Ian Anderson’s opinion on Stephen King

The Jethro Tull leader, main songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson is only one month older than the American horror author Stephen King. They were both born in 1947 but Anderson started his musical career in 1962, taking King five years more to begin to write.

However, the curious thing is that the American writer started his career in 1967, the same year Jethro Tull was formed. But what is the connection between the two? Well, Ian Anderson is an avid reader and already read many of King’s books, sharing his opinion on the author.

What is Ian Anderson’s opinion on Stephen King

Since Ian Anderson is a successful and influential songwriter it was expected that he really liked to read, since that’s usually the main secret of the greatest songwriters of all time. But many people couldn’t guess that he likes to read books written by Stephen King. The musician revealed that in an interview with Classic Album Review (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). Anderson said that King is an excellent writer and said that the greatest thing about his stories is that he always includes morality tales. He also said that he is frequently reading the books when he is on tour waiting on airplanes, cars and vans. He does that even in the dressing rooms before or after a show.

“Stephen King is an author, he writes as probably people would think of Stephen King, these rather gothic horror tales. But when you read Stephen King, you realize that not only he is a prolific writer, not only is he one that can write popular and extremely popular fiction. But in almost every book that I’ve read of Stephen King’s there is a morality tale. He is talking about people, he is talking about innate goodness, badness, the complexities of it all, the dilemmas.”

“He does really pose a lot of questions in the way that he writes. But it’s all delivered in the context of popular fiction. The people who get a thrill out of reading scary stuff or weird stuff will enjoy on that level. But behind it, every book contains one, two or three morality tales of a sort.”

Ian Anderson continued:

“That makes me doff my cap to Stephen King, perhaps more than any other writer. I mean, I guess I would prefer reading the works of John le Carré. But he is no longer with us. So, I’ve read all of his books and enjoyed all of them. But in the absence of John le Carré, I’d rather turn to the enormous back catalog of Stephen King. To (read) while away out on airplanes or sitting in cars, vans or dressing rooms, whatever it might be.”

“It’s worthwhile reading. Because it just shows you that in the world of pop writing you can have some pretty Progressive and even Heavy Metal approach to being a novelist. That’s what Stephen King does. So I won’t hear a bad word about Stephen. He’s an excellent writer,” Ian Anderson said.

Nicknamed “The King of Horror”, Stephen King is one of the most successful and influential horror writers of all time. Until 2006, he had sold an estimated amount of more than 350 million copies of his books worldwide. His stories have been adapted into movies, tv shows and comic books for decades. Some of them became really big movie classics like “The Shining”, “Carrie”, “The Dead Zone”, “Stand By Me” and more.

A curious connection between Ian Anderson and the pop horror culture is that his daughter Gael Anderson is married to the British actor Andrew Lincoln. He is famous for the role of Rick Grimes on the successful AMC show “The Walking Dead“. The TV show was inspired by the comic books created by Robert Kirkman.