The Todd Rundgren thread.*

Thanks for being so gracious.

 

Wasn't I'm an Adult Now a hit?

 

Depends on how you define "hit." It peaked at #22.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00U9DYC6G?psc=1&ref=yo_pop_mb_pd_title

 

I like Liars a lot, but I like every Todd album a lot. So for me, Liars doesn't stand out from the pack.

 

I’ve met and discussed this with members of the Tubes, Bougiois-Tagg and other bay artists who’ve either been produced by Todd or recoded/ performed with him.

The consensus is the guy’s a straight shooter but brings out the best of those he works with. His focus is on the task at hand as a producer, which is a dying art.

Never met Andy but it’s easy to see how those two would clash.

 

Todd and Andy both reportedly can be difficult. I am a big fan of both.

 

I think hiring someone like Rundgren who is/was a fully fledged recording and touring artist in his own right -- you are hiring him because you want his "sound" and you accept that he has very strong artistic opinions on your art.

 

I don't know. It's a bit of a stretch for me. I usually would consider a peer of Rundgren's someone who is of his generation and sort of came out of the same late 60s post Beatles era rock and roll scene that he came out of.

 

"Record production" and “the” role of the record producer as it once existed in the era of Rundgren, Ted Templeman, Richard Perry, Glyn Johns and a slew of other great record producers is a “changed art” – just as the art of “record promotion”, “record distribution” and “records sales” has changed.

The death of the classic record producer does not bug me nowhere near as much as the dying art of the great showman and performer. I try to go to concerts to see new(er/ish) bands and artists, and it’s really quite sad. It’s a lot of a very small stripper down ensemble singing and playing along to a lot of pre-recorded and pre-programmed tracks. I fail to see where the value for the money in the ticket price is for these performances. You might as well just keep listening to them on Spotify for free.

 

One of the things I've found about hanging out with a lot of musicians is that they tend to be far more inclusive of their fellow musicians than music fans tend to be. Todd certainly considered Trent enough of a peer to collaborate with him on a song.

 

"very small stripper down ensemble singing and playing along to a lot of pre-recorded and pre-programmed tracks."

So it it basically a 70's porn movie? (not that I have seen any)

 

One of the other things that Todd did that offended Andy was recording his own voice as a guide vocal for Andy to sing along with when he was having difficulty in a song. Andy thought this was just the worst thing ever, but it was a technique Todd had used with other singers successfully. Here's Todd's guide vocal for the Tubes song Come As You Are:



It worked. Frankly, Fee Waybill is a lot better singer than Andy Partridge, and if Fee could accept the assistance, Andy should have.

 

If memory serves, Bill Spooner sang lead on "Come as You Are".

 

I would guess that Todd sang the demo because he wrote the song. His level of involvement did seem to vary from one project to another, and in the Tubes' case (on both albums I would guess) he went as far as to write songs around their musical ideas and give them the credit.

 

My mistake. Not all that familiar with the later Tubes albums.

 

Nice! I saw Todd perform this with the Tubes (sans Fee) at The Warfield for the Jane Dornacker memorial. It was a sublime performance.

I'd love to hear his guide vocal demos for "Heaven's Falling (Cheap Trick) and 'Pretending' (Shaun Cassidy). Great Todd songs that he ought to reclaim someday.

 

I haven't listened to Love Bomb in a long time, but I do know for sure Spooner sang lead on 'Feel It' (another collaboration with Todd). You might be right about 'Come As You Are'.

My band opened for a Fee-less Tubes a couple times. Spooner's a fine singer in his own right.

 

I gave Hermit of Mink Hollow a listen this weekend. First Todd album I instantly liked since AWATS.

 

"Bat Out Of Hell" by Meat Loaf was one of the most successful albums of the 70s and yet Todd did not produce the follow up to it or Bat 2 years later.

 

smart man. Why try to better an album that was perfection in many people's eyes (as well as a commercial juggernaut)?

Grand Funk's Shining On wasn't half as good as American Band. And I say that as someone who owns and likes Shining On.

 

... but he was involved in vocal arrangements, and sang backup if I'm not mistaken. Jim and Meat weren't crazy about Todd's mix on the original Bat Out of Hell, but make no mistake - both recognize that without Todd it never would have been recorded. Again, according to Meat, Jim can neither read or write music, and would hum what he wanted to Todd, and unless Jim is the greatest hummer the world has ever known, and can hum multiple lines of music at once, Todd created all the arrangements.

By the way, anyone who still thinks Todd is a terrible mixer needs to hear his more recent solo albums. Mixing "in the box" has obviously made it a lot more fun for him than having to sit there and do the same song from beginning to end over and over again.

 

Fee sings Come as You Are.
Bill sings Feel It.

 

Todd actually did produce the followup which wound up many revisions later as Steinman's Bad for Good.