Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgrenis an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. Hailed in the early stages of his career for both his own material and for his production of other artists, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, his career has produced a diverse and eclectic range of recordings often both as a solo artist and as a member of the band Utopia. Rundgren has often been at the forefront as a promoter of cutting edge recording...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth22 June 1948
CityUpper Darby, PA
CountryUnited States of America
Once I go on stage, the atmosphere is totally theatrical. The greater the illusion, the greater the intensity of the excitement it creates.
It's no longer necessary to slave over the vocals. I don't sing the lyrics until I write them, and singing is the very last thing I do. I record the entire track, and then I worry about lyrics and vocals. The music will suggest where the words are going to a certain extent.
It was always remarkable to me how ignorant the labels were of the listening habits of their own customers, and how obstinate they were in denying those habits and then trying to essentially alter those habits instead of retooling their business to adapt to them.
I am a laptop boy. People say: 'Where's your studio?' I say: 'It's in my laptop, in my rucksack.'
People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one.
My father was not really into popular music; I had to learn about that for myself.
Behind every tree there's a new monster.
Music gets recorded usually in one format, and when you have to take it out and perform it there are other applications and things like that that are better for the live performance.
On occasion, I hear a rearrangement of a song that really makes me reevaluate it in a way.
I've become kind of a haven for people who like pop music, but that's not the only thing they like. They also like music in general and want to be able to expand their own horizons. They haven't completely given up on music and are willing to have somebody mediate new things that are happening in music to them.
If I have an opportunity to do something safe or something challenging, I'll often choose the latter. Sometimes, the objective is to submerge my viewpoint with the artist.
People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas.
There's only one band that could ever even pretend to assume the mantle of what the Beatles did, who have been so pre-eminent and world-dominating that they could effect a paradigm shift in the culture, who have been willing to leverage their success into musical change, and that is U2 - regardless of what the result of that is.
When I got out of the Nazz, I had it in my mind that simply to be eclectic was an important aspect of making music. It was something that I derived from The Beatles.