Music / 60s folk
Ian A Anderson: ‘I’m going to try to keep the body count down’
When a veteran music performer says they’re doing ‘one last retirement tour’ it generally leads to a rolling of the eyes and a disbelieving ‘yeah, yeah – whatever”’.
That’s why folk and blues musician Ian A Anderson, coming to Bristol Folk House on Sunday, December 7, won’t use the R-word: “I prefer to say I’m putting myself into mothballs because, were somebody to offer me the chance to play at a festival with somebody I really like to be on the bill with, I just might accept it.”
Nevertheless, at the age of 78 Ian does feel the need to step back from the limelight after a 60 year career.
He was ironically helped by the warm responses of young folk stars at a recent festival gathering where he performed. “A lot of younger musicians only knew me as ‘the bloke what ran that magazine’” – Ian edited fRoots until its demise in 2019 – “They’d never actually heard me play. The gratifying thing was them coming up after and saying ‘I didn’t know you were that good!’
“So I thought that’s it, quit while you’re still ahead. I’ve seen a few peers and heroes becoming decrepit and being carried on a wave of sympathy from the audience – I don’t want that, and I’m beginning to feel some of those age-related mobility issues myself.” And, in a nod to the pre-vinyl Shellac era, he adds: “I always wanted to be a 78 so stopping now seems appropriate!”
December 2025 also marks an auspicious anniversary for Ian – it’s 60 years since his professional debut.
Born in Weston Super Mare, he had found his way into the great 60s revival of interest in acoustic Blues music and joined a local combo – The Backwater Jook Band.
Drawn to the city’s thriving folk club scene, he moved to Bristol just as the Jooks were asked to perform on a TWW television show, for which they were paid actual money: “That was my first ever professional gig, in December 1965. That’s why I’m doing the Folk House gig then, my last ever Bristol appearance.”
70s folkies outside the Troubadour in Clifton – Ian is in the middle with the big hat
There’s one more gig on the actual anniversary date but that’s in Cambridge, where Ian now lives after leaving Bristol in 2019 for family reasons.
He insists he still has a strong bond here, however: “Of all the places I’ve lived for any extended period Clifton is my favourite and will remain so,” he says. That love affair with BS8 goes back to the 60s when he lived above the legendary Troubadour folk club on Sion Hill.
Jacking in the trainee accountancy job he had taken “just to keep my father happy” Ian became a full-time musician and later started his Village Thing record label. Fact fans are always interested to learn it is officially recognised that it was Ian A Anderson who first coined the term ‘Clifton Village’ so beloved of estate agents today.
Ian’s music took him on to London in the 70s, going on to form bands like the mighty Tiger Moth with guitarist Ben Mandelson, the pair of them later joined by Lu Edmonds to form Blue Blokes 3 – until Lu’s punk past in the Damned and the Mekons caught up with him and he left to join Public Image Limited.
By the 80s Ian was also increasingly involved in promoting world music as well as founding and editing the monthly Folk Roots (later fRoots) magazine.
Despite claiming never to have had a ‘proper job’ since that brush with accountancy it was a high-pressure lifestyle that put the squeeze on his playing work throughout the 90s.
After the Millennium, however, he recalls many memorable gigs: “Our Tiger Moth ceilidh at WOMAD in 2006 was not only exhilaratingly wild but we were told there were nearly as many dancing outside the packed tent as inside; and on the last night of our Blue Blokes 3 tour at London’s Purcell Room in 2009 we probably knew half the audience in the full house so it was like one big folk club.”
Returning to his beloved Clifton in 2011 Ian would go on to revive his solo performing and recording, leading to 2017’s Deathfolk Blues Revisited, the title a reference to his 1969 album Stereo Death Breakdown.
“I have become self-branded over the last decade by one of the things I do that I call ‘death folk’. I’m going to try to keep the body count down on these last few gigs but there will be some death and dastardly deeds in there, of course,” he promises.
Reflecting on the changing fortunes of the folk world over the past six decades Ian has seen its profile come and go: “Lots of people think of the 60s as a golden age: I think of the 80s as being one because we discovered the rest of the world. Then, around the Millennium, the general media stopped taking the piss with comments about Arran sweaters and fingers in ears and people like Eliza Carthy started getting Mercury award nominations.
“Certainly since then the music has been on an incredible high, it’s just that its fallen off the mainstream media radar again. I do a monthly Pod Wireless podcast and every month my problem is what to leave out. So much good stuff.
“For me, the important difference between now and back then is that all the most creative and leading musicians are women – a total turn around since the 1960s.”
Now contemplating his ‘mothballing’ how does he feel? “To be absolutely honest a sense of impending relief.
“But first I want to have some fun, which is why I’ve invited various reprobate musicians to twang and honk and what-have-you: mandolinist Alex Vann of Spiro and Three Cane Whale, desert guitar supremo Justin Adams of Sensational Space Shifters and Andy Leggett, once of the famed Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra. Andy played on a couple of tracks of my Royal York Crescent album in 1970.”
The gig will roam through Ian’s vast back catalogue – “Everything, from every crevice of my career!” – but with no time for a rehearsal there’ll be no safety net: “The Folk House has a flea market that afternoon, but we’ll have a soundcheck run through so it should be alright.”
That confidence, born of a six-decade career in the music business, has left Ian A Anderson with one simple guiding principle: “It’s supposed to be fun!” And isn’t it just?
Ian A Anderson and Friends appear at Bristol Folk House on Sunday, December 7. Ian’s autobiography Alien Water is available through Ghosts from the Basement on Bandcamp.
Main image: Caraway Studios
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