Roots Report: an Interview with Todd Rundgren
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Roots Report: An Interview with Todd Rundgren Okee dokee … I spoke with Todd Rundgren for about an hour last month in advance of his May 14 performance at The Odeum in East Greenwich. Here is the conversation. John Fuzek: Are you in Hawaii? Todd Rundgren: I am at the moment, yes. JF: Are you vacationing or do you live there now? TR: I’ve lived here for about 22 years now. JF: Is that the place that in the “Daryl’s House” video? TR: Yes, it is JF: I actually thought that you lived in upstate NY. TR: I did until the mid ’80s, then I moved the family up to San Francisco. I kept the place in Woodstock for a while and only went back and did projects, and in the mid ’90s we moved here. JF: You’re playing The Odeum on May 14. That’s an intimate venue. Do you choose to play those smaller venues? TR: No, we usually find larger venues to accommodate our production; the smaller venues are “pick up dates” or fill dates. JF: I saw you last year and it seemed pretty straight-forward with just the band; what do you have for production? TR: Last year I was not promoting a new record, I was trying to mollify the fans after a spate of somewhat challenging shows. The tour before last year I was promoting an album called Global, two singer/dancers and a DJ and a lot of lights (laughs). Tour before was me, Kassim, Prairie and Jesse. I was the DJ, and I discovered I couldn’t do all the singing that I needed to do and also DJ. This tour doesn’t have a DJ; this production is a band plus the girls and a pretty substantial production — lots of video, lights and things like that to the degree that we can fit it into any particular venue. JF: I see you have a new CD coming out, White Night. TR: The official release date is May 12, but there’s already a track out that is being featured off of it. My understanding is that the label may release a couple more tracks before May 12. Another one may come out at any moment, I was surprised by the first one. JF: So what is the feel of this record? Every time you’ve done something, you’ve taken a leap and have done something dramatically different from the previous album and you have gotten very experimental over the years. TR: This is my most collaborative record in a very long time. It has a lot of guest artists, things were written with other people. On the song that’s out now, the guest vocalist is Robin, a Swedish singer. Another track coming out is with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. During the break I will do a video for another song that I did with Daryll Hall, another with Joe Walsh, Joe Satriani and couple others, but I don’t have the list in front of me (laughs). A lot of collaborations. JF: Are these people that you hang out with normally? I see you do a lot with Daryl Hall; are you friends or just someone you work with occasionally? TR: I’ve done tours with them and produced an album for them in the ’70s. It’s a decades-long association on one level or another, and it was kind of obvious to ask Daryl to be involved once I got into doing collaborations cause we harmonize well (laughs). JF: I like the stuff you’ve done for the Daryl’s house show! Are you going to perform a lot of stuff off this new album or a mix of old and new? TR: It’s going to be a mix of old and new. The previous album the shows focused on those because I was performing everything myself anyway, but there’s so much collaborative stuff on this record that unless the artist shows up I can’t really do the song (laughs). The album is about half me singing and about half other people singing, so I will focus on the stuff where I sing. JF: Last year you played a lot of songs I was thrilled to hear. I know you are probably sick of playing “Hello It’s Me” and that is the song everybody wants you to play, but that’s the one that got me into you back in ’72-’73. TR: My version came out then. The song was originally written for the Nazz that was the B side to “Open My Eyes” and that came out in 1968 or ’69. JF: I heard that you were 16 when you wrote that. TR: No, I was 18! (laughs) But it was the first song I ever finished writing, yes. JF: That’s a pretty damn good song for the first finished song! TR: I got lucky the first time, yeah (laughs). JF: One I’d love to hear you play is “Time Heals,” I remember when it was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV when they actually used to play music. TR: I think there was a point that I did it, but we haven’t done it in a while. There’s a balance between nostalgia, satisfying the older fans with fond memories, and creating new memories. As you get older, if you’re going out live, you tend to lose audiences. Older fans don’t go out as much or buy records as much, if you want to survive you have to try to appeal to a younger audience, refresh your audience somehow. Those people don’t have the fond old memories if they’re only in their 20s (laughs). They’re just starting to make those memories. JF: So of all the fond old memories songs, which is you’re least favorite to play? TR: Yeah, it’s probably “Hello It’s Me” (starts laughing). It’s dogged me my entire career, 50 friggin’ years now, to have a song follow you for half a century it gets a little tired. I go through long periods where I don’t perform that old stuff. It’s not out of obstinance, it’s just having written 300 some songs and constantly having to do the same song, it’s just kind of a little weird. JF: I’m a performer. I write and record all my own songs, and you’re an inspiration to me in that aspect of recording and song writing and style. One of the things that impressed me was your production capabilities. You took your “Meatloaf money” and built a video studio. TR: Yes, coincidentally there was a technological breakthough in terms of price and getting into the video game. It used to be to make professional video you needed this gigantic thing that was the size of a car and cost a quarter million dollars each (laughs). And then suddenly Sony came out with one that cost 75,000 each and allowed me to get into some rather serious professional video production. JF: After watching some of your early videos I was wondering, did you do these by yourself? TR: No, we started out early on doing stuff by myself in my house, but it was the level of equipment that I couldn’t do broadcast production with. Once I got into the broadcast game, it’s the kind of thing where you needed electricians, people to run the lights and calibrate the machines, and by the time we did stuff that appeared on MTV we needed a lot of real technical support. JF: So are you still playing the foam green Strat? TR: Foamy? Yes, Foamy I still play (laughs). Foamy is pretty much the old stand-by now. JF: Are you using the Line 6 equipment? TR: I’ve been using it consistently, recently, even when I’m with Ringo. We use a Line 6 four pedal and put it through a Fender Twin Reverb or something like that. That’s only because we haven’t been able to dependably get Line 6 equipment when we go to places like Australia. JF: So you’re going out on the road with Ringo again? TR: Yeah, it’s not a big tour. As a matter of fact, I’d say half is in Las Vegas. That’ll be interesting. JF: You’ve been doing that for a while. You must enjoy it. TR: He essentially has decided that this is the band that he wants. He wanted to go out this summer and some of us had already committed to putting out a new album. I had to promote my own stuff over the summer so he essentially postponed everything till the fall when everyone in this particular line up is available. It’s kind of like a little reunion. JF: I think Ringo shows are some of the more fun shows that I have been to. Ringo has a lot of energy; I don’t know he can do that at his age. TR: He takes good care of himself! JF: He must; he was doing jumping jacks at the end of a two-hour show. TR: It’s a lot of exercise; he has a very strict diet and gets proper sleep. That’s why he can still do it. JF: What about you? TR: I try not to do anything in too much excess on the road, except I try to sleep as much as possible (laughs).