A Quote by Ian Anderson

I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton. — © Ian Anderson
I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.
I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.
Once we played at the Fillmore opposite The Cream. Eric Clapton was there and he played his ass off that night ... backstage Michael Bloomfield introduced me to Eric, and Eric was so nice. He came up to me, put his arms around me and said "Barry, it's such a pleasure to meet you" ... I couldn't figure it out... then Michael told me that he had told Eric I had cancer and two months to live...
Eric Clapton wrote "Layla" when he was coked out of his mind. Later on, it nearly killed him.
I didn't look up and say, "Oh, man, if I learn how to play a guitar I could make not much money, but I'd make a decent living like Eric Clapton or somebody." There wasn't nothing like that out there.
I'm no spring chicken. The same arthritis that ate up my left hip that finally got replaced hasn't stopped there... And touring is a lot of work. I'm impressed when I see people like Eric Clapton out there. Gee whiz, Eric, give me a break! I know it's gotta hurt somewhere.
I'm going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.
Eric Clapton was such a great player. He sounds like he's Freddie King or someone like that. He plays the roots of blues and Delta blues. He really affected me with the way that he plays, because he never really plays that many notes.
I know he played on the last record but I don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking of Eric Clapton.
The one thing I do have is good ears. I don't mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.
When I got out of high school, I was in a blues band. It was the kind of music I was interested in, and listening to, mostly because it was becoming a vehicle for a generation of guitarists - like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Mike Bloomfield. And that's what I wanted to be, principally: a guitar player.
When I grew up, I had influences as diverse as Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix.
I was a kid that grew up listening to The Beatles and The Stones and Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and I wanted all of that in there. But at the same time, a large part of my playing is Tony Iommi and Billy Gibbons. I'm just a sum total of all of the guitar players that I think were really cool.
I love Eric Clapton.
The breath of the flute player: does it belong to the flute?
Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.
There's the whole significance of Krishna as the flute player who awakens our consciousness. It doesn't necessarily have to be a flute because for me it was a sitar or a guitar or even Elvis Presley doing "Heartbreak Hotel." It was like Krishna's flute calling me somewhere. It's just really simple when we can remember.
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