Men Without Hats frontman Ivan Doroschuk has been talking about the time the band worked with Jethro Tull mainman Ian Anderson.
The prog-adjacent Canadian synth band are currently promoting their new single, I Love The 80s, which, with tongue clearly in cheek, echoes their massive hit from the decade, The Safety Dance.
Talking on Canada's The Metal Voice podcast, Doroschuk was asked about his collaborations over the years, and remembered recording with Ian Anderson on the song On Tuesday from the band's 1987 album Pop Goes The World, and how Gentle Giant's Derek Shulman was the catalyst!
"The connection was through Derek Schulman from Gentle Giant, who used to tour with Jethro Tull back in the 70s," explained Doroschuk. "So he knew Ian. So, because of The Safety Dance video and the whole medieval thing. Derek thought it would be a great connection, which it was. And Ian came in and all he asked for was a six-pack of Grolsch beer and a Silver Shadow limousine to pick him up at the train station and drive him back after the gig. And he was great.
"I was really nervous, first of all, to meet him because I grew up on Jethro Tull. The second thing is that the part that he had to play, it sounds all like the same thing, but every single line in the song is different. There's little kind of little intricacies that make every little part different. And I didn't want to be the guy sitting there telling him what to do. But he came in, and it was like one take. He knew every part. He knew all the little differences. He didn't have to be told anything. He was great, it was just an awesome experience.
"I can't even think of a time that I've been let down by one of my musical heroes. I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of the guys I grew up listening to and he was one of them. Often hear like, "Oh, this guy's going to be difficult. He's going to be this. He's going to be that." But he was just, he was awesome. He was awesome."
Anderson himself recalled the session, also on The Metal Voice several years ago, recalling, "It's a nice tune that I was asked to play on because Ivan, the main ma,n was in London recording an album and he must have got wind of me having some positive comments about the Safety Dance. The song was quite a hit in the UK, and a refreshing one; it was almost an abandoned, crazy hippy kind of video at a time where everything else was synth pop and rather contrived. This was a fun, abandoned wacky song, but everybody loved it in the UK and I enjoyed it too. I guess Ivan heard about that and said, 'Oh can we get Ian Anderson to play on a song?' and the record company got the message.
"So I trotted into the studio in London and recorded it, and that was the end of it really. When I play on other people's records, I politely refuse any form of payment because I choose what to do, I don't do everything, and I am certainly not a gun for hire. You can't pay me to overcome my feelings for perhaps this is not the right thing for me to do, or that I don't really think I can add anything useful to your song. I have to feel like I can make a contribution. I am more likely to make that contribution if the music is some way away from what I do because then it becomes more of a challenge and I can step out of my normal musical area and tackle something a little different that I have not played before."
You can listen to Ian's flute runs on the rather Tull-esque On Tuesday below, as well as watch all of Ivan Doroschuk's interview with The Metal Voice.
