What Ian Anderson thought of Genesis

There is no doubt that one of the most influential musicians in the Prog Rock area was and is the frontman of Jethro Tull Ian Anderson. Orbiting in the same context in Great Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s were the Genesis then guided by Peter Gabriel. Anderson has never been a fan of them despite recognizing their importance so much so that at Vintage Rock in 2002 he declared that they are part of the ‘Big Four’ of Progressive Rock.

In a 2021 interview with Oswaldo Marques of Stay Rock Brazil Anderson argued: “I’ve never been a Genesis fan.

But their musicianship is incredible.” One of the things he didn’t really like about Genesis was that they took Prog Rock too far. “It was 1972, so that’s when I think I realized they were A, surreal, and B, beyond reality, and to parody and mock certain institutions of Britishness. Doing so, under the umbrella of prog rock. I was kind of making fun of the whole notion of concept albums and prog rock as it was known at the time. Having started in 1969 with the softer sound of progressive rock. Once it became prog, there was an element of mockery and maybe certain bands. Maybe Yes or ELP and Genesis took it a little to the extreme. Making it rather self-indulgent. Musically grand but self-indulgent and perhaps pompously different from simpler musicians. Like all of us who were still learning to play our instruments.”.

In the mid-70s many Prog Rock groups had tasted the sweet taste of success and tried to push the genre a little further by creating increasingly complex and longer songs. This was annoying Ian Andersonthe now 77-year-old British musician believed that those groups made “arrogant” and “exaggerated” music, as he explained in a 2012 interview with Jim Rowland. “Well yes, you are paraphrasing, not entirely incorrectly, what I thought at the time. ‘Aqualung’ was perceived by critics, rather than the public, as a concept album. It gave them something to write about. There were two or three songs that were connected in some way. There were a lot of songs that had nothing to do with each other. So I don’t think it’s really correct to call it a concept album It never caused me any problems. I was more than happy to be considered a progressive rock musician, it was fine with me. It was only later when the word ‘prog’ took on rather dark tones of bombastic, pompous, arrogant, exaggerated and selfish music it was the way of some of our peers like Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer and Genesis who tended to be a bit monotonous, and at that point we weren’t doing that.”

The musical direction taken by prog rock bands at that time led to rejection within a couple of years and was an inspiration to the punk movement which felt that rock music was losing its soul and immediacy, as the songs had become very complex, long and played by very talented musicians, therefore not within everyone’s reach. Among the intentions of punk rock was also to bring rock back to its basics.