had trouble with this. A lot of fans had a
tough time with the State album, and that
has happened in the past, but you always
seem to come back with something that is
enduring for the older fans, as you did
with Nearly Human. There are a lot of
elements of that on this record – “Flesh
and Blood,” is a classic Todd Rundgren
ballad with a very contemporary soundtrack; and “Ev-rybody” could be called a
sequel to “Bang On The Drum All Day…”
Todd Rundgren: Yes, it is sort of a sequel to
that song! The point is nobody can be
everything to everybody. It’s impossible. If
I settle down to do one particular thing I
might satisfy one element of my audience,
but not necessarily everybody. There are
people out there who wait for the more
experimental records. (Laughs.) It is not
as if they don’t like it if I do something that
is successful, but the exciting part is what
is going to happen. I don’t know what is
going to happen, and they may or may not
like it. It is the same way with a filmmaker, whose work you follow. Every human
being at one time or another is going to
feel the need to work outside of their comfort zone. And sometimes that results in a
less than successful effect. I don’t feel I
have an obligation to consider exactly how
everything is going to land. After I have
done it, I feel a greater obligation not to
patronize my audience, and to think that
they don’t have the capacity to understand
or absorb something that they are not
familiar with.
IE: “Earth Mother” on the new album has
a decidedly Gospel feel to it. It could have
been a song on one of the older Rundgren
albums like Nearly Human, or even
Utopia’s Oops Wrong Planet. As a songwriter, you seem to have a sun in your universe that feeds life to a lot of your music,
does that make sense to you?
Todd Rundgren: Yeah, I understand that. I
always envisioned this album as having
that R&B element to it. That touchstone
04•2015
kind of thing that I essentially grew up
with. It’s that thing that a lot of people
think is characteristic of “blue eyed soul,”
that myself and Daryl Hall kind of grew
up in the same neighborhood and listened
to the same kind of music when we were
younger. And now, that characterizes a lot
of the ways we hear things in terms of
songwriting. So, yes, I do have things that
I will return to and it’s never clear why I
do this or when it is necessary. On the
other hand I have written many other
things that have nothing to do with this,
and were based on my musical theater
influences; Gilbert & Sullivan and that sort
of thing. My roots are not singularly in
R&B but it is one of things that I tend to go
back to.
IE: Is that because you grew up in
Philadelphia?
Todd Rundgren In large part, yes, we had
the sort of radio that was more liberal than
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10 illinoisentertainer.com april 2015
April 7
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