JETHRO TULL frontman Ian Anderson is featured in a new interview with Classic Rock Revisited. An excerpt from the discussion is available below.

Ryan Sparks: Your list of accomplishments over the years has been extraordinary and I’d like to ask you about some them if I may, but firstly for someone who just last year celebrated forty years as performing musician, as you've gotten older you haven't been content to simply rest on your laurels. What's the secret to your longevity?

Ian Anderson: "It has partly to do with the fact that I don't think you ever finish learning about music. It's always been my belief that the focus, attention and the motivation is something that I think you have to have if you're going to be an honest performing musician, as opposed to just some juke box on legs. You will get that more from accepting the fact that you have something to learn everyday in music, sometimes from working with musicians who are much younger than yourself, and that is a lesson I learned some while back. Other musicians that I have worked with both in Jethro Tull and outside of Jethro Tull have not learned that lesson. They frankly just thought that they knew everything they needed to know about music some time ago, and now they just play within their comfort zone. It could be argued that someone like BB King plays within his comfort zone and has had a long, industrious, and welcomed career, because lots of people enjoy what he does. However, that wouldn't suit me at all because I have to extend that comfort zone into a discomfort zone in order to give me the kind of personal satisfaction from struggling, to try to learn new tricks. Old dogs, counter to rumor, are usually quite good at learning new tricks, if they get an early bed at night, and they wake up early in the morning vigorously refreshed and ready to take on some new challenges. That's my motivation musically, to keep trying to accept new challenges however difficult they might appear to be."

Go to this location for the complete interview.