If there was a multiple choice question about who Todd Rundgren is, you’d be correct if you picked the answer at the bottom of the long list: all of the above. Whether it’s producing artists like Patti Smith, The Band or The Tubes, leading proto-jamband Utopia through hours of improvisation or developing music-based technology, Rundgren has brought impeccable skills to each. He was enough of a rockstar in the ‘70s to have adoring fans pin up posters with his countenance that read, “Todd is God.” Despite releasing 13 albums while part of The Nazz and Utopia, the prolific Rundgren released his 16th solo album, Liars, this past April. And, not surprisingly, it’s as good as anything he’s done in the last 25 years.

You’ve said you’re not a big fan of rock and roll.

I’m a fan of examples of a lot of genres, but I don’t necessarily fully commit to any particular one. In that sense, rock and roll by it’s strictest definition, which I always kind of think Elvis Presley on the white side and Chuck Berry on the black side, is a very particular kind of music that I can’t say I played a lot of. Sometimes we go back and play those things almost as a goof. I remember for a while in Utopia we used to do “96 Tears” [Englishmen] during some period of touring and that was because, by contrast to all the complicated stuff we were doing, it was extremely simple. And it had some weird cultural significance to us which I don’t quite remember what it was, but in that sense, I like all kinds of music but only because somebody did it really well. You can say you like R&B because people like Marvin Gaye sang it or you like rock and roll because a band like Cheap Trick plays it. But in that sense, I don’t have a commitment to a particular genre.

You weren’t into being a heavy guitar player because you said it was like the old west gunslingers and people were always looking to hunt you down and beat you. Would you say you successfully stayed out of that arena?

Well, I didn’t get shot! [laughter] There was a time, and I was pretty young, I didn’t write a lot of material so I didn’t have anything that I thought was my own personal mode of self-expression except for playing the guitar. Ironically enough, a very derivative kind of guitar based on other influences I had. It got to a certain point, after I started to write songs, when the guitar became more of a tool I guess to me, a lot of my writing was taking place on the piano and I suppose that I just evolved away from the idea that you had to prove something as a guitar player. I still enjoy playing it and I still every once in a while think I can do something that’s, something that might be recognizably me as opposed to all my influences [slight laughter] and so in that sense I don’t have any new horizons planned for the guitar. You get to a certain point and then you plateau I guess.

Most people think of you as a musician, but you’ve had a prolific career as a producer working with everyone from Janis Joplin to Patti Smith to Bad Religion to The Tubes. Can you talk a little bit about being on both sides of record making?

I originally thought, after I left The Nazz, that I was going to be spending most of my time as behind the scenes guy, basically engineer, record producer. And that’s also a rewarding existence because you get to work with so many talented people. And for a long time, after I quit the Nazz, I felt to go out and perform would be a distraction. I did an album, more or less for my own amusement, and it turned out there was a single on it [ “We Gotta Get You a Woman” ]. I got forced, I suppose, into thinking, again, as a performer. And I’m kind of glad I did because I guess because when I was in The Nazz, the reason I didn’t want to go out and perform is because I always saw myself as essentially a sideman. Not as a frontman. And there’s a whole other bunch of skills you have to develop as a frontman that have been really useful to me ever since, extending all the way to the point that I can now to a two and half hour show by myself and entertain people. And that’s a valuable skill that can be applied to a lot of other things. I participated, just about a week ago, in a sort of a performance piece, a tribute to the Fireside Theater. And most of it involves more or less acting and doing voices and things like that and because I have a comfort level as a performer, I was able to work with other people whose work you normally can just sit back and admire. Actors like John Goodman and George Wendt And comedians like Mark McKinney and Bob Odenkirk and other people who work in an arena I don’t normally work in. And because I did have the comfort and skills of a live performer, I was able to drop into that world for a little bit and not be too out of place.

Would you say that one your early band, The Nazz, was the first, true Anglophile group?

I would say that we were, but I wouldn’t say that we were the first because I remember at the time of the so-called British Invasion, a lot of guys affecting a British accent because they thought it would get them girls you know. And some of them would be incredibly awful. Guvnor type of stuff, you know? [laughter] I remember this happening even in high school. If a guy could get away with growing his hair long, the next thing he moved on to was his fake British accent. In any case, I do admit that we were Anglophiles and the bands we emulated and the fashion we emulated, were essentially British. And for a good long time, I wouldn’t even buy clothes in America. I would take a yearly trip to England and stay with friends in the fashion business and go shopping in the warehouses and come back with two-dozen pairs of crushed velvet pants. So there was a time, for all intensive purposes, that our musical influences and the way we looked, in other respect, you could have said we were from England. A lot of people even to this day, say, “you know, you don’t sound English.” [laughter] That’s because I’m not English.

You’ve said that record is more than just a 12 inch piece of plastic, that’s it a lifestyle. Can you explain further?

You mean how it can represent a lifestyle? There’s no guarantee that the record conveys its message without condition to anyone who listens to it. So you would certainly have to have some reference points but for me I’ve discovered there’s a big difference in the way that the music is created. For instance, the last album I made was purposely an anti-concept album. I wanted to just let whatever ideas happen, to try and complete them at the time they came to me rather than save them up for some grander project. And then when I had enough of these ideas completed, I would have an album, kind of like an old fashioned, make a single at a time and then when you have five singles and B-sides, you got ten songs and that’s an album. And that was the way things were before The Beatles recorded Sgt.Pepper. Because that was first, real concept album and they made themselves, at that point, the first album artists because there were no singles on the album. So I do recognize the difference in terms of what my lifestyle turns out to be when I take the two different approaches. On the most recent record I had to do what I’ve done more traditionally which is isolate myself so that whatever it is that my subconscious is really fixated on can start to be heard over the din of daily distractions. And so for me, it does become a lifestyle in terms of being alone a lot [slight laughter]. Not necessarily because you crave being alone but because the process just doesn’t happen otherwise.
As an older artist, you have embraced technology some others have stayed away from it. Is there a point where technology does a disservice to the music?

Music is at the service of mankind, not the other way around. Often we speak of music as being something in and of itself that you have to strive to achieve but it is, in reality, just another reflection of where we’re at. And if we’re in a world of technologies, than that’s just where we’re at and we have no choice but to let it be incorporated into what we do. The thing that’s probably the downside of the incorporation of technology is when people try get out of some part of the essential work you have to do to make something worthwhile. And in that sense, it’s just as much of a technology for some guy from Orlando to have a formula for putting boy bands together that involves them being somewhere between this height and that height and having voices that are somewhere between a castrati and a teenage boy, or something like that. And the songs resemble a certain exact thing. And so that’s probably more corrosive to music than any particular technology is, is the assumption that you can just flick a switch and have music come pouring out some how and that applies no matter what technology you may be using.

• “Time Heals” was the second video ever played on MTV.*

So I’ve heard, I didn’t have cable at the time. [hearty laugh]
Did you think at the time music videos would have the impact they have?

I always imagined that there would have been as much variety as there is in music. That it wouldn’t have just become a promotional thing for pop records. And, as it turn out, historically you have to say, as a so called art form, it didn’t really survive that well because now MTV doesn’t even play videos any more. Everything has become reality television and other sorts of documentation sorts of things. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I know there was a certain point in which videos became pro forma, you know? Strobe lights, explosions and half-naked women. And that seemed to be all that was necessary. It was your option whether you wanted to do anything more than that. I always thought it would become a way to visualize all kinds of music. And the first experiments I did with so called music videos or putting music and video together, all involved things that were much more abstract. For instance, I did a couple of tunes off Tomita’s Snowflakes are Dancing, which is an electronic treatment of Debussy’s music. But it just had this weird, sort of evocative thing about it and I did a lot of experiment in visualizations to that. So when I first got into video, it had nothing to with promoting a band. It was almost like trying to duplicate a drug experience. Trying to create imagery that went along. It’s what they call synaesthesia. You hear certain music and you see a certain color or something like that; the connection between various kinds of sensory input.

You’ve said that you always play music that’s visually inspired.

To an extent. At this point, I think that I don’t as much or as consistently incorporate a visual element. But I know there are certain points in time and certain specific projects that I’ve done, that were almost, they couldn’t have been done without it. For instance, the production on Sklylarking, XTC’s album, was specifically based on a whole set of visualizations that the music was then supposed to describe. I actually collected books and other materials, pictures of an English garden, for the opening song of the record. How do we reinforce this image musically? And for myself, I probably don’t get as specific but there are certain instances, even on the new album, where I try and take people on a very brief little train ride. [laughter]. The conductor tries to wake up a day dreaming passenger. That’s obviously a visualization about a real thing. Then again, that can be too limiting of a factor because so much of human experience is ephemeral. It’s all about what we think about things, not what they actually are.

Much of the music we cover could be considered to be visually inspired. Had the term been around back then, would you have called Utopia a jamband?

Well, we were. Certainly in the beginning when we had six or seven members in the band, we would do shows that would be four hours plus because there was so much jamming going and because we had so many good players that could do that. And we were younger, we had unlimited energy. [laughter] Now you’re back hurts if you stand up for four hours. I still have a soft spot for that era. I still like to go see King Crimson do all of their guitar intricacies and other sorts of things who only musicians who are at the top of their game do. And I am actually sort of on a campaign at this point to get musicians to take advantage of the fact that the traditional music industry is kind of on its knees now and go out and take back a lot of things that have been lost. In particular, the collective reputation of musicians as performers. When you think musician, you think dance lessons. I’d like to see a big, healthy jamband thing going on as well as other kinds of music. I’m just as happy that there’s a band like Outkast out there whose just trying to have fun in a world where everything is just so damned mannered all the time.

I think it is a good sign that an album that is so adventurous and occasionally out there is being received so well by the mainstream. I think it’s a smaller glimmer of hope.

Well, I’ve heard people describe it as purposefully “tinny.” [laughter] Redolent of a sound when either production hadn’t gotten come along to the point it has where you can make the assumption that almost everybody who owns a sound system owns a subwoofer now. So now you start mixing a lot down in these sub frequencies. Whereas as before, in the days of vinyl records, you put too much bass on a disc, it starts skipping all over the place.

You’ve always been technologically progressive. You began offering subscriptions for people to download or buy your material from your Patronet service. With that in mind, what’s your take on the current music business and its practices?

I had the advantage of seeing a lot of this stuff coming that not all the other musicians did, they weren’t privy to all the pieces of the puzzle. Certainly the music industry in its obstinate ignorance had the same information idea and, as a matter of fact, I brought them a lot of that information and they just refused to even consider it. That is as much of an indictment as anything else, the fact their only recourse now seems to be to sue their own customers. When they had available to them, the same information that’s available to everybody else, and they just refused to either look at it or implement it. It’s like frickin’ Condoleezza Rice. Since I saw this coming and since I also had knowledge of things like the Internet and what the possibilities were, I could do some preemptive preparation for what has now has come to pass in the music industry which is predictions of imminent collapse. I don’t see it as a bad thing. It’s probably, partly, because the Internet exists, but might have happened anyway. I think even before the Internet, people started to think that music isn’t the principal, cultural mean anymore. It was in the ‘60s and ‘70s when we were growing up and it specifically represented the counter culture and you versus the old guard, and stuff like that. Then it just became too commonplace, too eager to please sometimes. Certainly too big in the sense that all of what used to be hundreds of independent labels and a few majors all conglomerated into five and now I believe four giant companies that have all kinds of holdings not related to music. In some cases, they’re completely conflicted, like Sony. Sony makes Mp3 players and they make records that get ripped off and put into Mp3 players. [slight chuckle] And they have to make decisions about which one they want to fight for and for them, they’re making far more money on the Mp3 players than they are on the music. For musicians, the whole idea at this point is: First of all, remind yourself what it is you’re supposed to be doing, and that is performing music. That’s why you call yourself a musician. If you want to be a pop star, be a pop star. We have plenty of those. [laughter] But if you want to be a musician… it’s like a baker bakes, a bricklayer lays bricks and a musician plays music. And too many musicians have it in their head they’re trying to hit some kind of goldmine with a record and then go home and collect royalty checks. The greatest musicians are still out there playing like B.B. King 300 days a year. That’s what defines him. Not any particular record that he’s made. And that’s what should basically define any musician, is their ability to just get up and do it. As long as you can do that, you’ll make a living just like every other working stiff. What makes musicians think they’re so special that they should get money for not working? Yeah, it can be hard sometimes. Yeah sometimes you have to go to work sick or when you don’t feel like it, just like everybody else does. But it is, as much as it’s a glamorous lifestyle, it is your job. And so regardless of what happens in the record industry, you got to be like Phish, you know? [laughter] Make your own records and leave them on the merchandising table.
Why do you think some of your more experimental album work – particularly that with Utopia – has been overlooked by younger fans of today’s jamband scene?

I don’t necessarily worry about the time frame of music because I know I’ve discovered a lot of music well after the fact. Maybe it didn’t do the artist the good they would have wanted at the time by me rushing out and buying the record when it was just released but I’ve come to realize, I’ve probably had this realization for a long time. From the musician’s side, once you’ve made this thing, you’re living with it for the rest of your life. People still ask me about the early records, still go back and listen to Nazz records and stuff [laughter] and ask me questions about them. In many cases, the records have an impact on them that’s lost on me because of all the intervening time. I don’t think really good music has a time frame. The thing that does a have time frame is let’s say the audience’s ability to absorb something new. And that’s just a natural human tendency to try and get things in a routine and just stick there and no big surprises, that kind of thing. [chuckle] I figure as long as you got it down there, as long as you got it preserved, it’s there for somebody to find whenever they find it. The whole idea of music is repercussions of influences. You have an influence on someone else just like you were influenced. There’s a whole chain reaction of influence going on there. Very few musicians are actually totally original. They’re just complex combinations of influences.

Are there any musicians that you think of as totally original?

Well, as I say being a musician from the inside, I realize how hard it is to be truly original. Because first of all, to claim such a thing, is also to claim that you never really listened to anyone else’s music ever, therefore you weren’t influenced by it. But the other thing is, for the music to make it into the public ear, there are certain rules and limitations already. For instance, in the west, we have a twelve tone scale. And so if you start doing micro tonal music, a lot of people are going to say, “aren’t you playing out of tune?” [laughter] Whereas there are other parts of the world that, for instance in Thailand or Bali where they have scales that are tempered completely different. So an octave isn’t even actually an octave, [laugh] it’s just an octave in some sense. As you go up the scale, things get sharper, sharper and sharper. And say there’s some Tahitian singing style which is all vocal, all a capella with large choruses but they somehow manage in concert to create the effect as if you were slowing the record down. They do it live. They all, in complete harmony, just do this portamento thing down to a lower note and you look at the record player like it’s broke. There’s all kinds of way of doing music that sound original, that may even be traditional, they’re outside you’re cultural sphere. As musicians, we always work under limitations of our culture and the influences we experience within it.
You produced The Band’s Stage Fright album ¹⁹⁷⁰ alongside engineer Glyn Johns. As the story goes, the original album mix had seven of yours cuts and three of his, though it’s been claimed that they used all of Johns’ mixes which is what the credits read. It was re-released in 1994 and featured the “alternate mix” of the album and drastically changed what all the songs sounded like. Many believe they are all your tracks and think they are considerably better than the original and much more in tune with their previous albums and feel. Can you lend some clarity to the situation?

Well there is a lot of confusion there. As a matter of fact, no one gets producer credits on The Band’s albums because no one is actually the titular producer. They were, in my experience, done in a completely democratic manner involving, first, all the members of The Band themselves and whoever else was participating might also make a contribution. But in that sense, there was no singular person that guided the process; it was more or less done by consensus. That’s an interesting process. It resulted in a third set, well I’m having trouble keeping track of them. Here’s what actually happened.

They had made an agreement with Glyn Johns to have him mix the album. Since I had recorded the whole album, they figured I should have a shot at mixing the album as well. So they sent me, with the tapes, to London and put me in one studio and I would mix. I gave half the reels to Glyn and he was mixing half the reels while I was mixing the other half of the reels and then we swapped reels and completed our mixes. Then I came back with two versions of the record. As it turned out, they weren’t completely happy with either one so we went into the studio and did a whole other series of remixes while The Band was there. So those were essentially The Band’s own remixes.
With you and Glyn both there?

No, no. Just me. Glyn Johns was too busy to leave England. So we went back to Bearsville Studios and essentially went through a very long, torturous remix process again because it was five guys. We spent all day mixing a tune and then they would take the references back and come back the next with all new ideas or sometimes start the mix all over again. So it took a terrifically long time because you had to satisfy five guys. So in the end, I have no idea actually which ones went on the original record or which ones might be on the reissue of the record [laughter] because in the end they made decisions about which ones would go one. I’m pretty sure that on the original release, it was a combination of the three. That they’re might have been one or two mixes I did, a couple that Glyn Johns did, but also many that we done in the third mix session with The Band all there. So the album that was re-released, I haven’t gone back and listened to it. I probably couldn’t tell you anyway which one was which. I felt a little uncomfortable in my own mixing situation because I was sent into a strange place with speakers I had never worked with before and so I was just kind of trying to make my way through it and hoped that I was getting it right. Just kind of following my instincts.

Fans and my boss want to know: will there ever be a Utopia reunion?

We can say, with absolute certitude, that there never will. [laughter] I know this is disappointing news to some people but they should stop dreaming about it because it ain’t going to happen. [more laughter]

You seem to have always done what you’ve wanted- no kowtowing to record companies or soul-less moves for popularity and yet you’ve been the star and the underground favorite. Is there anything that’s eluded you as an artist though?

No. I think people often think that our career is the most important thing in your life. And though it is a hugely important thing in my life, I had other goals for as long as I can remember and one of them I knew was to have a family. The fact that I’ve survived that [big laugh], to me, is the greatest achievement for me. The fact that I’ve had fairly, substantially happy family life and had the kids I wanted to have and watched them grow up. As pedestrian as that sounds, you have to cover the basics in life. That’s what life is about. You have to try and do a good job on the same things that everyone else has to do, like having kids and raising a family, before you can start bragging about your other accomplishments.

If you could see one person get hit in the nuts with a hockey puck, who would it be?

[laughter] There’s so many to choose from. I’m trying to think of the biggest jerk. Bill O’Reilly is certainly a big jerk every time I accidentally stop on Fox News. [big laugh] Runaway, runaway. Who most deserves it? I have to say I don’t have a lot of personal grudges in my life. The person who probably screwed me the worst was Albert Grossman and he died. [laughter]. So I could zing a hockey puck off his grave perhaps, but I would have a tough time finding his nuts at this point. [laughter]