Todd Rundgren

• 1. Introduction

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  Todd Rundgren, born on the 22nd of June 1948, once called one of his own albums "my act of tyranny". He said it brought "a complete loss of about half of my audience". He said the episode became the model for the rest of his life. Rundgren is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer, and he had radio hits to lose. So why did he keep walking away from them? How does someone with no production experience become the person other bands call to finish their records? And what pushed a rock musician toward video, software and the Internet? The answers begin in Pennsylvania.

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• 2. Trial and Error

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  Todd Harry Rundgren was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the neighboring Upper Darby Township, where he taught himself guitar with little help. His parents kept a small record collection of show tunes and symphonic pieces. The operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan fascinated him most. Later he became infatuated with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Ventures and the Yardbirds. He also loved the Philadelphia soul of Gamble & Huff, the Delfonics and the O'Jays.

  At the age of 17 he formed his first band, Money, with his best friend and roommate Randy Reed and Reed's younger brother. After graduating from Upper Darby High School in 1966, he moved into Philadelphia. There he joined Woody's Truck Stop, a blues rock group modeled on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Within eight months it was the most popular group in the city. Rundgren and bassist Carson Van Osten then left, before the group's first album appeared. Rundgren had lost interest in the blues. He wanted to record original songs in the style of newer Beatles and Who records. With Van Osten he formed Nazz in 1967. In that band he learned songwriting and vocal arranging, determined to equal the artistry of the Beatles.

  In 1968, after four demo discs, Nazz signed with Screen Gems Columbia, an Atlantic Records subsidiary. The band flew to Los Angeles to make a first album at ID Sound studio. Rundgren had never produced anything. By his account, the credited producer, Bill Traut, rushed through the mixes in a day or two. Once Traut had gone, Rundgren decided the band should mix everything again, closer to how they wanted it. The engineer let them tinker with the board. Rundgren later said, "It was pretty much trial and error."

  He used varispeed and flanging on those recordings. Despite having no formal training, he wrote out the music charts for string and horn arrangements. Engineer James Lowe, whom Rundgren had recruited for his work with arranger Van Dyke Parks, thought Rundgren had become the de facto leader of Nazz. Lowe also believed that a producer's credit was wrongly withheld from him.

  The band's debut single arrived in July 1968. It paired "Open My Eyes" with "Hello It's Me", and Rundgren wrote both sides. The first album, Nazz, followed in October 1968. That March, New York singer-songwriter Laura Nyro had released her second album, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. Rundgren was struck by what he called "all the major seventh chords and variations on augmented and suspended chords". The record changed his writing at once, and he began composing more at the piano. He sought out a meeting with her. Soon afterward she asked if he wanted to be her band leader. Nazz had just signed its contract, so he declined, though he called the offer "incredibly tempting".

  Living together strained the band, and tensions grew between the first and second albums. They grew further when the other members bridled at the once-unassuming Rundgren taking complete control of the Nazz Nazz sessions as producer. By the time that album came out in April 1969, he and Van Osten had both quit, so the track selection happened without them. A third album, Nazz III, was assembled from leftover Nazz Nazz tracks and released in 1971 with no involvement from him at all.

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• 3. Boy Wonder

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  At 21, with Nazz behind him, Rundgren briefly considered working as a computer programmer. He decided instead that his calling was production. In the summer of 1969 he moved to New York and threw himself into the clubs of Greenwich Village, especially Steve Paul's Scene. There he met a number of Manhattan musicians and fashion designers.

  Michael Friedman, once the assistant to Nazz manager John Kurland, offered him a job as staff engineer and producer under Albert Grossman. Grossman was known for managing folk rock acts. He had just founded Ampex Records, a joint venture with the tape company of the same name, and had built Bearsville Studios near Woodstock. Bearsville soon grew into a record imprint of its own. Grossman promised Rundgren that he would become the "highest-paid producer in the world". That prediction later came true.

  The early assignments were modest. Rundgren said he was handed older folk artists who needed an upgrade, among them Ian & Sylvia and James Cotton. After producing the 1969 self-titled album by Great Speckled Bird, he was promoted to house engineer at Bearsville. Next he traveled to Canada with Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm of the Band to record Jesse Winchester's debut album in 1970. He guessed that it served as a run-through for what came next. The Band asked him to engineer the sessions for Stage Fright, because he got sounds quickly.

  Stage Fright was released in August 1970 and reached number 5 on the Billboard 200, the Band's highest chart showing to that point. Bearsville began calling Rundgren its "boy wonder". He went on to make a second Winchester album, which was shelved for two years. In 1971 he was expected to produce Janis Joplin's third and final album, Pearl, but the plan collapsed because the two could not get along. A smaller project did more for his future. Working on the 1970 album Taking Care of Business by the James Cotton Blues Band, he met keyboardist Mark "Moogy" Klingman. Klingman introduced him to keyboardist Ralph Schuckett, and both men worked extensively with Rundgren over the next few years.

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• 4. Reluctant Pop Star

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  Runt, released in mid-1970, did not carry Rundgren's name. Anxious about starting a full solo career after believing he might never perform again, he credited the record to the moniker "Runt". He asked Grossman only for a recording budget to cover the studio costs, with no advance. His general attitude was to "make the record I wanted to make and then hope the label can find a way to promote it". The album had a bright sound and songs inspired by Laura Nyro. It was recorded with 19-year-old bassist Tony Fox Sales and his 16-year-old brother Hunt Sales on drums.

  James Lowe returned from the Nazz days to engineer. He thought Rundgren seemed more able to lead a group, calling the material very sophisticated for someone so young. The lead single, "We Gotta Get You a Woman", reached number 20 on the Billboard charts. While preparing a follow-up, Rundgren produced Halfnelson, the debut album by the band that became Sparks. Ron and Russell Mael later credited him with launching their career.

  With his reputation growing, Rundgren started using recreational drugs for the first time. He began with marijuana, which he said gave him "a whole different sensibility about time and space and order". The Ballad of Todd Rundgren appeared in May 1971, mostly piano ballads still built on Nyro's template. He tried harder to refine his choice of subject matter and set himself apart from his influences. Its singles, "Be Nice to Me" and "A Long Time, a Long Way to Go", did not repeat the earlier success. Reviews were mixed at first, yet the album came to be counted among the greatest singer-songwriter albums of its era.

  In late 1971, George Harrison abandoned Badfinger's third album, Straight Up, to organize the Concert for Bangladesh. Rundgren was recruited to finish it, and the sessions lasted two weeks in September. The album and its two singles were hits. Rundgren was not credited on the first single, "Day After Day", so he earned no production royalties from it. He said the song did not sound much like Harrison's work and guessed the credit might have come from a general Beatle hubris.

  Then he returned to Los Angeles to start his third solo album, first planned as a single LP. By now he was also experimenting with Ritalin. His songwriting had become so second-nature that he was knocking songs out in about 20 minutes. Facing a three-week deadline, he worked up to 12 hours a day. He moved an eight-track recorder, a mixer and synthesizers into his living room so he could keep recording after leaving the studio. For the first time he played every part himself, including bass, drums and vocals. That yielded about an album and a half. He then stretched the project into a double LP and cut the last few tracks live with other musicians.

  Something/Anything? came out in February 1972, the first album officially issued under the name Todd Rundgren. Bearsville had just signed a long-term distribution deal with Warner Bros. Records. Among the pop songs sat extended jams and studio banter, including a spoken track called "Intro". In it he teaches listeners to spot recording flaws for an egg hunt style game he calls "Sounds of the Studio". Magazine ads showed a smiling Rundgren daring readers to "ignore me". The album peaked at number 29 on the Billboard 200 and went gold within three years. "I Saw the Light" reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Hello It's Me" followed late in 1973 and reached number 5.

  Critic Colin Larkin later called the record "rightly regarded as one of the landmark releases of the early 70s". In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it number 173 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Among its songs, "Couldn't I Just Tell You" influenced the power pop genre. Journalist Paul Lester called it a "masterclass in compression". Scott Miller's 2010 book Music: What Happened? went further and named it "likely the greatest power pop recording ever made".

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• 5. Painting With Your Head

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  The tag "the male Carole King" nagged at Rundgren after the success of Something/Anything?. "With all due respect to Carole King," he said, it was not what he hoped to build as a musical legacy. Back in New York and trying a host of psychedelic drugs, he decided his writing on that album had been formulaic and lazy. He wanted a follow-up that was "more eclectic and more experimental". His listening drifted toward the progressive rock of Frank Zappa, Yes and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

  The result, A Wizard, a True Star, was envisioned as a hallucinogenic flight plan in which every track segued into the next. It began in a chaotic mood and ended with a medley of his favorite soul songs. Rundgren explained, "With drugs I could suddenly abstract my thought processes in a certain way". He wanted to see if he could put them on a record. Others recognized the dynamics of a psychedelic trip, which he said was "almost like painting with your head". Musical theater, jazz and funk also fed into it.

  To house the sessions, Rundgren and Moogy Klingman founded a professional studio called Secret Sound. It was built to his specifications so that he could experiment without worrying about hourly studio costs. He still said the album felt rushed because the studio was unfinished. A Wizard, a True Star arrived in March 1973. At his insistence, no singles were issued, because he wanted the tracks heard in the context of the full LP. Its release overlapped with the rise of the "Hello It's Me" single. That gave him a reputation as a ballad singer, in sharp contrast to the album's content.

  Critics were divided at first. Over time the record became highly influential. In 2003, journalist Barney Hoskyns called it "the greatest album of all time", describing a dizzying rollercoaster of emotions and genre mutations. In 2018, Pitchfork writer Sam Sodomsky saw its fingerprints on bedroom auteurs to this day.

  In the weeks after its release, Rundgren produced two of the year's most significant LPs. Grand Funk Railroad's We're an American Band reached number two on the US charts. The New York Dolls' self-titled debut became a seminal forerunner of punk rock, although Rundgren never became known as a punk producer. He also prepared a technologically ambitious stage show with a group later called Utopia Mark I. It featured bassist Tony Sales, drummer Hunt Sales, keyboardist Dave Mason and synthesizer specialist Jean-Yves "M. Frog" Labat. The tour began in April and was cancelled after a couple of weeks.

  Next he returned to Secret Sound for Todd, a synthesizer-heavy double album drawing on more of his hallucinogenic experiences. He had also developed a fascination with religion and spirituality, reading Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Todd was due in December 1973, but a vinyl shortage caused by the 1973 oil crisis pushed it to the following February.

  While making Todd, he noticed the fusion jazz sensibility between session players Kevin Ellman on drums and John Siegler on bass. He chose them, plus Klingman and Schuckett, as the new Utopia. They played their first show in Central Park on the 25th of August 1973, sharing the bill with the Brecker Brothers and Hall & Oates. In their shows through November and December, Rundgren opened alone at the piano, playing along to a pre-recorded track.

  On the 7th of December he appeared solo on The Midnight Special, performing "Hello It's Me" in jarringly flamboyant glam clothing. Some bandmates were unhappy, and so was Bearsville executive Paul Fishkin, who remembered a look he compared to a drag queen. Another piece of flamboyance came from his guitar. In 1972 he had bought a psychedelic Gibson SG, known as "Sunny" or "The Fool", from British singer Jackie Lomax for $500. Eric Clapton had played it in Cream before giving it to George Harrison, who loaned it on to Lomax. Rundgren eventually retired it in 1993 and auctioned it in 1999.

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• 6. Mink Hollow

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  In the February edition of Melody Maker magazine in 1974, Rundgren accused John Lennon of striking a waitress at the Troubadour in Hollywood. He also insulted the former Beatle harshly. His album A Wizard, a True Star had already included a song aimed at Lennon. In September the magazine printed Lennon's reply, which denied the charge and called him "Turd Runtgreen". Lennon wrote, "I have never claimed to be a revolutionary. But I am allowed to sing about anything I want! Right?" A phone call from Lennon ended it. Rundgren recalled that both men realized they were being used.

  Utopia's first successful tour ran from March to April 1974. After it, Rundgren produced The Handsome Devils by Hello People and War Babies by Hall & Oates. Todd Rundgren's Utopia, released in November 1974, was his first full-fledged venture into progressive rock. It peaked at number 34, which stayed the group's highest album chart showing. Keyboardist Roger Powell recalled that Bearsville wished Utopia would have "just gone away". But Rundgren's contract demanded a set number of albums, so every other album was a solo record and the next a Utopia album.

  Initiation followed in 1975, leaning on synthesizers and the avant-garde jazz fusion of Zappa and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It again pushed the physical limits of vinyl. Its side-long suite, "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire", ran over 35 minutes. Faithful, released in May 1976, marked ten years as a professional musician. One side held original songs written as a reflection of his 1960s influences. The other side held covers of significant 1966 songs, including the Yardbirds' "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations". The arrangements were meant to sound as close to the originals as possible. He named "The Verb 'To Love'" as the moment he decided to stop writing superficial love songs.

  After Faithful he spent two months on an eastern spiritual retreat, traveling through Iran, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand, Japan and Hawaii. Back home he opened Utopia Sound Studios in Lake Hill, New York, just outside Woodstock. He bought a nearby house and an adjoining property to lodge visiting artists. The complex on Mink Hollow Road remained his base for the next six years. Meanwhile he made three albums with Utopia. Disco Jets, a tongue-in-cheek instrumental disco collection, stayed unreleased until 2001. Ra, in February 1977, was a concept album on Egyptian mythology, and its lavish tour used a giant pyramid and a Sphinx head. Oops! Wrong Planet, in September 1977, pointed the group toward pop.

  His relationship with model Bebe Buell began in 1972. During a break, Buell had a brief relationship with Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler, and she became pregnant. She gave birth to Liv Tyler on the 1st of July 1977. Buell first claimed that Rundgren was the father, and the baby was named Liv Rundgren. Soon afterward the couple split, but Rundgren stayed committed to the girl. At age 11, Liv learned that her biological father was Steven Tyler. She later said, "Todd basically decided when I was born that I needed a father so he signed my birth certificate." Buell said she made the claim because Tyler was too addicted to drugs at the time.

  By late 1977, Rundgren was separating from Buell and shut himself away at Mink Hollow. Being the odd man out, he said, left plenty of time for self-examination. He planned to perform the songs of his next solo album on piano, with minimal arrangements apart from bass, drums and voices. Hermit of Mink Hollow came out in May 1978 and was widely seen as his most accessible work since Something/Anything?. Critics called it a return to form after the Utopia prog records. It peaked at number 36 in the US, and "Can We Still Be Friends" reached number 29. That song became his most-covered, with versions by Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, Colin Blunstone and Mandy Moore.

  To promote it he played smaller venues, including The Bottom Line in New York and The Roxy in Los Angeles. Those shows produced the double live album Back to the Bars. Backing musicians included Spencer Davis, Daryl Hall and John Oates, and Stevie Nicks. In 1980, Utopia recorded Deface the Music, a Beatles parody album. It included "Everybody Else Is Wrong", another song seen as aimed at Lennon. Later that year Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman, an obsessive Rundgren fan who was angry about Lennon's remarks on religion. When Chapman was arrested he wore a promotional T-shirt for Hermit of Mink Hollow. He had left a copy of Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren in his hotel room. Rundgren did not learn of the connections until "way after the fact".

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• 7. Early Adopter

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  Healing, a concept album from 1981, included the song "Time Heals", whose music video was among the first videos aired on MTV. He also made a video for RCA set to Gustav Holst's The Planets, which RCA used to demonstrate its videodisc players. That same year he developed the Utopia Graphics System, one of the first computer paint programs. It ran on an Apple II with Apple's digitizer tablet. He also co-developed a screensaver system called Flowfazer.

  The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect arrived in 1982 with a new wave tinge and a cover of the Small Faces' "Tin Soldier". Its single "Bang the Drum All Day" was only a minor chart hit at first. It was later adopted as an unofficial theme by several professional sports teams, notably the Green Bay Packers. Geno Michellini, a disc jockey at KLOS in Los Angeles, used it to kick off the weekend on Friday afternoons. It also appeared in a Carnival Cruise television advertising campaign. The album ended his time with Bearsville Records.

  He signed with Warner Bros. Records, which issued A Cappella in 1985. Every sound came from his own multi-tracked voice and arrangements made from programmed vocal samples. In 1986 he scored four episodes of the children's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse. Nearly Human in 1989 and 2nd Wind in 1991 were both recorded live. The first was cut in a studio, and the second in a theater before an audience told to stay silent. Each song was a complete single take with no overdubbing, and both albums returned in part to his Philly soul roots. 2nd Wind also drew on Up Against It, a musical adapted from a screenplay by British playwright Joe Orton, originally titled "Prick Up Your Ears". Orton had offered it to the Beatles for a follow-up to their film Help!, which was never made.

  Rundgren was an early adopter of the NewTek Video Toaster. His video for "Change Myself", from 2nd Wind, was widely distributed as a demo reel for the device. He later formed a company producing 3D animation on the Toaster. Its first demo, "Theology", looked at religious architecture through the ages. The music came from former Utopia bandmate Roger Powell. It also circulated widely among Toaster users.

  No World Order, released in 1993 under the name TR-i for "Todd Rundgren interactive", was built from hundreds of music snippets lasting seconds each. Listeners could combine them in different ways. It was first aimed at the Philips CD-i platform, with controls for tempo, mood and other settings. It also offered pre-programmed mixes by Rundgren, Bob Clearmountain, Don Was and Jerry Harrison. It appeared for PC and Macintosh. On standard audio CD it came in two versions: a continuous mix, and the more song-oriented No World Order Lite. The music had a dance and techno feel, with a good deal of rapping by Rundgren. The follow-up, The Individualist in 1995, added interactive video, including one simple video game, with more rock-oriented music.

  As the Internet reached mass acceptance, Rundgren teamed up with longtime manager Eric Gardner and Apple digital music executive Kelli Richards to start PatroNet. Fans, called patrons, paid a subscription for access to works in progress and unreleased tracks, cutting out the record labels. The first run of songs became the album One Long Year in 2000. He then cut his ties with major labels and kept offering new music directly to subscribers, though he also released CDs through independent labels. As of 2022, the PatroNet.com website was not active.

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• 8. Producer and Legacy

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  Writer Paul Myers calls the recording studio Rundgren's "ultimate instrument". Rundgren himself said he does not think "as a producer" on his own records, using the studio instead to "assist in creating a performance". Comparisons are sometimes drawn to Brian Wilson and Brian Eno. His methods continued the tradition of multitrack pioneer Les Paul and the studio experiments of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. His production jobs for other acts were mostly one-off affairs. The exceptions were Grand Funk Railroad, the New York Dolls, the Tubes, Hello People and the Pursuit of Happiness.

  He described his role as that of a "songcraft" agitator. When an act's songs were unfinished, he completed them and declined a writer's credit. Collaborators often called him a genius, though also sarcastic and aloof. His most notorious production was XTC's 1986 album Skylarking, known for the creative tensions and disagreements during its sessions. Some regard it as the pinnacle of both his production career and XTC's. Rundgren said that despite the turmoil, the record "ultimately... sounds like we were having a great time doing it. And at times we were having a good time." All three members of the band admired the finished album.

  Myers argues that Rundgren inspired "a generation of self-contained geniuses like Prince". He adds the irony that these innovations liberated artists enough to lessen the perceived need for a producer at all. His influence is also cited on Hall & Oates, Björk and Daft Punk. Slate writer Marc Weingarten saw A Cappella as the precedent for Björk's 2004 album Medúlla, her "all vocals, all the time" experiment. As a solo artist from 1972 to 1978, Rundgren scored four US Top 40 singles and three US Top 40 albums. One single, "Hello, It's Me", reached the Top 10. His singles often contrasted with the other tracks on their albums, which limited his mass appeal. He said commercial expectations never troubled him, because production already paid him so well.

  In late 2005 the Cars were planning to re-form even though bassist Benjamin Orr had died and former lead singer Ric Ocasek was uninterested. The lineup that emerged included Rundgren alongside Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes, plus his former bassist Kasim Sulton and drummer Prairie Prince of the Tubes. In 2006 the New Cars played The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and toured that summer with the re-formed Blondie. Rundgren called the project a chance "to pay my bills, play to a larger audience". He also hoped to "have some fun for a year". Their first single, "Not Tonight", was released on the 20th of March 2006.

  Rundgren has two sons, Rex and Randy, born in 1980 and 1985, with Karen Darvin. Rex spent nine seasons as a minor league baseball infielder. In 1998 Rundgren married Michele Gray, a Tubes dancer in 1985 who then became his backup singer. She appeared on Late Night with David Letterman as one of "The World's Most Dangerous Backup Singers". They have a son named Rebop and an adoptive son named Keoni. Paul Myers reported that Rundgren diagnosed himself with attention-deficit disorder.

  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was another matter. Rundgren was nominated for the class of 2019, long after becoming eligible in 1995. A 2018 poll by the institution, not counted in the final vote, placed him third-most deserving on the ballot. In 2016 he had said he did not care, calling the Hall of Fame process "just as corrupt as anything else". He was inducted in 2021. Earlier honors included a Grammy nomination for Best Music Video in 1984 for "Videosyncracy". In 1995 the Popular Culture Society at UC Berkeley gave him a lifetime achievement award. In 2017 he received honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and DePauw University.

  In December 2018 he published a memoir, The Individualist: Digressions, Dreams, and Dissertations. It contains 181 chapters, each one page long and made of three paragraphs. He said he wrote it because otherwise somebody else would, and he would not be happy with the result. The story stops at his 50th birthday in 1998, because he said his life had since been a lot more boring. On the 21st of October 2019 he visited the Library of Congress. There he signed a braille copy of the book, produced by a fan who is blind.

  His later work kept moving. In 2020 he released "Down with the Ship" with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo. He reunited with Sparks, whose debut he had produced 50 years earlier, for the single "Your Fandango". His album Space Force came out in September 2022. On the 3rd of August 2024 the hip hop duo ¥$ released Vultures 2. Rundgren sang additional vocals on its track "My Soul", alongside the Sunday Service Choir.

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