Most music fans might not know, but there may be an interesting connection between Jethro Tull and the Eagles. Ian Anderson, the leader of the influential Progressive Rock band, has mentioned the extremely successful American group many times during his career, sharing his opinion on their music and even suggesting that they may have been inspired by one of his songs when writing their biggest hit.
What is Ian Anderson’s opinion on the Eagles
Although Ian Anderson is not a big fan of the kind of music Eagles play, he recognizes them as a great band and has said that Hotel California is one of the greatest songs ever written. Interestingly, the similarity between that song and Jethro Tull’s We Used to Know has been discussed by fans for decades, since they share similar chord progressions and the American band was Tull’s opening act in the early 1970s.
“When The Eagles were on tour with Jethro Tull, actually as an opening act back in the early part of 1972, we were still at that point playing some of the music from previous albums, including the song ‘We Used to Know’. I guess The Eagles probably heard us playing it onstage. They may well have heard it on the radio, anyway. But I’ve never accused The Eagles of plagiarism. You know, I can see the similarities, particularly in terms of the chord sequence, the actual harmonic nature of it.”
“But the time signature is completely different, the melody is substantially different, and the lyrics, of course, are totally different. So, for my money, The Eagles came out with one of the best and most classic pop-rock songs ever. I mean, who would not like to have written “Hotel California”? If there’s a little bit of my song kind of in there, then I am flattered. I’m certainly not someone who would accuse them of plagiarism. I never have. Other people have continued to make that comparison to this day,” Ian Anderson told Jeff Moehlis in 2018.
Ian Anderson said there is something magical about “Hotel California”
To Jethro Tull’s leader, “Hotel California” is a hundred times better than his song and has something magical about it. “Well I wasn’t going to say that but the Eagles song is a twenty times, hundred times better song than my song. So credit to them wherever they got the chord sequence from. A monkey banging on a piano key would have come up with it sooner or later. So credit to them they had a great song.”
“It’s not my kind of song but it’s a very well written song lyrically and musically. It really is very skillful, so it made them a ton of money. But is really a little piece of magic, it goes on forever. The actual recording of that particular song can be re-recorded countless times by either the Eagles live in concert, re-recorded in the studio, recorded by other artists. But it is that song itself which has that greatness about it.”
He continued:
“It could be argued that many songs by The Beatles have that same thing, they are really little pieces of magic. But when it comes to The Rolling Stones it is really about The Rolling Stones. If somebody else does ‘Brown Sugar’ or ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ frankly it’s not really going to make a lot of sense (laughs),” he told Paul McLaney in 2017.
“We Used to Know” was on Tull’s second album, “Stand Up” (1969), but is not among their most famous songs. “Hotel California”, on the other hand, is not only Eagles’ most successful song but also one of the biggest Rock classics of all time. It was released on the band’s album of the same name in 1977. Don Felder, former guitarist of the Eagles, wrote the music for the classic track. According to him, he came up with the chord progression while staying at a rented beach house in Malibu, saying the chords just “kind of oozed out.” Notably, he wasn’t even in the band when they toured with Jethro Tull, only joining in 1974.
Ian Anderson said it seemed that Eagles didn’t like Jethro Tull when they toured together
According to Ian Anderson, the Eagles didn’t seem to like them when they toured together and the members of Jethro Tull didn’t feel much differently about the American band. Their music was quite different and according to Don Henley, some agents at the time didn’t care whether bands from completely different genres were booked to play together.
“It was due to an agent who didn’t really care whether the groups had anything in common or not. He said, ‘You’re gonna open for this group called Jethro Tull. We went, ‘Uh, OK,’ we only had one hit ‘Take It Easy’. So we’d go out and play that and a couple of other songs. Back then there was no trying to match styles of music, they just put you out there and you had to sink or swim. (It was a) mismatch (to play with them). “The guys in Yes (who we opened for later on) were nice to us. Procol Harum were very kind to us. I remember their wives translating some of the reviews in German for us,” Don Henley told Classic Rock, showing that they might have not liked Tull that much.
Ian Anderson once talked about those shows, recalling that the two bands didn’t really get along that well. “We didn’t interact with them very much because they were countrified, laid-back polite rock. We were a bit wacky and English and doing weird stuff. And I don’t think they liked us, and we didn’t much like them. There was no communication, really, at all. Just a polite observance of each other’s space when it came to sound checks and show time,” he told SongFacts.