Rundgren tries to out-do The Rutles on Deface The Music

Utopia : Alone

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On September 24, 1980 Utopia released Deface The Music, an album that apparently confused fans. Todd Rundgren had said Utopia never had a set sound and would never be predictable. My own theory is Rundgren watched The Rutles one night and decided he could write faux Beatles songs better than Neil Innes. He doesn't. But that doesn't mean Deface The Music isn't a fun way to spend 32 minutes, playing spot the influence. "Alone" may be based on "And I Love Her" but it stands on its own.

Rolling Stone's David Fricke seemed to appreciate the exercise, writing:

A literal rewrite of the Lennon-McCartney songbook may seem as pointless as a new Knack LP. But Utopia–and Rundgren, in particular–have always had a talent for this sort of snappy, crackling pop. Besides, the ingenious, engaging way they go about it here is a tribute to the spirit of fun that marked the originals. That kind of imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

"Take It Home", inspired by "Day Tripper", is another song that stands on its own. Think Cheap Trick with more cowbell.

Side Two takes on the psychedelic era with fewer good results. Rundgren's Beatleisms would come in handy when he produced Psychedelic Furs' Forever Now and XTC's Skylarking  years later. 

Shaun Cassidy and Todd Rundgren team up for 1980's most unusual album

Shaun Cassidy : Rebel Rebel

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On September 1, 1980 Shaun Cassidy released Wasp, one of the most unusual albums of 1980, because it was produced by Todd Rundgren whose band Utopia performed on the songs. Six of the tracks are covers including the single, David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel". 

Cassidy told Trouser Press Rundgren selected most of the songs.

I'd been listening to rock n roll ever since I can remember; "Da Do Ron Ron" (his US#1 hit) was the first single I ever bought...I had enjoyed the album Todd did for Grand Funk, but I really wasn't familiar with what he had been doing with Utopia. Todd gave me a list of records to familiarize myself with --some of them great, some of them terrible, but all material he thought I should know.

I enjoy Elvis Costello more than I used to. The B-52's are real dumb...I like that

Overall my attitude toward music has changed. I used to haver to like the songs or the way the performer would sing. Now, I'm more interested in commitment. I like Tom Petty's work a lot. Bruce Springsteen, too, though he seems to be in a bit of a rut.

David Cassidy's younger brother's own career was in a bit of a rut . His previous album failed to chart. So Shaun followed Rundgren's suggestions, recording covers of The Who's "So Sad About Us" The Four Tops' "Shake Me Wake Me (When It's Over)", The Animals' "It's My Life", and Talking Heads' "The Book I Read". The latter is especially egregious.

Rundgren also offered up some of his own originals including the title track. Hard to imagine what a young fan might have thought of this album. Wasp failed to chart , bringing he 21 year old singer's musical career pretty much to an end.

Don't Care About History

The Ramones and Paley Brothers : Come On Let's Go

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In May of 1979 Sire Records released the soundtrack to Rock N Roll High School, months before the August release date. The album kicks off with four Ramones performances including the title track, "I Want You Around", and a five song Ramones medley. There is also the curious teaming with Sire labelmates The Paley Brothers on a cover of Ritchie Valens's "Come On, Let's Go", recorded when Joey Ramone was too sick for the session. The Paley Brothers needed the career boost but it did nothing to help the power poppers make the charts. They broke up later in the year.

The film itself is entertaining thanks to PJ Soles and the Ramones, who are so clearly out of their element. Dee Dee needed 40 takes to finally master the line "Oh boy, pizza!"

The soundtrack features more than The Ramones. It serves as a great introduction to some superb artists like Nick Lowe, Eddie + The Hot Rods, and Devo.

And the soundtrack likely introduced legions of future music snobs to Brian Eno, although 1977's "Energy Fools the Magician" probably didn't get much attention in this context.

The album also features two hits : Alice Cooper's "School's Out" and "Smokin' In The Boy's Room" by Brownsville Station". And from 1974, there's Todd Rundgren's ballad, "A Dream Goes On Forever", a song that may have been overlooked from that quirky double album Todd.

Through Hell Together

Todd Rundgren : Can We Still Be Friends

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It was almost like when a tribal elder in some culture says "You have to go out there to this far desert and take this drug, and just be stuck with yourself for awhile. And if you can survive being stuck with yourself then you can live with the rest of us.

-Todd Rundgren

On April 7, 1978 Todd Rundgren released Hermit of Mink Hollow, which signaled a return to the pop music form that made Something/Anything? a favorite album for fans.  We're not heading off into some kind of Utopia-n jazz fusion land here. Rundgren repeats his Something/Anything? trick by writing, producing and playing every instrument in a 24 track studio on Mink Hollow Road in Lake Hill, NY.

Rundgren had broken up with Bebe Buell and come to the realization that it was very possible Liv, his presumptive daughter was actually fathered by someone else. He spent this time in isolation, with a 24/7 studio in his home, wondering why his life had turned out the way it had and what changes he needed to make.

While many fans believe his top 30 hit "Can We Still Be Friends" is a message to Buell, Rundgren says it's a formulaic Tin Pan Alley song written to convey an emotion of sadness.

From Michael Bloom, writing for Rolling Stone:

Six years displaced in time, here is the follow-up to Something/Anything? Todd Rundgren's unalloyed pop craft motivates every moment of Hermit of Mink Hollow. While there are some concessions to modernity -- the synthesizers that thicken a few Phil Spector-like productions, a lavish use of the shivery suspended chords Rundgren's always loved (but that Steely Dan made commercial) -- Hermit of Mink Hollow's dozen songs all stem from the universal library of luminous pop enjoyment that this curious artist carries around in his head. They condense the whole world into a three-minute capsule and promise eternal youth. They know the rules so well that it's almost a joy to conform.

Rundgren understands pop as a vehicle of genuine communication perhaps better than anyone: he never trifles and rarely gets silly. Hardly the "gloriously cheap displays of human emotion" that rock writer Cameron Crowe once claimed of Something/Anything?, these pieces are concise but careful observations of anything Rundgren confronts. He offers a couple of conventional love songs, but be careful: "All the Children Sing," which begins as such, soon expands into an analysis of Rundgren's reputation as a utopian philosopher and guru. "Too Far Gone" sympathetically depicts his family and friends passing judgement on his quirky career. 

 These examples are all on "The Easy Side," where the pitches tend to be higher and the subjects less severe. "The Difficult Side" is difficult only because the emotions are purer and more wrenching. "Bread" is a protest song, but it doesn't preach. The protagonists -- people in this country who are starving -- tell their own story and bite their own bullets as the energetic, minor-key music builds from Byrds-like angularity to full roar. "Bag Lady" is quite subtle and absolutely chilling: sprung rhythms and inconclusive, airy chords paint the portrait of an old, tattered subway denizen until "One day it gets a bit too cold/ Maybe a bit too wet, maybe a little too lonely/ Lifelessly she lies amidst her bag world/ But maybe she's only sleeping." Neither simple nor always pleasant, Todd Rundgren is still an artist to be taken seriously.

From Robert Christgau who gave the album a C+ rating: 

 Only a weight as willfully light as Todd can be trusted to put his smartest song ("Onomatopeia") on "the easy side" and his dumbest ("Bag Lady") on "the difficult side."

Holy Cow

Meat Loaf : Paradise by the Dashboard Lights

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On October 21, 1977 Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell was released to the world, the ninth best selling album of the 1970s. Excessive and campy, it did nothing for me at the time and still fails to stir my soul despite my appreciation of producer Todd Rundgren and the presence of members of the E Street Band. I don't want this much opera in my rock opera and songwriter Jim Steinman leads Meat Loaf to a place that is far too theatrical for me. Apparently the trick to falling in love with this album is to get drunk and sing along with friends ( which is how, I'm convinced, Steinman's  "Total Eclipse of the Heart" has also earned its legendary status).

From Dave Marsh writing for Rolling Stone:

Meat Loaf earned his somewhat eccentric name as a performer in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the theatrical torture, although he had previously spent several years as a rock singer in Detroit, even recording a single or two for Motown. Bat Out of Hell reflects such diversity, but can't resolve it. Meat Loaf has an outstanding voice, but his phrasing is way too stage-struck to make the album's pretentions to comic-book street life real. He needs a little less West Side Story and a little more Bruce Springsteen. 

 Jim Steinman, who wrote an arranged the entire album, needs a lot less of both. Some of the songs here, particularly "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth," are swell, but they are entirely mannered and derivative. Steinman is wordy, and his attempts to recapture adolescence are only remembrances; he can't bring out the transcendently personal elements that make a song like "Night Moves," an obvious influence here. The arrangements aren't bad, although they play into the hammiest of Meat Loaf's postures, and the playing is excellent, led by pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg of Springsteen's E Street Band and producer Todd Rundgren's guitars. But the principals have some growing to do.

Billboard's reviewer has no idea the album would sell four million copies:

This debut album has mixed commercial potential. Some driving rock cuts, if shortened, have enough pop appeal to gain AM airplay. But the LP also contains some lengthy tunes that are complex in arrangement and slightly forbidding. Producer Todd Rundgren also contributes guitar work. Best cuts: "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth," "All Revved Up With No Place To Go," "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad."

From 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die

The combination of Meat Loaf (real name Marvin Lee Aday), a larger-than-life actor from Texas with an operatic voice, his surreal songwriting friend from New York, Jim Steinman, and producer Todd Rundgren resulted in an album that, despite never topping the UK album chart, resided there on and off for nearly ten years. Using backing musicians such as Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band plus members of Rundgren's group Utopia, Bat Out Of Hell included three hit singles (the title track, "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth [Hot Summer Night]" and "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad"), which, much like most of the album, were appropriately epic proportions (the fourth label which had been involved in the project). 

 Several extraordinary video clips promoted the album, and "Paradise By The Dashboard Light," a story of lust in a car, included a commentary by Phil Rizzuto on events, which he likened to a baseball game. The songs on the album were written by Steinman for his musical Neverland, a futuristic rock version of Peter Pan, in which Meat Loaf would play the part of Tinkerbell (when asked, he did not deny it, other than to say the character would be called Tink). 

 For some, the real stars of this brilliantly over-the-top extravaganza were the songs, the work of Jim Steinman's highly disturbed, but extremely imaginative mind; Steinman later wrote big hit songs for Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse Of The Heart"), Barry Manilow ("Read 'Em And Weep") and Celine Dion ("It's All Coming Back To Me Now"), among others. But those tracks have never inspired the affection aroused by this high-camp metal musical extravaganza.

40 Year Itch : Burned in My Prime

Todd Rundgren : Love of the Common Man

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  On April 9, 1976 Todd Rundgren released the single "Love of the Common Man", a nifty slice of pop perfection that radio stations simply did not play. That's why a local FM rock station in Reno, Nevada donated its promo single --as well as hundreds of others--- to the Washoe County Library. And that's how I got my 12 year old hands on this single ( as well as 10cc's "I'm Mandy Fly Me" and The Band's "Ophelia"). The library didn't want to keep track of the 45's so anyone could go into the Sparks, Nevada branch, grab a few at a time and keep them forever.

   I was a kid who would walk blocks and blocks past empty desert lots and small ranch houses with dead lawns and drop outs working on their broken down dirt bikes just to visit the library.

  

 What I didn't know at the time was that "Love of the Common Man" came from Faithful, with its Side A of note for note perfect copies of classic rock songs Rundgren loved like "Good Vibrations" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." Interesting once. Maybe twice and then you just have to ask "Why?"

     Side B had the good stuff, especially "Love of the Common Man", a return to the power pop form for those who loved Something/Anything. Rundgren was actually trying to avoid writing love songs at the time so I hear this as a celebration of the good nature of your everyday man, the kind who will catch you should you take a dive from your ivory tower.

40 Year Itch : Rethinking the Electric Guitar

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Henry Cow founder Fred Frith's stunning Guitar Solos is an album of eight tracks recorded in four days of improvisation using modified and specially tuned guitars. On the track "No Birds" he's simultaneously  playing two guitars placed neck to neck on a table. 

   The album made the NME Critics Poll of Best albums of 1974. At the 9:45 mark, you can probably hear why Brian Eno wanted to record Before and After Science and Music for Films with Frith.

   The rest of the NME Critics Poll looked like this:

NME Albums 1974
 1. Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan
 2. It's Only Rock 'n' Roll - Rolling Stones
 3. Before The Flood - Bob Dylan
 4. 461 Ocean Boulevard - Eric Clapton
 5. Todd - Todd Rundgren
 6. On The Beach - Neil Young
 7. Rock Bottom - Robert Wyatt
 8. Fulfillingness First Finale - Stevie Wonder
 9. Country Life - Roxy Music
 10. Average White Band - Average White Band
 11. Future Days - Can
 12. Smiler - Rod Stewart
 13. Secret Treaties - Blue Oyster Cult
 14. Maria Muldaur - Maria Muldaur
 15. Another Saturday Night - Various
 16. Sold American - Kinky Friedman
 17. On The Border - Eagles
 18. Court And Spark - Joni Mitchell
 19. Odds And Sods - The Who
 20. Kimono My House - Sparks
 21. Okie - J.J. Cale
 22. Grievous Angel - Gram Parsons
 23. Radio City - Big Star
 24. Mysterious Traveller - Weather Report
== Sheer Heart Attack - Queen
 == Big Fun - Miles Davis
 27. Rock 'n' Roll Animal - Lou Reed
 28. Deal Gone Down - Michael Chapman
== I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard And Linda Thompson
== It's Too Late To Stop Now - Van Morrison
31. Teasin' - Cornel Dupree
 == Close Up The Honky Tonks - Flying Burrito Brothers
 33. Feats Don't Fail Me Now - Little Feat
== Veedon Fleece - Van Morrison 
35. Paradise And Lunch - Ry Cooder
== Dreamer - Bobby Bland
 37. In Concert - Beach Boys
== Fear - John Cale
== For Everyman - Jackson Browne
== His California Album - Bobby Bland
 41. Limited Edition - Can
42. The Psychomodo - Cockney Rebel
== Good For You Too - Toni Brown
 == Live - Marvin Gaye
 45. Live From Deep In The Heart Of Texas - Commander Cody
 46. All American Boy - Rick Derringer
== Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash - Mike Nesmith
== Streetwalkers - Chapman-Whitney
 == Keep On Smilin' - Wet Willie
 == Planet Waves - Bob Dylan
 51. Anthology - Marvin Gaye
 52. Soon Over Babaluma - Can
== Spyglass - Greenslade
54. Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley - Robert Palmer
 55. Propaganda - Sparks
 56. The Shipbuilder - Bob Pegg & Nick Strutt
== Learn To Love It - Jesse Winchester
 == Guitar Solos - Fred Frith
 59. Angel's Egg - Gong
== Good Old Boys - Randy Newman

40 Year Itch : Wyatt Ear in the Atomic Age

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   On paper it sounded like a great idea: team up Philly's blue-eyed soul sensations Hall and Oates  ("She's Gone") with Philly hit maker ("Hello, It's Me", Something/Anything and that soul medley on A Wizard, A True Star) Todd Rundgren producing. I'm sure Atlantic Records was salivating at the thought of a pop classic.  

    That's not exactly what they got.

    Instead they got a Hall and Oates eager to experiment with their sound and a producer who was knee deep in nut-so prog rock with his band Utopia. The result is War Babies, an album that nearly destroyed the duo's career. It also happens to be one of the most interesting listens of 1974. Those outtasight guitar solos are Todd and the backing band throughout is Utopia.

  "We wanted to cut loose from what we called the gingerbread'" said Hall, "the people who had seen us doing acoustic stuff in the folk clubs, who though that we were just these nice, safe folkie guys. Certain people in our initial fan base got violently upset about that album. We lost a lot of them, but I think that the fans we gained later, who carried us across, realized that we were innovators. I think that has characterized our creative direction ever since then."

  War Babies would be the final Hall and Oates album for Atlantic.

  Says Rundgren "So what? I didn't care what the label wanted. We weren't even pondering what they wanted, or their expectations, which I suppose was the issue. In those days, it was supposed to the era of freedom of the artist, and I think Hall and Oates took advantage of that. The label had other things in mind."

   

A month earlier, Todd Rundgren's Utopia released their first album. If you can sit through more than two minutes of this album, you're a bigger rock n roll fan than I. 

40 Year Itch: 1974's Most Difficult Masterpieces

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The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, released February 8, 1974 demands its listener's full attention, patience and indulgence. This isn't background music for cleaning the house or driving to work. This requires old school album listening: a room with just enough light to read the lyric sheet, a set of good headphones and something that will help alter the mind.

   

     With the help of his former band, the UK Art rockers Van Der Graaf Generator, and ex-Spirit guitarist Randy California on "Red Shift", prog rock's most theatrical singer, Peter Hammill, invites us into a dark, mad world. Will you enjoy your visit? Read this review, give the 12-minute epic track " A Louse is Not a Home" a listen, and then make your decision. We will not judge you.

Also on this date: 

   Todd Rundgren played "A Dream Goes on Forever", a new song from his double album Todd,  on the Midnight Special. The single would stall at #69 on Billboard's Hot 100. 

     Todd's fans already had a sense of this amazing artists's attention deficit disorder on 1973's A Wizard/ A True Star. Here,on Todd,  you get everything from Rundgren's pure pop tunes to experimental electronic freak outs like "The Sparks of Life" to Gilbert and Sullivan. The poster that came with the album had 10,000 names of Rundgren fans printed on it.

40 Year Itch: When Living Is All Uphill

[OUT OF PRINT]


One of the most important female bands in American rock has been buried without a trace. And that is Fanny. They were extraordinary.  They played like motherf*ckers. Revivify Fanny. And I will feel that my work is done.
 — David Bowie

Produced in the wilds of New York by Todd Rundgren ( on the condition he could mix the album without interference), the all-girl rock band Fanny scored their best album with Mothers Pride, released in March of 1973. By then, Fanny had been together three years. That's three years of answer questions about being an all girl rock band and "Feminism". As founder June Millington tells Gillian G Gaar in She's A Rebel : The History of Women in Rock and Roll:

     When the band broke up, I can't say that any of could say that we were 'feminists' by any stretch of the imagination. It was such a dirty word! My mindset was like 'Hey man, I have put myself out on the line here, just holding this fucking electric guitar. Don't put me in any more spots."



June's lyrics reveal some of the frustration she was experiencing as the band toured the world, with the likes of Slade, Jethro Tull and Humble Pie. After the album's release, she left the band. "I didn't have a personal life, and I fell apart."



Trivia:  Keith Moon covered album track "Solid Gold" on his 1975 album Two Sides of the Moon. And , I'd add, the Fanny version sounds like it inspired Liz Phair's entire career.

40 Year Itch : You Want The Obvious

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Enter the "unpredictable" phase of Rundgren's career, which is going on (40) years now.

-The New Rolling Stone Album Guide

There's a lot more studio wizardry on A Wizard, a True Star than star-making songs. Not wanting to live up to the "male Carole King" label, Rundgren appears to have deliberately left behind almost all of the singer-songwriting ear candy that made Something/Anything? such a pleasure and, instead, seeks to dazzle us- in short lysergic snippets- with his genius.

"Psychedelics brought me to an awareness of myself that I'd no comprehension of previously", Rundgren said. " You don't know you're 'you' until you've had your ego stripped away and you realize you're all that stuff." 

He's monkeying with your stereo this time out and your ears will lap it up. Wide, weird, wired and wonderful

-Warner Brothers ad

When Rundgren delivered the 53 minute single disc album, not everyone at Warner Brothers was thrilled.

"It was like I had lit off a stink bomb in the record office," Rundgren says. "There was just so much commotion and recriminations like 'Why did you do this?' What were you thinking and yaddiyaddiyadda.."

There are some fully realized songs on Wizard, especially the single " I Don't Know What To Feel", album opener "International Feel" , "Zen Archer" and concert closer "Just One Victory". The  medley "I'm So Proud/Ooh Baby Baby/La La La Means I Love You pays tribute to Philadelphia soul before breaking out into "Cool Jerk".

In retrospect, the patchwork of songs on Side One sounds like a demo reel for Todd Rundgren, producer. I'm sure XTC heard all kinds of possibilities for Skylarking in tracks like "Dogfight Giggle".

In late 2009, Rundgren began touring the album after discovering Wizard has a whole new set of young fans including the bad Hot Chip.

40 Years Ago This Month: Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything

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Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything, released in February of 1972, is a generous double album full of melodies so sweet 4 out of 5 dentists suggest you brush heavilly after listening. On the first three sides, labelled "A Bouquet of Ear Catching Melodies", "The Cerebral Side"  and "The Kid Gets Heavy", Todd is playing all the instruments: guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and of course the instrument he mastered most...the studio itself.  The fourth side, called "Baby Needs a New Pair of Snakeskin Boots", is a live in-studio recording featuring a full band.

First, the sweet stuff:



The first side is full of sweet pop songs, including album opener "I Saw The Light" which, now that it's been mentioned a thousand times, does sound a bit like a good Carole King song. "It wouldn't Have Made Any Difference" and "Cold Morning Light" are both songs from a sweet boy who has apparently lost his dream girl. The entire album teems with sugary pop tunes, something Rundgren admits came so easily to him he got bored writing them.

"As soon as something becomes automatic," he told Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1978, "like the pop formula of Something/Anything?, I don’t consider it creative anymore. You’ve heard of crossover artists — I like to think of myself as a double-crossover artist.”

Still Todd could hardly argue with success. His Nazz era tune "Hello It's Me" hit the Top 5 in 1973, leading to this bizarre appearance on The Midnight Special.



Something/Anything? features more challenging tunes as well. Like all of Side Two's "Cerebral Side". For those who play the "Turn That Flawed Double LP Into a Single Great LP "game, these are the tracks that are most endangered. But you don't want to lose the playful "Intro".



As Todd told Creem Magazine's Ben Edmonds in 1972, Something/Anything? is a record about more than four discs of studio wizardry and a true star's songwriting skills:

"Something/Anything? is a record of experience, but the thing is that I'm bringing the experience into a really specific focus, and the experience is the whole thing that's creating the experience. It's not only a record about the experience, it's a record about recording the experience."

So along with the power pop classic "Couldn't I Just Tell You" you get flubbed count-ins and band members cracking up, all leading to our deep cut "You Left Me Sore" which, yes, could be about venereal disease. Or not.




So my Great Something /Anything? single disc album goes like this:

Side A

1. I Saw The Light
2. It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference
3. Wolfman Jack
4. Cold Morning Light
5. Intro
6. Black Maria

Side B

7. One More Day (No More)
8. Couldn't I Just Tell You
9. Hello It's Me
10. Some Folks Is Even Whiter Than Me
11. You Left Me Sore
12. Slut

What's yours?

For a one hour radio show Todd made to promote Something/Anything? visit Willards Wormholes

Just A Blur: 10 Great Songs Under A Minute

Todd Rundgren: Remember Me from Runt:The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971)
Soft Machine: Thank You Pierre Lunaire from Volume Two (1969)
Mandrake Memorial: Just A Blur (Version One) from Puzzle (1969)
Paul McCartney: The Lovely Linda from McCartney (1970)
Sam Phillips: Love And Kisses from Martinis and Bikinis (1994)
Willie Nelson: Denver from Red Headed Stranger (1975)
Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band: Kama Sutra from The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse (1968)
Wire: It's So Obvious from Pink Flag (1977)
Lo Borges: Pra Onde Vai Voce from Lo Borges (1972)
The Minutemen: Martin's Story  from Double Nickels On The Dime (1984)