Todd Rundgren
The wizard, a true star, plays a one-off, two-set show in London.
Now 70 years old, the Philadelphia-born singer, songwriter, producer and multiinstrumentalist should require no introduction. But try telling that to the “bunch of clowns” at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
Your autobiography, The Individualist: Digressions, Dreams And Dissertations, was published last year. Why did you leave it so late in life?
Writing always reminds me of homework and school. Breaking things down into chunks made the task much easier, but it took a lot of discipline.
What type of emotions did the process stir up? Some parts were pleasant, others much less so. I don’t dwell much in the past, so most of my recollections were always going to be pretty fleeting. However, it was always important for me to separate the factual from the emotional.
Why does it cover only your first fifty years, and is there likely to be a volume two?
I had expected to finish writing it twenty years ago [laughs] but I put the project on the shelf for decades. I bracketed the first fifty years because it’s a nice round number, and after I turned fifty my life became more boring. I find the things I do interesting, but readers might not, so a second book would probably have be the opposite – much more emotional and less factual. The set-list for this tour documents the same first half-century of your life, and includes hits and deep cuts. Was it easy to select the songs? Yeah. The show is in two sets. The first is intentionally nostalgic. I don’t consider myself a nostalgia artist, but on this occasion it feels right to revisit my material in the way that people remember it.
An alien comes to Earth and wants to know what Todd Rundgren is all about. Which three songs of yours do you play him or her?
Hello It’s Me [1968] would have to be among them because it was the first and last big hit I had. By
Real Man [1975] I had begun my evolution as an artist, and to take things in a completely different direction Bang The Drum All Day [1983] is the most successful song I’ve ever done, even though most people don’t know it’s mine.
Last year your band Utopia reunited for a first North American tour in thirty-two years. Did it live up to your expectations?
We acquitted ourselves well despite Ralph [Schuckett, keyboards] being diagnosed with an exotic disease. But then as much as the gods had frowned upon us, they smiled by sending us a young kid named Gil Assayas who wasn’t even born when Utopia first existed, and things worked out just fine. Having guested with The Lemon Twigs on their bizarre but fascinating rock opera Go To School, do you consider them a good prospect for the future? Yes I do. Their originality makes them remarkable.
“[The Hall Of Fame] are a bunch of clowns. Nobody knows them or how they come up with their decisions.”
How did you feel when you were nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2019 but missed out in the fan vote?
I never cared about the Hall Of Fame. They induct you into that when your career is twenty years over. I was thirty-five years old when they established the Hall Of Fame [in 1983] – by then I had already had three careers. Why would I need that validation? They’re bunch of clowns. Nobody knows them or how they come up with their decisions.
Incredibly, this was the first time the Hall Of Fame had even nominated you.
The thing that really annoys me is that my fans were inconvenienced. They had done what they were encouraged to do [by voting for me], and all that happened was that everybody got jerked around. That pissed me off. I’m very protective of my fans. DL Rundgren plays London’s Hammersmith Apollo on April 6.