Ian Anderson Quotes

In music industry they always want you to write something like the one that was popular. And that's something you kind of have to just - sometimes you just say yes to people, like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure," and then you just write the one you want to write.

Roadrunner wanted to make Born in the Flood the next Nickelback, but I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be a huge rock star playing songs I didn't like. I didn't want to be stuck playing 'Anthem,' the song everybody liked but I didn't want to put on the record, for the next five years.

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

Record companies tell me to play something more commercial, but I don't want to do anything else.

I'm going to make the music I make regardless and it's always going to be driven by rhythm and blues and hopefully it becomes popular. But I don't cater to, like, 'OK, I want to make music that's going to fit in this pop world or go on the charts, etcetera, etcetera.' Hopefully, enough people like it so it becomes popular.

I'm just not interested in selling out to get on the charts and make people happy.

I don't think it's so hard to be commercial and interesting. Look at Prince, or Neil Young.

It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'

Writing a song to be a single is hard, and I don't like to focus on that because you can get caught up in making something just terrible, which is really easy to do if you're focused on making it a single. It's more fun when you focus on what excites you musically.

And frankly, when I made that record, hit songs were not what I was trying to achieve.

Despite whatever commercial kind of success you might have or radio success, I don't want to do something just to get as many people as possible to listen.

I don't make records that way, where I'm trying to please the marketplace or anything. Not because I have anything against that, it's just never been a part of my aesthetic, even when I was with the Pixies.

I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.

I don't like working with hitmakers. I don't want hits! You're not even allowed to say that word around me.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

I don't feel I'm making a conscious effort to go more commercial.

I would love to be one of the few artists that hits a point of success and can go back into the studio and make another album that matters and relates to people and not go back in and be super tainted by this whole thing.

There's definitely been some songs in the past that we've put out, and it was purely us going, 'Okay, we think radio will play this. We think this will be a hit. This will be big for the show,' and all this stuff. But it's like, do you really believe in it?

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

I think, in the middle of the '90s, I made a couple of records where I tried to figure out what I thought the radio wanted from me. They weren't my best records by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't take me too long to figure out, 'Whoa, back up, dude. Just go back to following your heart, and it will all be OK.'

We've never tried to write radio hits. If I hear our song on the radio, it's cool, and I'm proud, but it's never a goal.

I don't want to focus too much on trying to write a song for radio.

People will always have the desire to make rock and roll records, and they'll always have the desire to sell rock and roll records. Most of the people making these records do it because it is a business, and if someone says, "You can't do this", they won't complain. They'll just keep making records, but they'll get blander and blander. There'll still be rock and roll, but compared to what it really could be or ought to be, I don't think it'll be all that terrific.

Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter. ... I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.

I'm very fussy about how my records sound, but I'm very aware that because of the way they sound, I will never be a big-selling, mainstream artist because the public has gotten conditioned to hearing pop music in a certain way. And I don't do it that way.