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Todd Rundren:
A Musical Journey
by Benjy Eisen
 “If
I feel like if I have to express myself it will be in musical terms — or
ideally musical terms,” says Todd Rundgren, on the phone from his office
in Hawaii. “So yeah, I’m a musician.” For anybody else with even half as
many musical credits as Todd Rundgren, his or her occupation wouldn’t be a
question. Rundgren has released over 20 solo albums, a dozen with his band
Utopia, and two with his first band, The Nazz. He has played on well over
50 other albums by a wide array of notable artists, including Celine Dion,
Cheap Trick, Grand Funk Railroad, The Psychedelic Furs, Patti Smith, and
countless others. He’s been a member of Ringo Starr’s All Star Band and,
as recently as this past summer, toured in another all star unit with Ann
Wilson (Heart), John Entwistle (The Who), and Alan Parsons in “A Walk Down
Abby Road: A Tribute To The Beatles.” It should be obvious then that Todd
Rundgren would list his occupation as being a musician. But it’s not. And
so given the chance to talk to him on the phone, it was the first thing I
asked him. After all, in a career than spans over three decades, Rundgren
has also established himself as a world-renown record producer, engineer,
and mixer, and has launched cutting-edge ventures in video, computer
software, and Internet technology. His production credits include a list
of albums the likes and breadth of which is almost unbelievable
(everything from Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell to XTC’s Skylarking). His film
and television scores include Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Dumb and Dumber. He
created the first digital paint program for personal computers. Recently,
he created an online subscription service that revolutionizes the
relationship between the musician and the listener. All this, and he
continues to put out albums and complete tours since, after all — he is a
musician. And as such, he is coming to Whitaker Center on October 19 in
what is being billed as a rare solo acoustic performance.
“This is just a little solo swing. It is something I haven’t done in
awhile. Essentially, it’s just me and piano and guitar and other bits of
minor augmentation. And then for a few numbers during the evening, Jesse —
the guitar player who usually tours with me — will come out and we’ll do
some Bossa Nova music together,” he says.
The Bossa Nova (an offshoot of Latin music) material comes from an album
Todd released in the mid-’90s called With A Twist in which he
reinterpreted material from his earlier albums in the Bossa Nova style.
Live, too, his songs may differ from the classic album versions although,
of course, not as dramatically: “I try not to deliver the song exactly the
same way, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I change the song
structurally.”
What does change structurally in his live show is the composition of the
setlist; Rundgren gave up playing with one over a decade ago. “I’ll go out
and maybe have one or two songs ready to go and then after that I’ll just
see how I feel, see how my voice is opening up, see how the audience
responds and then just wing it from there,” he explains.
The acoustic format is vastly different from what some might expect from a
Todd Rundgren concert, but then again, Rundgren has built his career — or
rather, a few careers — out of defying expectation. His albums notoriously
non-linear patchworks of musical styles and in-fact even his band Utopia,
successful in their own right, first became known as a pioneering prog-rock
band before morphing into perhaps something else entirely. As a solo
artist, Rundgren’s hit singles, when he had them, were never really
indicative of the rest of the material on the album. And while that has
led to frustration for some potential fans, as Rundgren puts simply, “The
only thing representative of the album is the album.”
As for the confusion by other possible fans brought on by a musical vision
that never stays in one particular musical location for very long,
Rundgren makes no apologies. “It’s going to happen with any sufficiently
eclectic artist. That’s just the way it is. There’s no reason to expect
that I’m going to settle down into one sort of style and mine that for the
rest of my career. It’s never been like that,” he says. “The very first
album that I put out had absolutely no thread to it at all. It was the
variety of ideas that I wanted to experiment with and it’s uncommon for my
albums to be about a single theme. It’s more common for them to be a
little more encyclopedic about where my head is at, at any particular
time.”
Rundgren’s dedication to his musical vision has certainly gained him an
army of die-hards but any time larger success was imminent, he somehow
managed to duck the bullet. Even with Utopia, which enjoyed its share of
success in the ’70s, Rundgren remains unwilling to yield to dollar
temptation — he completely rules out the possibility of a potentially
lucrative reunion tour. “Never going to happen. I don’t think anyone
should entertain such a thing and if we say ‘Oh, we’re going to reform’ in
order to squeeze some money out of the audience, they should refuse to buy
tickets.”
This attention to integrity and respect for the audience goes beyond his
careful evaluation of product. On a number of fronts, Rundgren has been
pioneering ways to actually include the audience in interactive creative
experiences. In the ’90s, he released No World Order, the first
interactive audio-only CD-ROM, which he produced, composed and performed.
Two years later, in 1995, he released one of the first “Enhanced CD’s”
with The Individualist. More recently, he launched PatroNet (patronet.com),
a revolution in the artist/audience relationship. “It’s essentially in the
name,” he explains. “PatroNet means essentially that you take somebody who
used to be a consumer of what the record company would put out and you
turn them into a personal patron, someone who directly underwrites the
music you make. And for that, they get to hear it before it goes to the
marketplace at large.” Wow.
All this for someone who still would prefer to be known simply as a
musician. And who, years after achieving moderate pop hits such as “Hello
It’s Me” “I Saw The Light” and “Can We Still Be Friends,” still remains
unclassifiable — and certainly not pop. “I don’t have an appreciation for
so-called pop music any more than any other kind of music. I realize a lot
of it (and perhaps the majority of it) is schlock and isn’t really meant
to be anything more than that. So in that sense, getting back to your very
first question, when I say ‘musician’ I mean it not in the pop sense in
that they just think I want to be on MTV. No, I want to know how to play
music and be able to express myself and my feelings in the widest possible
musical language that I can absorb.”
Todd Rundgren will be performing at Whitaker Center on October 19 with
guest opener Meghan Cary. Tickets are $27.50 and $30.00. Call 214-ARTS for
tickets or more information.
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