Coming up with a band name can be an exhausting task. It has to be memorable, capture something about the music and, in the modern age, be unique enough to Google without being impossible to spell or pronounce.
Ian Anderson learned the hard way that it also helps to know what the name means.
The Jethro Tull frontman says he was left “embarrassed” when he discovered that his band was named after an actual 18th-century agriculturalist — and that by then, it was already too late to change it.
Anderson made the confession in an interview with AXS TV’s Dan Rather, explaining that the band had gone through a series of names in its early days as it tried to establish itself on the late-1960s London circuit.
“To me, it was a nice made-up name invented by the booker in our manager and agent’s office,” Anderson said. “We kept changing our name in the very early days. And when they suggested Jethro Tull, I said, ‘Okay,’ because I was anxious to be seen to be taking advice and accepting management encouragement.”
The band had previously performed under names including Navy Blue, Ian Henderson’s Bag o’ Nails and Candy Coloured Rain. None of them stuck. Jethro Tull did — although Anderson had no idea who Jethro Tull actually was.
“Nobody told me at that time that Jethro Tull was an 18th-century agriculturalist who invented the seed drill, and of course is in the history books,” he said. “When I was at school, I only did a very small amount of history, and we didn’t cover that particular era. So, I didn’t know that Jethro Tull was a real historical character.”
Anderson says he learned the truth a couple of weeks later. By then, however, the band had secured a residency at the Marquee Club, one of London’s most important rock venues.
“I think it was a couple of weeks later that I found that out,” he said. “I was rather embarrassed to realize we were named after a dead guy who invented the seed drill, but at that point, we’d just been given the residency at the Marquee club.”
So the name stayed.
“He, too, was a musician as it turned out,” Anderson added, with a hint of a smile. “Over the years, I’ve always felt rather guilty about the identity theft. It’s just as well I don’t have his credit cards.
“But I feel kind of embarrassed about it. So a couple of years ago, I thought, ‘I should really try and push Jethro Tull, the historical character, back to number one on Google Jethro.’”
That may be a difficult task. The band has released 24 studio albums, toured the world countless times and, most famously, beat Metallica to the first Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance in 1989. The success of 1971’s Aqualung alone has probably made the band’s name impossible to dislodge from the top of any search engine.
Anderson also discussed the guitarists who influenced him — and the one who convinced him to focus on the flute instead.
“In my generation, it’s hard to imagine people who didn’t want to be Hank Marvin,” he said of the Shadows guitarist. “Hank Marvin had this wonderful clean tone on a single-coil Fender Strat. And that was a sound that captivated people.”
Then came Eric Clapton.
“When I heard Eric Clapton, I wanted to be a flute player because I knew I wasn’t going to be in that league as a guitar player,” Anderson said.
Jethro Tull released its 24th album, Curious Ruminant, last year. And while Anderson may still feel a little guilty about borrowing the name of an 18th-century agricultural pioneer, the band has now been using it for nearly six decades — making a name change considerably more awkward than it would have been back in 1968.
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