There was a period during the late 70s and early 80s when Ian Anderson began making plans for the end of the world. Born in 1947, he was a child of the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear annihilation had been a permanent presence throughout his life. “It always seemed entirely possible that all of this could end before I had reached manhood,” he says.
Now, thanks to a combination of escalating East-West tensions and having become a first-time father a few years earlier at the age of 30, the Jethro Tull singer’s fears were more intense than ever. The fact that Anderson and his family lived just a few miles away from RAF High Command near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire didn’t help matters.
