Ian Anderson, 75-year-old mastermind of Jethro Tull, speaks in a new interview about Jethro Tull’s new album “RökFlöte” (release: April 21, 2023), but also about the “wrong” use of umlauts – and lets his anger run free .
In the German radio show “Radio Bob” he only tells about the origin of his album title: “Before I started work, it had the working title ‘Rock Flute’, in English, because I thought: ‘I’m going to make a rock album and there will be a lot of flute on it’.”
About the origin of “Rökflöte”
Then he reports that he also decided to use umlauts for the title – but he uses them correctly: “When I started work on January 1, 2022, I thought about the topic and decided that I wants to write about gods of Norse paganism and the polytheistic beliefs in Norse religion. And in an imaginative way, I decided that maybe the title shouldn’t be ‘Rock’ but ‘Rök’.”
“Rök” means “destiny” in Old Icelandic, as Anderson elaborates. And “Flöte” is, understandably, the German and Germanic spelling of the wind instrument that he plays. So his umlauts make sense.
Anderson on the umlauts in Mötley Crüe, Motörhead and Co.: “They should make you laugh or get angry”
Not so with some other rock bands, he finds: “Umlauts are there for a legitimate reason, because they are spelled correctly, while the misappropriation of the umlauts by e.g. Mötley Crüe or Motörhead should either make you laugh or infuriate, depending on your point of view.”
The use of “Röck Döts”
The multi-instrumentalist talks about the “heavy metal umlauts” here, also called “röck döts” in English. This is how umlauts are used in the names of bands, which are usually assigned to the metal music genre. The Röck Döts are intended to give the various names a strange appearance. Another well-known example is Blue Öyster Cult.
More about “Rökflöte”
The latest work, “Rökflöte”, is Jethro Tull’s 23rd studio album and will be released on April 21st.
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