The Germanic umlaut has become synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal, with dozens of bands, including Blue Öyster Cult, Motörhead and Mötley Crüe, making use of the grammatical mechanism.
However, Jethro Tull founding member Ian Anderson said the umlaut has been spectacularly misappropriated over the years in the rock scene.
"The umlauts are there for a legitimate reason because they are correct in the linguistic spelling, whereas the misappropriation of the umlaut at the hands of, for instance, Mötley Crüe or Motörhead, ought to make you either laugh or get angry, depending on your point of view," Anderson said during an interview with German radio station Radio Bob, as transcribed by Blabbermouth.
The topic came about during a discussion on the usage of umlauts in the title of Jethro Tull's imminent new album, "RökFlöte," which marks the band's 23rd studio album and is due out Friday.
"Before I started work on the album, it had a working title of 'Rock Flute', in English, because I thought, 'I'm gonna make a rock album and it'll have a lot of flute on it.' So that was what was at the top of my page when I started work on January the 1st of 2022," Anderson said.
Anderson said that as he dwelled on his thoughts about the album, he began to flesh out the subject matter. He decided to write an album "focusing, really, on some of the Gods from Norse paganism, the polytheistic beliefs in Norse religion."
"And in a fanciful way I decided that perhaps the title should become not 'Rock' but 'Rök', which in old Icelandic means 'destiny', and 'Flöte', which is the German- and other Germanic-language pronunciation and spelling of flute, the instrument I play," he added. "So that's what it became."
Last year Anderson shared with BBC how he settled on the band name Jethro Tull, who was an English agricultural pioneer from Berkshire who helped to bring about the British Agricultural Revolution.
"Well, I know all about that now, but when our agent suggested it back in 1968, I thought he made the name up. I thought it was just some funny name," Anderson said.
"But it just so happened we stuck with it. Maybe two or three weeks after that, I then learned to my horror that we've been named after a dead guy who invented a seed drill, which didn't seem like a passport to instant success with the audiences of the day.
"But they, like I, probably didn't do history or that period of history at school, so they were oblivious to it as well."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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