Todd Rundgren has adopted a number of personas in his nearly 40-year career. You could call him a wizard, a star, a tortured artist or an individualist, and not only would all these be references to titles in his lengthy discography, they also describe various aspects of the man himself.
Fresh off a fall and early winter tour of theaters andmid-size clubs, the eclectic auteur has a number of irons in the fire, including a new album.
Of its musical direction, Rundgren says, “I’m only looking to do what I haven’t done much of before. Even though Utopia might have dabbled, let’s say, or on some rare occasion done something that resembled arena rock, we were more of a progressive-rock band. We tended not to have the advantages, shall we say, of Top 40 play and things like that.
“My last album, Liars, had aspects about it I would like to explore further, but one thing it didn’t have was a stylistic unity to it,” he continues. “It was fairly eclectic, so I think I want to tame that a little bit by doing a more consistent style. And, in that regard, I wanted to experiment with something I maybe know about, but never tried to create anything in that style.”
Actually, experimentation and exploring new creative vistas are nothing new for the Philadelphia native. Following his artistic instincts and taking calculated risks have been his stock and trade since initiating his first serious band, The Nazz, in 1967.
Around this time, Rundgren really began to emerge as not only an evolving musician, but as a gifted producer, as well. But, to tell that story one needs to revert to where it all started in the first place.
“When I was still in school, becoming a musician was a secondary option, because nobody expected that you could do it for a lifelong career,” explains Rundgren. “It was always a crapshoot to see if you could survive, even for a little while. And so, I was interested in computers and technology and thought I would go to a technical school or something and learn how to program or repair computers or electronics. As it turned out, I didn’t have to do that. I was fairly successful early at music. And the advantage of that was that music is not a nine-to-five job. It doesn’t eat up a lot of your time, so there was flexibility that enabled me to learn about these other things and apply them to my music.”
He certainly learned and applied his knowledge well, having gone on to become one of the most successful and versatile record producers and engineers in the business. Some of his credits include creating hits for Grand Funk Railroad, Badfinger, The Band, Fanny, Paul Butterfield, Meat Loaf, The Pursuit of Happiness, New York Dolls, The Tubes, Patti Smith, XTC and countless others.
“I was very interested in the production side of things when I was in my first band, The Nazz,” recalls Rundgren. “I paid a lot of attention to what the producer would do on our first couple recordings. By the end of our recording career, I was actually behind the console mixing and stuff like that. After The Nazz, I wasn’t interested in getting into another band or prepared to start a solo career, so I got into production as a way to stay in the music business and learn about the process. I was actually more successful initially as a producer than an artist. And if I never had become an artist on my own, I would probably be an everyday record producer today.”
But, thankfully, he did decide to get back into the performance arena in 1971 with the studio band Runt, scoring a Top 20 hit with the single “We Gotta Get You a Woman”.
His solo career went into full swing in 1972 with the monumental double album Something Anything, which spawned two more Top 20 hits with “I Saw the Light” and “Hello, It’s Me,” a remake of a Rundgren song originally recorded by The Nazz.
As his star was rising, the prodigious musician kept the creative flame alive with the psychedelic-tinged A Wizard/A True Star in 1973 and 1974’s self-titled Todd, which featured everything from electronic pop to hard rock and ballads.
Rundgren continued riding the ’70s tide with the progressive-rock band Utopia, showcasing a Mahavishnu Orchestra-meets-Frank Zappa aesthetic. The band was eventually streamlined into a tight, well-oiled unit playing full-on power rock songs with memorable hooks. It featured Kasim Sulton on bass and vocals, Willie Wilcox on drums and vocals and Roger Powell on keyboards and vocals.
“My early musical influences were pretty diverse,” says Rundgren, talking about the genesis of his creative psyche. “This is partly because of my father’s musical interests and the rules of the household where we weren’t allowed to play music of my generation that I liked. So, I got exposed to a lot of 20th century classical and show music. In addition to that, there was the British Invasion along with electronic music and jazz.
“Up to this point, I was a guitar player, and that’s all I imagined doing,” he continues. “But, I came to realize you have to get serious about songwriting, because that’s what everybody did then. You weren’t an artist if you played somebody else’s material like Frank Sinatra. You had to be like The Beatles and write your own material. And so, when I started writing material, there were more obvious and immediate influences that had more to do with my guitar. But, there were other areas I thought were great, like the music of the Beach Boys, although I wasn’t into the surfin’ and cars and stuff. When we formed The Nazz, it was an equal combination of The Who, The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix — all these different influences.”
The ’80s and ’90s found Rundgren managing production, solo and Utopian fronts while also delving into video and computer technology, with personal advancements in early precursors to DVDs, state-of-the-art music videos utilizing live action and computer graphics and early developments in CD-ROMs and interactive music.
The industrious visionary, who turns 60 this year, has lost none of his revolutionary hunger to evolve and grow. He maintains a steady and faithful production and touring schedule and is still very involved with and aware of his loyal and astute fan base. This became very apparent while on tour with the New Cars this past year.
“Playing with The Cars allowed me the opportunity to potentially expand my audience,” says Rundgren. “But, there were often times when, because of confusion about the lineup of the bands and how it related to the original Cars, we would play some places where we would sell fewer tickets than what I would have sold if I had been the headliner. So, there certainly was the opportunity in some places to play for fairly large crowds, but, in general, I enjoy playing my own music. I would rather play for a smaller but interested and informed crowd than for playing for as many people as possible and not being able to express your own musical ideas.”
Along those lines, Rundgren addresses his audience specifically and has some theories on today’s ticket-buying public.
“It’s interesting. You’d have to say that there are not too many people older than I am [at the shows],” comments Rundgren. “Maybe the oldest would be 65, and I’m almost 60. There’s definitely an older crowd, but there seems to be some new blood coming in from the bottom.”
Rundgren sees various age levels being represented at shows, with many under 30 or 20 years old. Still, it’s mostly people in their 40s that come to hear him play.
“I understand that a lot of the older crowd coming out to the shows have limited time and are more selective on what shows to go to,” says Rundgren. “So, you’re gonna have a younger, more flexible audience coming in from where the attrition comes from. So, if I do gain any new audience, I don’t expect it to be from people my own age. People my age are kind of trimming their options.”
One area, in particular, where Rundgren’s creative options have always seemed limitless is his songwriting. It has been the cornerstone of his career since its inception and remains just as intriguing and arduous as ever.
“As time goes on, songwriting becomes more of a challenge, at least for me, because I don’t see the point of repeating something I’ve done already,” he says. “I’m always looking to find some new subject matter or new musical idioms to keep it interesting. At this point, songwriting is a lot of mental organization and not a lot of sitting around and plunking out stuff. I’m trying to build something in my subconscious that will be a touchstone or the guidance system.”
Much of Rundgren’s musical output comes from a natural creative flow, and that keeps things interesting.
“If you think about it too much, then music can come out really mannered-sounding and idiomatic, as most people are trying to be stylistically recognized,” says Rundgren. “There’s a whole audience where that is perfectly satisfying. Barry Manilow isn’t gonna change his stripes at any point, and he’s got casinos full of people that wanna hear the same old, same old. That’s just not the musician I’ve ever been. I don’t believe I have any purpose unless I explore things that are, at least, new to me.”
In 1998, Rundgren launched PatroNet, the world’s first direct-artist-subscription service. This online service was designed specifically to allow his fans the ability to download his recordings from a Web site, www.patronet.com. This concept obviously pre-dated current music industry practices by a decade. So, it is no surprise that the godfather of the marriage of progressive music and all things multimedia would chime in on the current relationship between music distribution, maintaining an artistic career and the Internet.
“The end result I guess was inevitable because of the huge inertia of the industry,” observes Rundgren. “There’s still this popular myth that you get a record company contract for a million dollars, and you go make a record and they promote the crap out of it and you become popular and rich. Certainly, that happens for some people, but nowadays, that only happens for guys that live down the block from the record company, like the guys in Maroon 5 (laughs). They are so inside what are the remnants of the music industry that they can work what is, apparently at this point, a very old and obsolete system. But, for everybody else, it’s very unrealistic to have expectations that a record label is gonna be the key to your success in the long run.”
Today’s artists have new marketing avenues to work to their advantage.
“There’s all these options to explore the Internet and use all these newer paradigms for getting yourself exposed and selling merchandise and getting the equivalent of radio play on the Internet and things like that,” explains Rundgren.
But, it’s kind of funny. For all the musical and technological sophistication that the chameleonic artist has masterminded over his vast and esteemed career, the ever-pragmatic Rundgren still breaks it down to brass tacks.
“The bottom line is what it always was and probably always will be for musicians, and that is that you get the most money and the most satisfaction playing music in front of people,” he says. “Recordings are exactly that: They’re great documents and ways for people to experience what you do when you’re not there. But, your goal is to have a live audience to play for, not necessarily have a hit record.”
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