Tim:
Something bland hopes you enjoy as much as he did:
geocities.com
I, Aqualung
by Ken Kurson
Mention Jethro Tull to a rock fan these days and
you're likely to get a "Who's he?" reply. Jethro
Tull is not a "he," of course, but the
influential British art-rock band. During the
1970s, Ian Anderson was Tull's leader, known as
much for hopping around on one foot while
blowing a flute as for singing Tull hits
"Aqualung," "Bungle in the Jungle," and
"Locomotive Breath."
But now it's the Age of MTV, when the transition
from mirthful teen idol to arthritic minstrel
can be particularly torturous. And embarrassing.
One pictures, for example, an ancient Mick
Jagger stalking the stage in football pants or
the Who limping one more time out of "permanent"
retirement. Which is what makes one fact about
Ian Anderson so refreshing: Ian Anderson is a
fish farmer.
"We're the third-largest supplier of smoked
salmon in the U.K.," he says proudly. "We turn
over about 20 million [pounds] a year."
Anderson demurs even to mentioning the names of
his fish farms or the brand names of their
products, but those who missed his name on the
annual rich list of the London Sunday Times
(which estimates his net worth at 25 million
pounds) shouldn't get the impression that
Anderson's business is of the dabbling variety.
He estimates that half his net worth is now tied
up in the enterprise; he owns four fish farms
and four processing factories, all located in
Scotland. As Anderson points out, "I currently
employ about 400 people."
But why fish?
Anderson, who is polite to a fault but clearly
more comfortable talking about the music
business than the fish business, claims a simple
calculus led him up the salmon stream. "The
point was that, if you make a lot of money at
something as frivolous as being a musician, you
can either pay it all in tax or you can hide it
offshore in a Swiss bank and become a
nonresident," he says. "Or you can try to take
advantage of all the legal, perfectly normal
tax-deductible breaks by investing it in
something that creates new employment. It's a
financial investment, from the point of view of
being a good capitalist."
Even Anderson's competitors in the fish business
could hardly call him a Jethro-come-lately. The
rangy flutist started his first salmon farm 16
years ago and has remained a hands-on presence,
even though Jethro Tull still plays more than
100 gigs a year. Anderson keeps the two
enterprises emphatically separate, avoiding any
association between the band and the brand. "To
be using my little bit of fame as a musician to
try to sell fish products?" he says of one
request by a U.S. restaurant chain to do just
that. "That's an eensy-weensy bit tacky where I
come from. Somehow I don't think that's proper."
Like any good empire builder, Anderson hasn't
simply succeeded in one business and left it at
that. He also owns a number of other
"interests," as he puts it in his Scottish
brogue. "I have for a number of years, in the
nicest possible way, been a registered firearms
dealer," he says. "But I don't supply machine
guns to small Arab countries. I specialize in
the refurbishment, restocking, en-graving, and
rebarreling of the best English shotguns,
usually made between the wars in London."
And what is the common thread? "Shotguns and
Swiss watches and flutes-- they're the same kind
of deal, really: beautiful examples of very fine
engineering that have great trial-and-error
ergonomic precision. Not that they're works of
art--they're works of great craft. And happily,
in most cases, they're still being made today.
I'm a real appreciator of fine, disciplined
human endeavor."
It was during the height of Tull's success in
the early 1970s that Anderson realized he had a
head for business. Having seen contemporaries
all but ruined by those assigned to look after
their business interests- -one famous legend has
the Kinks' Ray Davies chasing the group's
manager through the streets of London while
dressed only in underwear--Anderson took Tull's
financial matters into his own hands.
"We had managers who, slightly reluctantly but
ultimately gracefully, accepted that there
wasn't really a role for them anymore and that I
was at least as capable as they were at
organizing the business of recording and
touring," he recalls. "I enjoyed it. I liked to
sit down with my road atlases of North America
and my maps of the world and say, 'Can we go
that route? Is that possible? How much are the
trucks going to cost? Which airline are we going
to fly? What was the name of that really nice
hotel we stayed at last time?' I would be
distinctly qualified to be the guy who looks
after the luggage of rock-and-roll tours."
For now, the rock star has once again had to
turn his attention toward matters less glamorous
than sold-out shows and the hit parade. Anderson
and his wife of 21 years are busy putting their
children through college. Though he claims they
aren't all that interested in either of his
careers, both kids are majoring in
entertainment-related fields. And the proud
papa's contribution? "Basically," he says, "we
try to persuade them that we have no money
whatsoever and that we can barely afford their
school fees."
Not unlike a lot of parents who own neither fish
farms nor a bunch of hit singles. |
