INTERVIEW: Todd Rundgren

Published Jan 28, 2025, 10:03 AM

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Well, my next guest is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that is all you really need to know when you're deciding what show to attend. But he is far more than that. Todd Rungren is one of music's most revered singer, songwriters, guitarists and producers and he's returning to Australia. We get to see him at the Lion Arts Factory on the seventh of March. Todd Rungren, welcome back. Thanks for coming to see us.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I always look forward to coming down on you.

It is so great to have you in the country. What kind of show can we expect here in Adelaide, Todd? What can the old fans? What can the new fans look forward to seeing?

Well, Davy Lanes put together a band backing me up again, so it'll be a great band, a great performance. I'm doing a ninety minute subset of the show that I was doing in the US, which is mostly kind of some fan favorites, deep cuts, favorites of mine, and the occasion familiar song. My shows are usually the occasional familiar song because I haven't had that many, you know, hit records. A lot of the material that's familiar to people, maybe because somebody else recorded it, you know, like like Robert Palmers, Can we still be friends or something like that. But I'll do some of the stuff that you know, the older people would like to hear, but hopefully I'm satisfying the younger people and doing stuff that's more contemporary stuff that as I say that I like to play, I don't play down to my audience. You know. It's like I don't make assumptions about what they will or won't like, you know, or try and like pand or to them. I actually my audience, my personal audience is very long suffering in that regard, because when I went from the transition to something anything with all the hits on it, to a wizard a true Star with almost no hits on it, almost no actual songs on it, it was the great calling. A bunch of my audience left. You know, this is too much for us, But the ones who stayed were super committed and stuck with me through all of the various changes, stylistic experiments and things like that throughout the decades. And so I make the assumption that you know, a good percentage of my audience is fairly up on what I've been involved in. They don't necessarily have to be devoted in the sense that they own every record. But as I say, i'm the only assumption I make is that they have some level of sophistication that they keep open ears with whatever it is that I do.

You know, everything I hear about you, every compliment that is prised upon you, it's that you are this wizard, you are this true star. I think Bob Lefsett's code you a bacon. I mean, it's heady praise, but I just sense that you're the kind of person who just wants to play.

I think I take it more seriously than that. I mean, in some sense I I don't have a lot of choice. Is because you know, the record business is not what it used to be, and you have to play just like the olden days before there were records. You know, you're a wandering minstrel. So you know, if I want to continue to have any sort of income, then I have to do what I do best, which is which is making music. But you know, once it starts, you know, I realize that there's an entertainment aspect about it, but I have to sort of. I have to feel good about it, you know, I have to feel like I'm not just walking through it. You know that I still have some level of personal commitments in the material, and I'm conveying that to the audience. Entertaining is you know, maybe the end result, but more important than that is kind of reaching people somehow and get giving them something that stays there when they leave the show.

You're so renowned as this guru when it comes to video, computer software, interaction with the audience, et cetera. I saw Daryl Hall from Hall and I It's at your Hall of Fame speech and he said, you know, the thing with Todd is you just never know what he's going to do. Are you still like that today? Do you still like pushing the boundaries?

Ah? Well, I know it isn't pushing boundaries. I don't see them, you know that. It's a different thing. You know. I never think about, oh I've crossed the boundary here. You know. I realized, you know, when maybe the first time I wrapped on a record, you know that people were going to have strong opinions about it, you know, but it wasn't as if I had never attempted something out of the ordinary, or even try to cop something that might have seemed inappropriate to me. You know, for me to do I don't have as much to lose as most artists because I have an annuity of other people's records, because I was a record producer, and because you know, as long as those things keep producing some kind of royalties, I don't have to change my standards and try and read the audience before I do anything, you know, and try and figure out what are they going to accept. I'll just do that. It's still possible for me when I start making a record to think in completely unfettered terms about where I want to go with it, and you know, that's baked into the cake. And it's also I think part of my audience's expectations is that I will not suddenly fall into a rut and start doing things the same way all the time because I can't think of anything new. I'd rather stop and do that, or that I'm going to just simply pander to them, you know. Oh you like that, I'll just give you more of that.

Do you get do you get a different musical fulfillment playing solo or do you like the camaraderie in a band. You've been in so many great bands. I know you last to it here with Ringo Star and he's all stop band. I mean, that's got to be a great trip hanging with other musos.

Well. I have done shows where I have no band, I had no backing band, and I want to play the piano and the guitar and stuff like that. But I over time, it's kind of like I evolved as a singer, and the way that I sing now makes it more difficult for me to pay attention to what's happening with my hands, and so my piano playing was just getting worse and worse. You know, the better singer I got, the worse my piano playing got. And I was never you know, I had no kind of training as a piano player. People look in my hands and they say, wow, that's really weird the way you where your fingers are going. And so in that sense, I, you know, I'm more comfortable with the band. I can just get out in front with a microphone and focus only on the singing and relating to the audience and that sort of thing, as opposed to having to worry about making mistakes the whole time.

You mentioned earlier about how you produced. Can we talk about You've produced so many great acts, engineered so many great acts, Haul and Oates, Cheap Trick, meat Loaf, to name a few. Can we talk about meat because, Todd, I don't know if you're aware, but Meatloaf's got this bad legacy in this country now, unfortunately because of one bad performance at a sporting event. And I'm a huge Meatloaf fan. You produced the legendary Bad Out of Hell, which, first and foremost thank you because it is a classic. It's the fifth highest selling album of all time. This album, Todd, is a work of art. So looking back, explain to us, talk to us about that time. Do you still have im minse pride when you think about that album?

Well, it was certainly a challenge, and it was a record that nobody else wanted to make, and I had to find my own reasons to make it. And the reason that I had to make it was I thought of it as a spoof of Bruce Springsteen, and that's what kept me focus on it. I understand why everyone else kind of turned the project down. The songs were so long, The lead singer was this big, sweaty, fat guy. You know, and they're figuring, you know, I don't know if people are going to go for him, you know, that sort of thing. That first video of the Paradise by the Dashboard Light video was one of the things that, you know, that broke him. And you know, I just did the record with no expectations that it would be hugely successful. As a matter of fact, by the time we finished it, we didn't even have a label. Bearsville turned it down, Warner Brothers turned it down. They shopped it around and took them six months to find anybody who would even release the record. So it's the you know, it's always kind of I wrn a little weird to me when people say, yeah, that album, that's just it's a classic. It's you know that in retrospect it is, you know, but before it came out, nobody heard that. Nobody thought, oh, this is going to be one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Most people thought this is going to be one of the biggest flops of all time, you know, And so it's you just never can tell in some ways. But I always credited the success to three things. One was they never gave up, and that includes you know, they never gave up trying to find a label. When they found the label, the guy at the label, Steve Popovich, never gave up on the act. Put out one single and nothing happened, you know, and put out another single and nothing happened. And after that happened, most labels just give up, you know. They put out two singles and nothing happens. They said, well, we're done. But he went and put out that third single, and by then meat Loaf had toured so relentlessly that he had started to build up something of a buzz. You know, you just never stopped touring. That was how he lost his voice, and that's why that thing happened during the soccer match. You know, he never recovered his voice after his first tour, so it was that was kind of unfortunate, but it was from that relentlessness he burned part of his voice off. But the third thing that happened was MTV came on the air, and MTV they didn't have a whole lot of videos to play, and DJs were like DJs, they want to put on something really long so they can go up to the roof and get high. So they were playing Paradise by the dashboard light every hour, you know, and so those three things all kind of combined, you know, And if those hadn't combined, I don't know whether it would have become the record that it became, you know, and had the success on MTV and label certainly, you know, and the guy at the label willing to go the long distance for him, and if they had sort of given up themselves and said, well, maybe let's go our separate ways, Diamon and meat, you know, it's just too much work and we're not getting anything back for it.

The story I love is that no label would touch it, you know. Clive Davis, legendary producer, hated it. And yet it shows the power of music. It shows that it's like fans sticking up the middle finger to suits. Millions and millions of people love this. It's it's the producing, the engineering. It's just a great story.

Yeah, they're not a lot of those stories, but it is one of those.

Well, we are blessed to have you in our country, Todd, and to coming to our city. So first and foremost, thank you for coming to see us, because many people don't. They just stick to the Eastern seaboard. But congratulations on the coreer. Congratulations on the accolades and certainly what you mean to everyone in the industry. Thanks so much, all the best.

Thank you, and we'll see you in March.

Todd Rungren, He's performing at the Line Arts Center on the seventh of March. Folks, he is a true legend of music. You have to see him in the flesh. Tickets are available at moshtics dot com dot au.