The three artists Ian Anderson called his “guilty pleasures”
In most prog circles, straight-ahead rock and roll almost seems taboo. The charts have never lent themselves well to songs with multiple parts and daring sonic movements, so why try to match the radio-friendly sounds of other artists when you can make something completely different? Ian Anderson certainly wasn’t concerned with any of the hit potential behind Jethro Tull’s greatest works, but he did have a taste for the more meatheaded side of rock and roll with bands like Ramones and Motörhead.
If you look at what both Motörhead and Ramones were doing when they first broke, it seemed like the absolute antithesis of what Jethro Tull was supposed to be. Since every artist who wanted to be taken seriously was making their broad epics, Lemmy was looking to make something that called back to the sounds of Little Richard, albeit with his gruff approach to singing and the ramshackle energy of MC5.
If Lemmy didn’t care about prog rock, Johnny Ramone may has well have seemed them as his nemesis. People like Steve Howe from Yes could certainly play their asses off when he wanted to, but as far as Ramone was concerned, they were saying very little. Others could do exercises, but what prog bands said with mile-long guitar solos, Ramone could say with a fistful of power chords and a mountain of attitude.
Whereas most prog rock acts would be scared off by the punk movement, Anderson did have a passing fancy for it, telling Louder, “I have a soft spot for the brutal, simplistic music of Motörhead and the Ramones”. At the same time, Anderson also had a taste for a completely different flavour of guilty pleasure: synth-rock.
Outside of the punk side of the spectrum, Anderson had an affinity for Marc Almond, best known for his work with Soft Cell and his later solo career. Even though the thought of having Ramones and Soft Cell on the same playlist is enough to give people whiplash without even listening to it, there were at least a few sonic similarities.
Soft Cell didn’t rely on power chords, but their primitive approach to synthesisers almost felt closer to garage rock. ‘Tainted Love’ might not sound like ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by any stretch of the imagination, but both were born out of people not understanding the mechanics of proper musicianship and taking the chance anyway.
Considering how much Jethro Tull put into their own work, it’s not hard to see why Anderson would have at least a passing appreciation for it. He may have come from the school of making complex musical movements, but even those works were made out of a need to make something bolder that could push the genre past the usual schlock on the charts.
While the ideas behind bands like Ramones and Jethro Tull seem miles away, there are actually a few more common threads than you might realise. Punk and prog were already like chalk and cheese, but when looked at together, they were created with the intent to create something that no one had ever heard before.