Todd Rundgren

Caught a few Unpredictable shows over the weekend.

Monterey on Friday was excellent, probably the best out of the 5 Unpredictable shows I've seen.
Highlights for me were my first time hearing Don't Bogart That Joint and the wild 12:15 lounge version of Born To Synthesize, in which the entire backing band took solos.

The Napa show was the 6th one-nighter in 7 nights for the band, and I could tell Todd's 70-year-old vocal cords were feeling the effects of all the gigs and traveling. His voice definitely got better last half of the show. Patches was much improved from the ragged band version I heard a few years ago. Ditto for Hash Pipe, which rocked both Friday and Sunday night.

Greg Hawkes is a fine addition. Got to hear Good Times Roll live for the 1st and 2nd time. Excellent solo on Love In Action.

Not a pro image, but here's a pic from the end of the Napa show

 

Legend with a sense of humor!

 

I would be interested in reading one written by Paul Myers, or Graeme Thomson.

 

Thanks for sharing this.

 

Sounds interesting to say the least. Could be off putting, but can't be any wackier than Neil's book.
Sure won't be boring

 

Whatever he does, Todd has to keep it interesting for himself. I know he's a fascinating interview subject, but we'll have to see if that translates into being a good writer. He had three sample "chapters" up on the Interocitor, and they were worth reading, so if he can maintain that same level, it will be a good read.

 

Cool article in the Wall Street Journal couple of days ago about the inspiration for Hello It's Me:

Todd Rundgren wrote his first song, “Hello It’s Me,” in 1967, one year after a painful high-school breakup.

The song was first recorded in 1968 as a slow ballad by Nazz, a band Mr. Rundgren co-founded. In late 1971, while recording the solo album “Something/Anything?” he updated the song with a bouncier arrangement. It climbed to No. 5 on Billboard’s pop chart in 1973 and became his biggest-selling solo hit, remaining on the chart for 20 weeks.

Mr. Rundgren’s memoir “The Individualist” (Cleopatra) will be published Dec. 21, and he will tour in North America, Europe and Japan in the spring. Recently, Mr. Rundgren looked back at the writing and recording of “Hello It’s Me.” Edited from an interview.

Todd Rundgren : In the summer of 1967, I was sitting in a wheelchair. Nothing was wrong. I had co-founded Nazz months earlier and was living in our manager’s townhouse in downtown Philadelphia. All of us in the band lived there.

I found the wheelchair in a corner. I liked to roll around in it and balance myself on two wheels. Motion focused my energy. Up until then, Nazz had been playing cover songs. But we realized that if we wanted to attract a record deal and become successful, we needed original material.

One day, while sitting in the wheelchair, I was listening to jazz organist Jimmy Smith’s recording of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” The organ intro was intriguing. I picked up my electric guitar, a Gibson SG, and began trying to figure out Smith’s descending chords.

After I came up with an interpretation of the chords, I realized they could be the basis of an original song. Over the coming days, I developed a melody. Burt Bacharach was a big influence, especially his music for Dionne Warwick. The song “Walk on By” still knocks me out.

Once the music for my song was set, I turned to writing the lyrics. I thought back to early 1966, when I was still in high school. Senior year had been an emotional time. I had a crush on a girl named Linda, and we started seeing each other.

She probably liked me because I was the only guy in school with long hair. We became close and hugged and kissed a lot at parties.

One day in May ’66, a friend dropped us off and I walked Linda to her front door. Her father, who was outside, hated me on sight. He turned the garden hose on me. Long hair on a guy was a political statement back then and a red flag for parents.

A day or two later, Linda told me she was forbidden to see me anymore. Just like that, she stopped talking to me and wouldn’t take my calls. I adored her and was heartbroken, almost suicidal.

That Christmas, I wanted to make a final gesture to win her back. I saved up and bought her a pantsuit. When I went to her house, the only person there was her sister, who invited me in. When I left, I realized I had to stop this.

Writing my song in ’67, I decided to make the lyrics about our breakup. But instead of being the victim, I turned the song’s story around so I was breaking up with her. This gave me a little power and allowed me to imagine how I might have done things differently over the phone.

I opened with, “Hello, it’s me / I’ve thought about us for a long, long time / Maybe I think too much but something’s wrong / There’s something here that doesn’t last too long / Maybe I shouldn’t think of you as mine.”

To ease the blow, I wrote a bridge about why the breakup was good for her: “It’s important to me / That you know you are free / ‘Cause I never want to make you change for me.”

I guess in some ways it’s how I would have wanted to be let down. As I continued to work on the song, I channeled other influences, including the Beatles and Beach Boys and their stacks of vocal harmonies.

Admittedly, to write a song like this, you had to be especially insecure. I didn’t have a girlfriend all the way up through high school. Linda had been my first real relationship.

Nazz recorded “Hello It’s Me” on our first album in April 1968. Robert “Stewkey” Antoni, our keyboard player, sang the lead vocal. I envisioned the song as a ballad, but it became a dirge.

I played the vibes on the recording, not the guitar. A guitar felt inappropriate, and I wasn’t a ballad player. My guitar heroes were Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. Vibes also gave the song a cooler, more atmospheric feel.

The vocal harmony derived from major and minor 7th chords I learned fooling around on the piano in the high-school auditorium after school. I didn’t read music and still can’t.

In 1969, I left Nazz to go out on my own as a producer and solo artist. By 1971, living in New York, I had recorded enough material for three LP sides. I didn’t intend “Something/Anything?” to be a double album. But I found a song-writing formula and got into a jag.

I needed songs for the fourth side, so I decided to update “Hello It’s Me.” One Sunday morning, I called organist Mark “Moogy” Klingman and asked him to put together a recording session at New York’s Record Plant that afternoon.

By then, I envisioned the song faster and more sophisticated than the Nazz original. Carole King’s “Tapestry” had just come out and its bouncy, melancholy sound was an influence.

At the Record Plant’s top-floor studio, everything came together. Moogy had brought in horns for the session—saxophonist Michael Brecker, trumpeter Randy Brecker and trombonist Barry Rogers. He also brought in five background singers.

I established the feel for the song and taught everyone the chords before we recorded. On the 4:42 album version, you hear studio chatter and then a couple of false starts. I wanted to include sounds from the studio to give the song a live atmosphere.

I played eighth notes throughout on the piano, and Moogy played organ chords on top of those notes. My eighth notes provided urgency, a racing pulse under the whole thing rather than the original’s sleepy conga. I wanted to put some life into the new version.

Moogy’s organ gave the song a breezy feel and filled out the spaces. The backup singers’ parts weren’t overly complicated until the very end, when I had them sing “think of me” a cappella several times.

Funny thing is the instruments that got the shortest shrift were the guitars. We used Rick Derringer and Robbie Kogel. I wanted them to sound as if the guitars had been an afterthought.

“Hello It’s Me” was done in a single take. I’m not sure if it was the first take, but there was no overdubbing or splicing. Everyone was in the studio at the same time. It happened just as you hear it.

Thirty years later, I was in Oklahoma to perform. On the afternoon before the concert, the phone in my hotel room rang. When I answered it, a woman’s voice on the other end said, “Hi Todd? It’s Linda. Do you remember me from high school?”

There was a long pause on my end. When we finally began to talk, she told me she lived in the area, that she was married and had kids. My voice didn’t warm up, and I avoided talking about the old days. I was pretty businesslike.

I told Linda I’d put her on the guest list for seats. She thanked me and we said goodbye. I added her name but I didn’t include a pass for backstage access.

Our lives had gone in two different directions and we really had nothing to say to each other. I think I also wanted to hold onto the image I had of her in high school. I never told her she was the inspiration for the song.

 

Awesome album!
Side 1 with six fairly long songs, side 2 so out there you can almost smell the scent of drugs coming from your speakers.

 

I had a friend back in the early 80’s that I hung out with a lot and I used to play AWATS almost constantly. She called it ‘that weird music’. Yeah it was and still is LOL. I think he was doing a lot of psychedelics during that one.

 

I'm sure if Todd had popped his clogs mid nineteen seventies he would be seen in a more favourable ( I saw the ) light.

 

I was big into Todd back when Utopia was still around. I saw him for the first time in 89’ on the Nearly Human tour but the legend of his “Ra” tour with the laser pyramid was still talked about over 10 years later. I saw him in a 1,000 seat club and waited most of the day for good seats up front. During a break between songs I reached my hand up to shake his and he dissed me in front of the whole club, mocking me trying to get a handshake.

The next time I saw him he spent a good half hour bashing Ozzy Osborne. I was done with after those two events.

 

I met the man a few weeks ago, couldn't have been a cooler gent

 

Nice to read this. Wasn't Linda also the inspiration for a lot of other songs, including the excellent Utopia song "I Will Wait," which mentions his high school reunion?

"I remember there was someone that I wanted
Now she's a face
At the reunion of '66
What did she know
What was she thinking"

 

Saw the two shows at The Coach House. Muskrat Love reared its' ugly head once again at the second show. A couple had actual muskrat masks that they wore during the song. The band almost lost it. It's the first time I've ever seen a band take pictures of the audience. Todd was in fine form and the band was great as always.

 

The "Unpredictable" shows are becoming as skippable as the "tax debt/Todd solo with an acoustic guitar" shows of the 90s.

 

Any Utopia /Todd solo albums SACDs planned ?

 

Nothing I know of, but the odds would surely get better if he gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 

On that album they credited all the songs to everyone in the band, but that has all the hallmarks of a Kasim Sulton song. Also, he's performed it at his solo shows, where he concentrated on his own albums and the Utopia songs he wrote.

 

Bunch of rnr pussies for not allowing him in.

 

I did two long round trips to see two shows in the last three weeks (San Luis Obispo and San Juan Capistrano), and I'm very happy not to have skipped them.

 

I saw two "Unpredictable" shows this last year, in Kansas City at a dreadful venue called The Crossroads, and in Atlantic City at a casino. The KC one was a better mix of Todd originals and covers, but the Atlantic City one had so many covers it was like he was being willfully perverse, and deliberately trying to annoy the audience.

Sorry, but with a man who has written almost 500 songs, there's little excuse for covers. I know he has to keep it interesting for himself... But how interesting can it be covering Muskrat Love for the hundredth time?

 

SBN-10: 0997205652

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I, for one, will be placing a pre-order Monday at my favourite local book store, @ the book corner dot com in Niagara Falls NY.
After all, they need some rest after tallying up their sales from today's Shop Small® festivities.

 

I've seen two or three Unpredictable shows, and they were a lot of fun, especially the one last summer. I'm thrilled to have attended but that was enough for now.

The advantage to Todd is probably that they can be put together with very little preparation or thought. The advantage to me is to see he and the band up close and personal, and to watch them be relaxed and having fun. Still, for my money I'd rather see a serious show like the recent TR's Utopia and Global shows. The ticket prices for those and the Unpredictable shows were not all that far apart!