Jethro Tull
“It came to my awareness early on that if you employ managers and tour managers you end up spending an awful lot more money than you need to. You'd get booked into hotels just because they had the best commission, not because they were near the show or the airport. I also got fed up with the idea that you'd have roadies to pack and carry your suitcases. You can sometimes draw from the murky depths this amazing ability to actually get on the right aeroplane yourself.” Anderson has been managing himself since the midSeventies, his wife, Shona, does the books and his son, James, is promoting the British leg of the current tour.
It helps if you started at the Marquee Club in 1968
Not much use to today's Facebook hopefuls but as Anderson points out: “Deep Purple,
Fleetwood Mac, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull all began there and are still working. It was an incredibly inventive era, one that perhaps we're only beginning to really appreciate now.”
Fans age with a band. “Whether they like it or not, Duran Duran's core audience is now 40-year-old mums,” Anderson says. But contrary to rumour, Tull fans are not all middle-aged gents in real-ale T-shirts. “We are not constricted by a particular age group. We have a lot of Asians but not many black people. It's mixed gender but not so mixed that we have a lot of gays. There are bands with a strong gay following, which makes a difference to the numbers.” Clearly all those years in tights and codpiece did not work.
Anderson famously ran a successful salmon-farming business in Scotland, now sold. Hobbies include growing hot chillis and the study and conservation of the 26 species of small wildcats in the world.
“I don't want to live in my stately home in the country and have Waitrose deliver to me. On Friday morning I'll be with my wife in the Toyota Prius at Cirencester Waitrose. That's part of being out there.”
Anderson doesn't travel on the tour bus, preferring to journey alone on the train. “What you encounter on the frequently dodgy streets around stations is a way of keeping in touch with British society.”
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