Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to MEN WITHOUT HATS singer founder, Ivan Doroschuk about the bands new single ‘I LOVE THE 80’s, the bands upcoming new studio album and his collaborations over the years.
In the chat Ivan remembers recording with Jethro Tull’s singer Ian Anderson on the song , ON TUESDAY, taken off of the bands POP GOES THE WORLD which was release June 29, 1987.
Ivan recalls recording with Ian Anderson:
“The connection was through Derek Schulman from ‘Gentle Giant’ who used to tour with JETHRO TULL back in the back in the 70s. So he knew Ian. So because of ‘The Safety Dance’ video and the whole medieval thing. He (Derek Schulman) 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 (an antique limousine) to pick him up at the train station and drive him back after the gig. And he was great. I was really 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 with the talk back button going, “Sorry, Ian. I didn’t want to be the guy 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 a great, It was just a 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.”
The Metal Voice also spoke to IAN ANDERSON a few years ago and asked him about the same experience where Anderson said:
” It’s a nice tune that I was asked to play on because Ivan the main man 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 (Safety Dance) 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 U.K. 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 someway 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.”
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