Computer programmer, engineer, multi-instrumentalist,
producer, singer-songwriter and video director, Todd Harry Rundgren has
worn pretty much every hat you can in the record industry.He formed his first band, Money,
while still in high school.He
then band-hopped to Woody's Truck Stop and eventually Nazz.The band was named for an obscure Yardbirds
lyric.They flirted with chart
success with "Hello It's Me", a song that would later become
Todd's biggest solo hit.He and the band were going in different directions; Todd was writing
instrospective, Laura Nyro-inspired stuff, whereas the other members
of Nazz were interested in riding the wave of late '60s psychedelia;
and they split up in 1969.Rundgren formed Runt, a thinly
disguised moniker for Todd-plus-two-background-musicians, which released
"their" self-titled debut in 1970.It spawned Todd's first
top-twenty hit, "We Gotta Get You A Woman".Released on Ampex Records, it caught
Bearsville exec Albert Grossman's fancy and he signed Todd to a
long-term deal.His first album
with Bearsville was Runt's last, the aptly titled The Ballad of Todd Rundgren.Around this time, Badfinger was
looking for someone to finish production on their Straight Up LP; George Harrison abandoned the project to organize
his Concert For Bangladesh; and Todd filled the bill. " Baby Blue" was a hit
for Badfinger, and Rundgren had his first production credit.It was certainly not his last.He would go on to produced
Meatloaf's mega-smash, Bat Out
Of Hell.In
1972, Todd released his
first official solo album; an ambitious double album, no less;
called Something/Anything?
which would set a standard impossible even for himself to follow.Three sides of the double set are
truly solo efforts, written, produced and performed by Todd Rundgren.The album yielded two hits, "I Saw the
Light"; regarded as a Carole King tribute; and his
remake of "Hello It's Me" which went to #5.The album itself would go gold and
peak at #29 on the Billboard Top 200.Rundgren was poised for super-stardom, a position he would
subsequently eschew with the release of A
Wizard, A True Star, a hodge-podge of Disney songs, psychedelia, soul,
and vaudeville, of all things.It alienated all but his cultic fan base, which he continues to
enjoy to this day.It also
marked the beginning of his "experimental" stage.His follow-up to Wizard, the economically titled Todd, contained a good deal of
electronica, a portent of things to come with Utopia, a group effort that
comprised a bassist, drummer, percussionist, and three keyboardists.Their eponymous debut included four
instrumentals, each of them over ten minutes long.His subsequent solo release, Initiation, featured a B side that
consisted of one, long experimental synth riff.He did not eschew pop music
completely, however.In 1976,
he released the aptly titled Faithful,
a collection of pop covers of some of his favourite songs, including
"Good Vibrations" which put him back in the top forty.A year later, he would go back into
the studio with a much-altered version of Utopia and lay down two albums, Ra and Oops! Wrong Planet.In 1978, Todd would fly solo again with The Hermit of Mink Hollow, which bore the fruit of another
top-forty hit, "Can We Still Be Friends".It would be two years before
Rundgren or Utopia would release another album.Todd spent 1979 starting up Utopia
Video Studios, a state-of-the-art production effort that was commissioned
by RCA to come up with a demo videodisc for their SelectaVision line.He also put together one of the
first music videos for his song "Time Heals".He resumed his recording career a
year later with two more Utopia efforts, Adventures in Utopia, which yielded three hits,
"Caravan", "Road to Utopia" and "Set Me
Free", and Deface the Music,
a tongue-in-cheek Beatles tribute.In 1981, he split his time between recording Healing and computer graphics.He designed Utopia Graphics System,
one of the very first paint programs, for use with Apple II computers.Back on the road and in the studio in
1982 with Utopia's eponymous LP and another solo album, The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect.It yielded his last hit, "Bang
On The Drum All Day", which only peaked at #63 on Billboard Top 100,
but has since become an arena-rock staple at sporting events.In addition to this album, Todd
found time for another Utopia release, Oblivion.It climbed to #74 on the charts, but
their next album, POV, embarrassed itself by showing up at #161.In 1985, another experiment, A Cappella, featured Todd literally
solo again, using only his own voice, dubbed over ad nauseum.He broke into television in 1986,
scoring four episodes of Pee-Wee's
Playhouse and composing music for the retro police drama Crime Story.He changed channels again a year
later, writing the music for the motion picture Undercover.Rundgren's long-awaited solo album, Nearly Human, was recorded "live" in the studio in
one take, without any post-production tweaking.The
same was done; before a "live"
audience that was asked to be quiet, no less; with
1991's 2nd wind.He hit the road again with the
Nearly Human-2nd Wind Band, replete with a brass section and
background vocalists, including his future wife Michele Gray.It was during this time that he
became one of the first musicians to perform in Ringo Starr's All-Star
Band. Rundgren released his
next two solo albums under the moniker of TR-i, which stands for
"Todd Rundgren interactive".No
World Order was groundbreaking in that it was a series of short musical
phrases with which the listener could custom-design their own song, based
on mood and tempo.Its
follow-up, The Individualist, an
interactive video, including a video game, was released in 1995.A year later, Rundgren would put on
his entrepreneurial hat yet again with Waking Dreams, a creative
development firm.He also
started another Internet-savvy enterprise called Patronet that allows users
to subscribe to his music on his own self-designed website, bypassing the
record industry completely.In
the same breath, he turned around and inked a deal with a Japanese record
company.In 2000, he eventually
released his Patronet stuff on a CD entitled One Long Year.One
short year later, he joined another all-star band, comprising John
Entwistle, David Pack, Alan Parsons, and Ann Wilson for A Walk Down Abbey
Road, a mishmash of Beatles songs and the artists' own material.In 2004, Rundgren joined forces with
Joe Jackson and a string quartet named Ethel.They performed a cover version of
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.A couple of years later, there were
noises that The Cars were going to reunite, in spite of the fact that Ric
Ocasek was not interested.The
New Cars were unveiled in 2006 with a lineup that consisted of original
Cars Elliot Easton and Greg Hawks, ex-Tubes drummer Prairie Prince, and
Utopia's Kasim Sulton.Rundgren subbed for Ocasek.On 20th March 2006, their debut single was released.Just three months later, a greatest
hits package and live album entitled The
New Cars:It's Alive
was released.
