‘Todd’
A Wizard A True Star
My musical interests are wide and varied - from Bach to Wourinen, from the Monkees to Infected Mushroom, from David Grisman to Cecil Taylor and much, much more. Pretty much if the music is heart-felt and done well, I'm a fan.
That being said, there are are few stand-outs in my ‘big bag of musical influences’. One in particular is Mr. Todd Rundgren.
I was first introduced to Todd by my friend and musical colleague, Mike Mancini. Mike's one of the few folk that I know that actually makes money as a musician. He's played with Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny and more. He's made a respectable living arranging and recording music for corporate events. All in all, he is and incredibly talented and motivated musician.
One day in 1973, I was at Mike's parent’s house rehearsing in his living room for some High School gig and during a break Mike said "hey, I think you might like this..." He brought out a double album by Todd Rundgren titled 'Something Anything'. He pulled out one of the LP's, plunked it down on his parent's console turntable and played "Breathless" an instrumental. Mike pointed out some of the cool production effects, in particular a vocoder which encoded speech patterns onto musical tones (if you listen carefully, there are instances of Todd saying "I'm so breathless" via a synthesizer in the left channel.) But, and this is a BIG BUT - Mike also told me that Todd played all of the instruments on the first three sides of the album! This notion lit a spark in my mind that continues to inspire me to this day; so much so that my album "The League Of Instrument Owners" is written/produced/played/programmed completely by yours truly - sound familiar?
Needless to say, I bought the album and listened to it while reading the copious liner notes. Not only did I love the hits - 'Hello It's Me', 'I Saw The Light' and 'Dust In The Wind', but each and every tune had it's own distinctive charm - 'Wolfman Jack', 'Cold Morning Light', 'It Takes Two To Tango' - ALL of the tracks were keepers!
This made me a total Todd convert - I bought his follow-up albums - 'A Wizard A True Star', 'Todd' and the ear-opening 'Todd Rundgren’s Utopia” . I saw him in concert multiple times. One that sticks with me in particular was when I saw him at Wolman's Skating Rink on his birthday in 1974. At that show Todd played 'I Saw The Light' on solo piano, featuring Hall and Oates singing the harmony guitar solo; he invited all of us to his apartment to celebrate his birthday and lastly debuted 'The Ikon' as an encore - for those of you who don't know this 'song,' its a thirty minute, multi-sectioned tour-de-force of progressive wonderfulness.
After 'Todd Rundgren's Utopia' I began to loose interest to a certain extent. I was not particularly enamored of the newer iteration of 'Utopia' - the Kasim Sultan, John Wilcox, Roger Powell line up. That being said, there were solo albums that caught my interest and through the years I have remained a fan. He is one of my all time musical heroes - he continues to push the envelope of musical creativity - he is by any definition of the phrase, a 'wizard a true star'.
