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
Kids don't want to dye their whole head another color; that's what their mothers do.
I write in a very strange way. Things are very fragmentary for a very long time, and then they come together very quickly near the end of the process.
I think there are always people who, when they get the bug to play an instrument, they want to get as good as they can with it rather than just be simply adequate at it. You run into them every once in a while - some kid who wants to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan, for whatever reason, and plays exactly like him.
I don't know what the inspiration for most of songs really mean until I finish them. For the most part, I'm going for a visceral impression, and I write the words last.
When I got out of high school, I joined a local blues band in Philadelphia - Woody's Truck Stop.
Before there were any sort of 'recordings' there was performance. If we are devolved back to the Stone Age tomorrow, there will be performance.
So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits.
By the time my first solo record came out, I was making a handsome living as a record producer. I had worked with the Band, Janis Joplin and all of these other artists in the Albert Grossman organization. So as my so-called solo career evolved, I never felt pressure that I had to come back and top when I might've done before.
While I used to make my living principally as a record producer, as time went on, I had to depend more and more on my live performances because of the evolution of the record industry, which has de-emphasized what made it possible to make a living.
It's nearly redundant to enumerate the reasons The Beatles are important. There are probably different reasons why The Beatles are important to a musician like myself and to the millions of Beatles fans who just enjoy listening to the music.
It's great if you can afford to carry a string section on the road with you, but most people are used to the idea of just a keyboard player creating those string sounds.
It would be really great if someone would invent a new Internet with the specific purpose of not making money off of it, but making it what it originally was, a free marketplace of ideas, and there are still aspects of the Internet that are that. Wikipedia, essentially, is still the bastion of the original ideals of the Internet.
I'm a guitar player, really - I mean, first and foremost - I grew up with all that great 1960s music, in terms of growing up, becoming a musician, so it's like first-love stuff; I'm always going to go back to it.
I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when radio was less formatted. It was really special. You could hear a jazz song then a pop song then a show tune then some jazz. Basically, whatever the DJ felt like playing, he would play. He was educating you and exposing you to things you would never hear otherwise.