Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson

The first two Iron Maiden albums were quite heavy, and for many fans, they were a mix of Metal and Punk Rock. However, the band’s founder and leader, Steve Harris, never liked Punk music. After Bruce Dickinson became the group’s vocalist, they continued to write Metal tracks but also began experimenting with Progressive Rock. Over the past 20 years, the band’s sound has become even more Progressive.

Steve Harris a huge fan of Progressive Rock but the other members of the band as well, including Dickinson. Over the years the vocalist talked about many bands, including Jethro Tull but what is his opinion on them?

Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson

Just like Steve Harris, Bruce Dickinson is also a big fan of Jethro Tull, band led by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson. His favorite album by the British band is “Aqualung”, released in 1971. He explained that in an interview with Eddie Trunk in 2021, saying: “Steve (Harris), for example, is a big fan of Jethro Tull. I’m also a big fan of Jethro Tull. He loves ‘A Passion Play’ and ‘Thick As A Brick’. I’m more ‘Aqualung’ and the early stuff.”

Talking with Loudwire (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) in 2024, Dickinson mentioned Anderson as one of his favorite “storytellers” in music. “Ian Anderson, ‘Aqualung’ was a big go to (album). What a great record, great lyrics. All those lyrics, he was a great storyteller with his lyrics. He had a kind of a Folk tradition thing going on in the background. Folk songs tell stories, they’re the original Rock and Roll storytelling.”

Also last year, the musician told Qobuz (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) an interesting thing he found out after hearing the album for a while when he was young. “Oh ‘Aqualung’, fantastic. The old overcoat and everything. I didn’t realize until I read the credits that his (Ian Anderson) wife, his first wife, wrote the lyrics to ‘Aqualung’.”

He continued:

“But yeah, it’s an amazing album. It’s almost, for me, it’s his most perfect album, you know. I love a lot of his records but ‘Aqualung’ for me, probably, because it was in a way my first (of the band),” Bruce Dickinson said.

As the musician said, the title-track of the classic album was written by Ian and his ex-wife Jennie Franks. They were married from 1970 to 1974 and Ian said that she was responsible for the lyrics in the first couple of verses. According to him, half of the lyrics or word associations were made by her.

To this day, it’s Jethro Tull’s best-selling album and besides the classic title-track, that album also had other praised songs. Some of them are “Locomotive Breath”, “Mother Goose” and “Cross-Eyed Mary”. The last one was even covered by Maiden in the 80s.

Bruce Dickinson and Ian Anderson shared the stage once

Bruce Dickinson and Ian Anderson had already met a few times over the decades but they finally had the chance to perform together in 2011. The Jethro Tull leader invited Bruce to perform at Canterbury Cathedral in 2011. In an interview with The Metal Voice in 2021, Anderson praised him. “At one occasion Bruce was a guest of mine at Canterbury Cathedral’s performance I did in 2011. He is a great person to work with, very professional, very straightforward. Easy going guy, we learnt his couple of songs and he sang on one of ours.” Ian Anderson said.

Iron Maiden and Jethro Tull are two of the most influential bands of all time but curiously, they were still not inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.