Even though he’s written loads of iconic guitar bits with the Nazz, Utopia, and as a solo artist, Todd Rundgren often defers to other players when he’s on tour these days.
“I’ve got something of a balance,” he says. “I don’t feature the guitar as much as I used to. My show is just me singing at least half the time – I’m not playing anything at all.”
He’s clearly had a change of heart about guitar theatrics. “I’m somewhat of a limited improviser,” he claims. “I never took lessons, and I never took music theory, so there are techniques and modalities that I have little experience with.
“I could improve as a guitar player pretty easily if I studied, but at this point in my life, I just don’t. My strengths have always been figuring out something memorable that other players could play.”
He’s working on a new record to follow 2022’s Space Force. But don’t rush him – his live work has his focus for the moment. “Nowadays, me as a guitar player encapsulated,” he says. “Whatever style that I have, it’s on full display.”
What gear are you using on your latest tour?
“Right now, I’m down to pedals. The rack that I usually travel with is pretty small; just one unit. I’m not the guitar player I used to be in the sense that I don’t feel obligated to cover everything. That’s why I have players who are likely better than I am!”
Some would say you’re being modest.
“Every once in a while, I take a solo for fun. I mostly play sort of rhythm stuff. So I don’t need a whole range of sounds like the players in my band need.”
Your career has been about producing as much as guitar. What’s the trick to merging those worlds?
“I did start out as a player, so it was a heavy emphasis on guitar. But when the Nazz broke up because we didn’t have any radio success, I didn’t want to be in a band anymore. I put the whole guitar thing in limbo.
“I was kind of living on the street in the West Village and I got tracked down by the partner of the Nazz’s manager, Michael Friedman. He’d gone to work for Albert Grossman. They weren’t looking for a musician; they were looking for someone to help modernize the recordings of their legacy artists.
At a certain point Grand Funk said, ‘How can we be this popular, yet nobody likes us?’
“A lot of Albert’s artists had been signed in the folk phase. By the late ‘60s and post-Beatles, a lot of them weren’t getting any FM play; they seemed to be of another era. So they called me to apply something to the recordings. It didn’t entail guitar at all, but the guitar brought me to that point.”
One of your earliest production credits is The Band’s Stage Fright. What was it like working with Robbie Robertson?
“I was working with Robbie, but also working with the whole band. If you notice on the credits of the record, they don’t credit a producer because there isn’t one guy who was in charge. You’d think it was Robbie, but he had to kind of walk on eggs with the other guys. He’s writing all the material and making all the money – he doesn’t want to piss them off!
“He’s gotta be very solicitous and accepting of their input and stuff. That’s why the project took so long; there wasn’t one guy making the decisions. There were five guys, each with an opinion about it. The mixing process was torturous!
“But Robbie was definitely driving everything. The other guys had their own demons that prevented them from taking that responsibility. It was a sad fact that they went under the radar – and suddenly, you wake up and find yourself the biggest band in the world. Everything you’ve ever dreamed of is now yours, including all the excesses.
“But Robbie was kind of a straight arrow; he always kept himself together and was always the last one to lose it. And as a guitar player, he’d sometimes fade into the background. You’ll notice that on a lot of Band albums – there’s not a lot of guitar solos.”
What did you notice most about Robbie’s playing?
“He could be very terse; he didn’t go on noodling a lot. Also, from my standpoint, he had a somewhat difficult sound to capture. It’s straight out of the Fender Twin, no pedals or other kinds of sounds. It could be very piercing at times; almost grating.
“Trying to get control of that was, for me, something of an issue. But he liked the sound. He wanted it to sound that way and it was his record!”
You produced three diverse ‘70s records in Grand Funk Railroad’s We’re an American BandThe New York Dolls’ self-titled record, and Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell.
“Not everybody needs a producer. The degree of production required for one project is not the same as for another. It’s got to be apropos of what the act is doing.
“I always considered myself like the caulk in the process: where there’s a gap, that’s what I fill in. I don’t try and make the band do things my way. If they want to sound a certain way, I may not agree – and yeah, I may battle them over it – but in the end it’s their record.
“People may look at my production credits and say, ‘Oh, okay, this guy had something to do with it.’ But the greater public doesn’t pay attention to the production credits. If the record is bad, they’re going to blame the artist. So, my thing has always been, ‘It’s gotta be the record that the artist wants.’”
So, with Grand Funk, New York Dolls and Meat Loaf, was there a common thread?
“Each of those artists had a particular identifiable issue. Once I identify the issue I can usually devise, if not a solution, at least an approach to dealing with it. In the case of Grand Funk, they were like a B or C-level jam band. A lot of it was based on their live antics and an occasional bit of radio exposure.
“But they were just writing songs to noodle over, so the records were critically lambasted. At a certain point, that started to bother them. They said, ‘How can we be this popular, yet nobody likes us?’
“But they’d realized what was going on, so they got rid of their management and devised a new plan: ‘We’re going to write songs now.’ The difference with We’re an American Band is there’s no noodling on that record.
“The New York Dolls had never made a record before – in fact, they hadn’t been a band for more than a year. They were just part of a scene I’d been living in. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do a record out of this scene,’ and they were the biggest band in that scene, so I did their record.”
What was it like working with a player like Johnny Thunders?
“That was like herding cats! It was logistical more than anything. There’d be no point in making suggestions about what anybody was going to play – their range was not great. They purposely kept the range really narrow. Otherwise, you look like a poser. You look like you’re trying too hard.
I listened to Springsteen and it’s like, ‘The motorcycles? The switchblades? The leather jackets? We’re going to do this again? Oh, hell, no!’
“So that was crowd management more than anything. Just trying to get anything done, being the only sober person in the room at some points, was just completely different. But they didn’t jam and they very rarely soloed.”
Surely, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell must have been very different.
“By the standards of the time, Meat Loaf was just a plain weird act. No producer could figure out what to do with them because the songs were so long. They were just trying to imagine this big, fat guy; for most of them, it was a bridge too far.”
Why did you take the job?
“I was in a certain frame of mind at the time, and making that record represented a certain revenge to me. I’m very much about progress, and I know things are cyclic, especially in the music business – we go through phases. Every once in a while we’re due for a change, and God, at this point, Bruce Springsteen was like all over, you know?”
So, you produced Meat Loaf because you weren’t into Bruce Springsteen?
“He was on the cover of Time magazine, as the ‘savior of rock ‘n’ roll.’ And I listened to these long songs, all about the ‘50s, and it’s like, ‘Wait a minute… we have to go through this again? The motorcycles? The switchblades? The leather jackets? We’re going to do this again? Oh, hell, no!’
“So, when I saw Meat Loaf, I said, ‘This is a spoof of Bruce Springsteen, and that’s why I’m doing it.’ And the rest, as they say, is history.
“I don’t think I mentioned it while I was making the record, but I’ve done it enough in public. Meat Loaf must have known that’s what I was thinking. I didn’t care if it succeeded or not; I just wanted to make fun of Bruce Springsteen!”
As far as your many solo records, do you have a favorite from a guitar perspective?
“Those are the questions I never answer! The world is not made of absolutes. It’s a quantum world, but nothing is absolute. There’s never any ‘best’ or ‘favorite’ or anything like that.”
Your most recent record is 2022’s Space Force. Are you working on new music?
“I’m working on it. I have several balls in the air which are nagging at me. I’ve got a tour coming up, and in the fall, I believe, I’ll be going to Europe, and within the next six to eight months, I’ll probably get back to Japan and Australia. So, I’m going worldwide here. I’m staying busy.”
