“Living in the Past”: Ian Anderson brings story of Jethro Tull to Brooklyn

Celebrated British rock legend Ian Anderson will pay tribute to the life and times of English Agricultural inventor (and his own personal inspiration) Jethro Tull during the reign of “Jethro Tull: The Rock Opera”—a “quasi-operatic” concert tour slated to land in Brooklyn’s own Kings Theatre on Friday, November 6.

The performance—set to some of Anderson’s best known songs from classic rock band Jethro Tull’s repertoire, as well as a small selection of premieres—tells the story of Jethro Tull, the English agricultural pioneer credited for the perfection of the horse-drawn seed drill and, ultimately, the British Agricultural Revolution.

Though, that story, Anderson stressed, has been completely reimagined.

“Rather than creating a historical drama, I repositioned it in the present day talking about him not as an inventor of seed drills but as a biochemist working with genetically modified crops,” Anderson said, explaining that, in “Jethro Tull: The Rock Opera,” the protagonist is “not just about making money but about feeding an ever-hungry planet.”

Anderson hopes the storyline swap will make the show more relatable, though he, himself, never found it too hard to relate to Tull’s story.

“[The show] began as an actual notion for a production tour as a way of representing a lot of songs that I’ve written over the years and to put them in a context—to give them a narrative and a place in relation to each other—and in the relation to the life of the original Jethro Tull after whom we were named,” Anderson explained. “[Last summer], I was struck by how many songs that I’d written that were really describing potential elements of his life.”

However, picking and choosing which made the final cut, Anderson said, was tricky.

“I started off by writing a long list of [songs] and whittling it down from there,” he said, adding—with a slight chuckle—that he “desperately wanted to find a way to describe the show without using the words ‘rock opera.’”

Yet, he “couldn’t think of another term that would give credence to songs in a timeline linked together with the story”—and so, “Jethro Tull: The Rock Opera” was born, with Anderson using five brand new pieces to help tell the story.

“They’re all fairly short pieces used to flesh out the story in the modern age,” he explained. “I really needed to find the missing piece and I thought, ‘We’ll slip five new songs in there.’”

Still, about 85 percent of the production, Anderson said, is made up of Jethro Tull classics, such as “Aqualung,” “Locomotive Breath” and “Living in the Past”—all only slightly re-written to tell the tale better.

“I think [Jethro Tull fans] will enjoy the familiarity, which is one of the reasons people go to see bands they’ve seen before,” Anderson said, hopeful that fans will also enjoy hearing those songs in a different setting that “perhaps would make them think more about the lyrics.”

No stranger to the stage, Anderson will assume the role of the narrator in the first half of the production and an older Tull in the second half, accompanied on stage by David Goodier (bass), John O’Hara (keyboards), Florian Opahle (guitar), and Scott Hammond (drums) as well as some surprise virtual guests.

“We have a little bit of shifting around [of parts and performers],” he said, “but that’s part of the fun.”

When asked to share his favorite part of the production, Anderson simply replied: “drinking a cold beer in the dressing room after the show.”

That, and he’s pretty excited to finally play Brooklyn.

“It’s an area that I’ve not played in before,” he said, noting also that he loves old theaters the likes of the Kings. “Big arenas and stadiums—those are not my cup of tea. It’s always enjoyable for me to be in the [theater] environment because I feel like it’s my place. I make it my home.”

The United States run of “Jethro Tull: The Rock Opera” will kick off on Sunday, November 1 at the Chicago Theatre.

Curtains will rise on Anderson and company at the newly revamped Kings Theatre (1027 Flatbush Avenue) on Friday, November 6 at 8 p.m. For tickets (starting at $75) or for more information, visit www.kingstheatre.com.