"After the summer of love came the winter of discontent," observes Ian, who tours to Worthing this September.

"It all disintegrated between 68 and 70 and slipped into a harsh period of recovering from the hippy excesses.

"People started realising that they had to get jobs. Even some musicians realised it!"

By 72-73, the hippy days were over: "People found themselves in a more pragmatic age. It had lasted too long. It chewed up the hippies and spat them out.

"I hated the whole thing, the drippy, self-indulgent hippy time. I found it quite repugnant. It irritated me, people passing around the endless squish-squashy joint. I feel very relieved looking back that I was never part of it."

It was society's gap year – and it lasted four years.

Its one saving grace is that the period produced a lot of extraordinarily-good music, though Jimi Hendrix certainly wasn't at his best when Ian last saw him at a big festival just a few months before he died.

"He was a rather unfortunate, rather preyed-upon creature. Like Michael Jackson, he surrounded himself with an entourage that just said yes to him and supplied him with drugs."

As for Jackson, as Ian points out, there is a striking and indeed frighteningly similar precedent with Elvis Presley, the similarities stretching from the yes-men entourage to the "dodgy rock-band doctor".

As Ian says, the line runs unbroken from the king of rock and roll through to the king of pop, the two losing touch with reality and becoming deluded.

"Michael Jackson was the master of self-delusion. You can see it in the Bashir interview. He was a man in denial about the truth and perfectly capable of believing in his own delusion..."

But surely Ian can understand how that can happen, given the heights of adulation both attracted and the need for protection both felt? Didn't Ian ever feel it happening to him?

"I am just not that kind of guy and have too much intelligence to sink into that morass," says Ian. "Of course, it is great to see thousands of fans in front of you, all adoring your music.

"But then you walk off stage into a cr*p little dressing room with a toilet that doesn't work. It brings you back down to earth.

"If you connect yourself with the blue-blanket creepy comfort zone of creepy men, then it is a one-way trip to oblivion. The first thing any self-respecting pop or rock people need to do is to dump the entourage."

For the tour, which brings him to Worthing's Pavilion Theatre on Tuesday, September 29 (tickets on 01903 215799; www.worthingtheatres.co.uk),
Ian will be concentrating on the acoustic side of things.
With a band consisting of German guitar virtuoso Florian Opahle, pianist and accordionist John O'Hara, bassist David Goodier, drummer Mark Mondsir and special guests, Ian will play Tull acoustic classics as well as other specially re-arranged Tull rock material, splus some new material specially written for the tour.

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