will eat! It’s done with good will, but I just get carried away.

I’m interested in finding how things work together. I suppose the difference is, if you look at your dinner and think, ‘actually this is a big mistake’, then you can just feed it to the chickens, but unfortunately when you’ve made a record, then it’s very difficult to go back and delete it. You’re facing such an enormity if you have to start again.

With experience, I think I’m less likely to make those mistakes. The problem is that if I have a nice little tune and some nice words, I get flooded with ideas, and I often think that I can do it and then hit the delete button later. But sometimes, I think ‘that’s really nice’ and I haven’t got the heart to delete it. I think the answer is just to sit with one microphone, acoustic guitar, voice and some recording software and nothing else. The way to do this is to lock myself in another room in the house where I have no other instruments and hopefully I can continue down the path of simplicity.

That musical austerity is something that I aspire to. It’s very difficult for me to achieve because I have such a lot of enthusiasm, vigour and energy and I just can’t stop myself. It’s a terrible affliction!

Read the rest of this interview with Ian Anderson at Rolling Stone India, yes, Rolling Stone India.