The Jethro Tull song Ian Anderson picked as favorite

Led by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson for the past five decades, Jethro Tull is one of the most influential and successful Progressive Rock bands of all time. He is the only member of the group who played on all 24 of their studio albums and wrote most of their songs.

It’s hard for fans to pick their favorite tracks from the band and Anderson also finds it difficult to do so but he once made a choice and revealed which song he considers his favorite.

The Jethro Tull song Ian Anderson picked as favorite

Anderson first said it’s always hard to pick a favorite album or song, because for him, it would be like choosing a favorite cat and if the others found out, they wouldn’t be happy. But he eventually chose the song “Budapest”, released on the 1987 album “Crest of a Knave”. He revealed that in an interview with Rocknews Switzerland in 2025 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). “A particular song that I was just rehearsing again with the band, last week, was a song called ‘Budapest’. It’s quite a long song in its original arrangement. But it embodies again lots of elements of music that for me make it interesting as a composition. Lyrically it’s telling a little bit of a non-circuitous story, there is no conclusion, no follow-up to it.”

“I like the obliqueness of the story line. But I also like the fact that it is a paean to femininity and some people might think is a bit sexist. Especially by standards of today, but it’s a song about look but don’t touch, you know. It’s admiration for an athletic young female, but no more, (just) enjoy the view for 10 seconds and move on. I wrote it the next morning after the concert where there was someone helping with the catering in the backstage area. It was literally 10 seconds of seeing a person and going ‘Wow, she looks nice’.”

Ian Anderson continued:

“The next morning I woke and our guitar player had asked the promoter who was the girl doing the catering. He said: ‘Oh, she’s one of the Hungarian junior Olympic athletes’. That explains her toned body. She wasn’t muscular enough to be a 100 meter sprinter and she wasn’t skinny enough to be a marathon runner. She was sort of in between which is why it starts off with the words ‘I think she was a middle-distance runner’.”

“The translation wasn’t clear because the promoter didn’t speak very good English. So sometimes when you have a little thought that occurs to you wake up in the morning. It’s the first thing it goes through your head. (And you go) ‘Quick, write that down’. I had a guitar with me in the hotel room. (I wrote the first phrase and three first chords).”

He continued:

“By the time I got to the airport I had half the song written. I like things when they are spontaneous. It’s the equivalent of Cartier-Bresson as a photographer and his supposedly famous quote to seize the moment, it won’t come again. It’s recognizing something special and getting it. I suppose that sums me up as a songwriter too.”

“If there’s a little idea that comes to I want to move with it straight away. It’s very frustrating if you are somewhere and you can’t do anything. You don’t have a pen to write anything down, you’re sitting on a plane or walking through a crowd of people. You can’t develop the idea,” Ian Anderson said.

Released in 1987, “Crest of Knave” was Jethro Tull‘s sixteenth studio album, recorded after a three-year hiatus of the band, which was caused by Ian Anderson’s throat infection. That’s the reason why his singing sounds different from the previous albums released by the group. Curiously, it was the record that gave them the Grammy Award for “Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance”. They beat Metallica‘s “…And Justice for All”.

Besides Ian, were part of the album the guitarist Martin Barre, bassist Dave Pegg and the additional musicians Doane Perry (Drums), Gerry Conway (Drums) and Ric Sanders (Violin).

Why Anderson believes the lyrics are respectful

Although Ian Anderson recognizes that the lyrics might be considered sexist these days, he told Live Music News & Review in 2019 that if someone analyzes more carefully, they are actually respectful. As he had explained, they are about looking and admiring but nothing else other than that. “In that sense it is a respectful song but some of the words and notions are rather deliberately rather sexist. Because I want people to think about the degree to which you can admire the human form. Male or female, clothed or unclothed.”

“This is what I did in arts school, when I was seventeen. I was sitting in front of a naked woman, drawing (them). I have grown up with that kind of sensitivity and that restraint,” Ian Anderson said.

The only member of Jethro Tull who appeared on all the albums the band released over nearly six decades, Ian Anderson is the mastermind behind their songwriting. In addition to writing the tracks, he is also the vocalist and a multi-instrumentalist.

Besides playing the flute, he performs on several other instruments. “On Crest of a Knave”, for example, he also recorded parts of the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, percussion, keyboards, Synclavier, and handled drum programming. Nowadays he is the only original member of Tull who is still in the band.