I'm a beginner, and have been avoiding looking at alternate tunings because I'm nowhere near ready yet to try to wrap my mind around them.
I was looking at the Jethro Tull song "One Brown Mouse" (tab http://www.xguitar.com/guitar-tabs/jethro_tull/heavy_horses/one_brown_mouse.txt among other places), which is a pretty straightforward progression of simple week-1 open chords, in standard tuning. I have played it and it does indeed sound like the song is supposed to sound (which is gratifying!).
I'm curious about one thing--on some live version of this song, Ian Anderson introduces it with "This was inspired by the Scottish poet Mr. Robert Burns, who, had he been able to tune his guitar in open-E tuning, would have certainly written this song." So, is this just a joke? Or is there some version in open-E, or a way of playing it in open-E that would be better?
It would be typical of Anderson's stage patter for this to be a joke, but since I understand so little of this I'd like to make sure.
