You say ‘yes’
The 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees are bringing their 31-date summer tour Yestival to the Zoo Amp. Gene Triplett catches up with special guest Todd Rundgren.
Todd Rundgren isn’t used to being the second-billed act on a concert tour.
“We’ve only had four dates, and it’s a little bit different for us because we’re used to headlining and doing a two-hour show, so we had to cut down to an hour, production is all different; it’s a little bit hectic because there’s three acts on the bill, and getting everybody a soundcheck is a challenge. So we’re getting used to it,” he said in a recent phone interview, while riding in his tour bus between Philadelphia and a gig at Foxworth Casino in Connecticut.
The ‘70s pop wunderkind who penned the consummate rock love ballad “Hello It’s Me,” is in the middle of a lineup starring the latest version of premier progressive rock assemblage Yes, and former Emerson, Lake and Palmer drummer Carl Palmer, who’s offering ELP classics delivered by a group of musicians replacing the late stars Keith Emerson and Greg Lake on keyboards and vocals/guitar, respectively, during Yestival, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday on the Zoo Amphiteatre stage.
Rundgren said he didn’t have any misgivings about joining the Yestival lineup as a supporting act, save for a bit of mislabeling.
“I note that whoever it is who put the bill together may have thought that I was still in progrock mode or something like that,” Rundren said. “But I tend to have no particular sort of a genre at this point. I’ve done pretty much every kind of music except country. So the big challenge, essentially, is just keeping the audience entertained, and so far I think we have.”
Indeed, this Philadelphia native’s musical directions have been all over the stylistic map since his modest beginnings as chief songwriter and guitarist for the Nazz, Philly’s answer to the British invasion, through his pop-rock innovations with his 1972 breakout solo album “Something/Anything?” through his musical and technical inventiveness with his progressive-rock band Utopia and beyond. At the same time he’s established himself as a go-to producer for such varied artists as Patti Smith, Badfinger, Cheap Trick, XTC, Hall and Oates and Meat Loaf.
Rundgren doesn’t seem to have a problem sharing the bill with Yes and Carl Palmer.
“I think it’s working out,” he said. “As I say, things are so sort of hectic and different for us that I haven’t had a chance to check out what happens during the other acts. Like Carl comes on before us, and we’re getting ready for our show during that, and then Yes come on like half an hour after us, and we’re still entertaining our guests. So at some point, there’ll be a situation where I get to go out and see the other guys play.”
Setlist expectations
While Yes is planning to play crowd-pleasers from their first 10 albums, and Palmer will rely exclusively on ELP’s fan favorites, Rundgren, whose musical output has constantly taken unpredicable stylistic turns, will be offering well-known and little-known tunes from his massive catalog, as well as selections from his latest album, “White Knight.”
“I had a new album come out in May, and so I have some obligation to continue to focus on that to some degree,” he said. “The rest of the set is kind of built around whatever doesn’t get covered when I’m doing the ‘White Knight’ thing. In other words, I do a ballad from another record that audiences are pretty familiar with, and some songs that they’re more familiar with near the end of a set, just to make sure that if someone wanted to hear something in particular, they’re going to get one song out of it.
“We do do ‘Hello It’s Me’ in the set,” he said reassuringly. “It is the most familiar song. Even if there are some people who aren’t fans of mine, we are aware of that particular number and they’ll be pleased in that regard.”
The new album, which features collaborations with several well-known artists, leans heavily toward keyboard centered, blueeyed soul, such as his teaming with Daryl Hall, “Chance For Us,” with a few guitar-propelled rockers such as “Deaf Ears” with guest Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails.
But don’t expect a performance of “Tin Foil Hat,” a President Trump-slamming ditty aided and abetted by Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen. “It’s been one of the songs that’s gotten the record a lot of attention, although not in the way that I originally intended perhaps,” Rundgren said. “We weren’t really expecting it to go outside of kind of a certain circle of people. But when I did the video for it, I didn’t do it specifically to have it released to YouTube or anything like that. I had a spot in the show where I had to do a costume change, so I needed a video to cover that time.
“So I completed it just before we went on the road, and the only place it really showed was during the shows, but we went to a couple of places and after the song was done, fights would break out in the audience, and that’s when it finally started to get attention from, like, Breitbart News and Fox News and stuff like that, especially after I did an interview with Variety and explained what had been going on in the shows.
“It’s too much a point of contention for me to do it when Yes is really the headliner. I’m not gonna cause fights in Yes’ audience. When we get to the end of the year, I’m going out on a sort of modified ‘White Knight’ tour, and it’ll be back in the show by then, I think.”
On the record
As for his future as a producer of others artists’ records, Rundgren said, “I seem to enjoy making records with other people. Unfortunately, the way the music industry has changed, I don’t get as much of that kind of work anymore. It’s a combination of the fact that labels don’t sign acts for seven albums anymore, and give that big advance for all of their records. You’re lucky if you get like a three-album deal or something nowadays. And also the cost of recording technology is so cheap that anyone who wants a home studio can pretty much afford it now, so being a gatekeeper to the studio is no longer a way to get these kinds of gigs.
“But, yeah, I always learn something when I work with somebody else. And it finds it finds its way into my own music and I’m always conscious of that possible benefit. And, yeah, I’ve had some unexpected successes. ‘Bat Out of Hell’ (by Meat Loaf) was never, we never thought it was going to be a big record, just hoped that somebody would put it out. Lo and behold, it became gigantic. And then there were records that were really difficult to make, but it worked out well for the artist. Like ‘Skylarking,’ for XTC. A really good album but a difficult one to make, because of psychological conflicts or something.”
Those conflicts arose between Rundgren and XTC main man Andy Partridge during those 1986 recording sessions with one of England’s premier exploratory pop-rock bands.
“Well Andy really was de facto producer for their records, even though the label didn’t want him to because he really doesn’t know how to stop recording. Once he gets in the studio, he doesn’t want to come out.”
But the album was completed, thanks to Rundgren, one of the best-reviewed records XTC ever released.
Meanwhile, Rundgren’s latest LP, with its all-star lineup of collaborators, has pleased the managers of his new label, the independent Cleopatra, so much so that they want to make another one with big stars doing guest turns behind the “wizard,” the “true star,” to borrow from the title of Rundgren’s 1973 masterpiece LP. “The label is pretty enthusiastic about the ‘White Knight’ brand. And I’m on the road almost continuously until the end of the year,” Rundgren said. “Any new recording that I do is going to be in a hotel room somewhere. So, it’s going to be an interesting challenge to get more of those collaborations done, but it’s not impossible, because I’ve had situations where I’ve had to do remixes or other sorts of production elements while I was traveling. So that’ll be sort of an interesting aspect of the process, but not necessarily something revolutionary.”
Interesting words, coming from a man responsible for many revolutions in the art of recording — not to mention pop music songcraft — in the last half-century.