Jethro Tull — Blackpool and Ian Anderson's Origins

Jethro Tull formed in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 1967, when Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker, and Glenn Cornick came together from various parts of the British Midlands and North. Anderson had grown up in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Edinburgh before the family moved to Blackpool, where he left school and threw himself into the local music scene. The band moved to London almost immediately after forming and quickly built a following on the blues club circuit, but their origins in Blackpool gave Anderson a northern directness that tempered the more elaborate aspects of the progressive rock they would soon be making.

Jethro Tull's second album Stand Up (1969) reached number one in the UK and announced them as a major force, with Anderson's flute playing — itself an unlikely lead instrument for a rock band — giving them a distinctive identity. Aqualung (1971) and Thick as a Brick (1972) are their landmark records, though the band's restless eclecticism across folk, classical, and hard rock has made their catalogue difficult to summarise. Anderson's one-legged flute stance and his grizzled tramp persona became two of rock's more theatrical images.

Blackpool is a seaside resort town with no formal Jethro Tull landmark. The town's musical heritage is more often associated with the ballroom dancing and cabaret traditions of its famous ballrooms — the Tower Ballroom, the Winter Gardens — than with progressive rock. Anderson has lived in the Scottish Highlands and Wiltshire for much of his career and continues to tour extensively.