Todd Rundgren talks about challenging his fans, producing Meat Loaf and New York Dolls, and picking the right rock stars to collaborate with.
If Todd Rundgren calls, rock stars pick up thei phone. Collaborators on Rundgren’s last two albums, 2022′s “Space Force” and 2017′s “White Knight,” include: Trent Reznor, The Roots, Joe Walsh, Daryl Hall, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen,They clear their schedules to work with Rundgren because he’s one of the classic-rock era’s last true iconoclasts. Like his contemporary David Bowie, he’s a shapeshifter. Like his descendant Prince, he’s a multi-instrumental maestro, too.
Rundgren’s currently on the road with his “Me/We Tour.” His band includes two Utopia alums, keyboardist Gil Assayas and bassist Kasim Sulton. Of course, by the time I’ve been on the road for a little while the setlist gets out , and people will know what what’s coming. But for the most part, it seems like the audience is pleased with the kind of deep dive and fan favorites and things that the band likes to play, and things that we’ve never played before, sometimes.
In particular, we had one deejay, his name Jerry Blavat. And he would play almost exclusively R&B records while everyone else was playing like Frankie Avalon and white artists and white pop before the Beatles, before the British Invasion. Well, there are sort of different reasons for doing things. The Meat Loaf project, I knew who Meatloaf was from “The Rocky Horror Show” .
And so I heard the whole Meat Loaf project as a spoof of Bruce Springsteen, even though I didn’t tell them that. And that’s why I decided to do it.But the New York Dolls was a different situation. There was a scene going on in New York in the ‘70s, It was before they called it punk rock. They just called it the New York scene. A lot of bands some of which were interesting, few of which were actually competent.
Well, often it’s somebody that I think I’d like to work with and never had the opportunity, so I will just pitch them on it. Sometimes it happens almost spontaneously.
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