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Todd Rundgren
Rundgren in 2009
Background information
Birth name	Todd Harry Rundgren
Born	(1948-06-22) June 22, 1948 (age 70) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Genres	Pop rock progressive electronic R&B psychedelia
Occupation(s)	Musician singer songwriter record producer sound engineer video producer multimedia artist
Instruments	Vocals guitar bass keyboards drums
Years active	1966–present
Labels	Ampex Bearsville Warner Bros. Cleopatra
Associated acts	Nazz The New Cars Runt Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band Utopia Woody's Truck Stop

Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Utopia. He is characterized for his sophisticated and often-unorthodox music, flamboyant stage outfits, and his later experiments with interactive entertainment. He also produced innovative music videos, pioneered forms of multimedia, and was an early adopter and promoter of various computer technologies, such as using the Internet as a means of music distribution in the late 1990s.^[1]

A native of Philadelphia, Rundgren began his professional career in the mid 1960s, forming the psychedelic band Nazz in 1967. Two years later, he left Nazz to pursue a solo career and immediately scored his first US top 40 hit with "We Gotta Get You a Woman" (1970). His best-known songs include "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light" from Something/Anything? (1972), which have heavy rotation on classic rock radio stations, and the 1983 single "Bang the Drum All Day", which is featured in many sports arenas, commercials and movie trailers. Although lesser known, "Couldn't I Just Tell You" (1972) was influential to many artists in the power pop genre.^[2] His 1973 album A Wizard, a True Star remains an influence on later generations of "bedroom" musicians.^[3]

Rundgren organized the first interactive television concert in 1978, designed the first color graphics tablet in 1980, and created the first interactive album, No World Order, in 1994.^[1] Additionally, he was one of the first acts to be prominent both as an artist and as a producer.^[3] His notable production credits include Badfinger's Straight Up (1971), Grand Funk Railroad's We're an American Band (1973), the New York Dolls' New York Dolls (1973), Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell (1977) and XTC's Skylarking (1986).

Early life

Todd Harry Rundgren was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania^[4][1] the son of Ruth (née Fleck; April 29, 1922 – April 6, 2016) and Harry W. Rundgren (1917–1996). He grew up in Upper Darby, a town that borders Philadelphia.^[5]

Career

1966–1969: Nazz

Aftering graduating from Upper Darby High School in 1966, Rundgren moved to Philadelphia and began his career in Woody's Truck Stop, a blues rock group in the style of Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He and bassist Carson Van Osten left before the band released its eponymous first album^[6] to form the garage rock group Nazz in 1967 with Thom Mooney (drums) and Robert "Stewkey" Antoni (vocals and keyboards). The group gained minor recognition with the Rundgren-penned songs "Open My Eyes" and "Hello It's Me".^[7]

Nazz released three albums during this time – Nazz (1968), Nazz Nazz (1969), and Nazz III (1971).^[7] "Open My Eyes" gained belated recognition thanks to its inclusion in Nuggets (1972), the genre-defining anthology of American 1960s garage punk and psychedelia compiled by musician Lenny Kaye. The group's second LP was originally intended as double album (titled Fungo Bat), but instead a truncated version was released as Nazz Nazz in April 1969. Rundgren and Van Osten left the band shortly after. Under Stewkey's leadership the band continued (with new members) until 1970, and their label released a third LP Nazz III, on which most of Rundgren's vocals on the unreleased songs from the Fungo Bat sessions were replaced by Stewkey's.

Rundgren's distinctive style was inspired by a wide variety of musical influences—British pop-rock & baroque pop (notably Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Who, The Yardbirds, Cream and The Move), the intricate vocal harmonies of The Beach Boys, classic American rock and roll, Broadway musicals, the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan and American soul and R&B, but as his music evolved he demonstrated an increasing interest in other genres as well, such as hard rock.

Particularly during the early years of his career, Rundgren's songwriting was heavily influenced by the music of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro:

"I knew her fairly well. I met her right after Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. I actually had arranged a meeting, just because I was so infatuated with her and I wanted to meet the person who had produced all this music. We got along, and we were kind of friendly, and actually, after I met her the first time, she asked me if I wanted to be her band leader. But the Nazz had just signed a record contract and I couldn't skip out on the band, even though it was incredibly tempting."^[8]

Rundgren's debut solo album Runt (1970) includes the strongly Nyro-influenced "Baby Let's Swing", which was written about her and mentions her by name.

Nazz manager Michael Friedman, who had joined Albert Grossman management brought Rundgren to the firm where he became both a solo artist and producer for many artists in the Grossman stable.

1970–1982: Bearsville era

Production work and Runt

Rundgren's unhappiness with the production on the Nazz recordings prompted him to educate himself in audio engineering and production, and after leaving the Nazz in 1969, he relocated to New York, signed with Albert Grossman and began working as a producer for other groups, as well as recording his own material, which was initially released through the Ampex Records label (a short-lived joint venture between Grossman and the Ampex company). He also apparently considered working as a computer programmer.^[9] Subsequently, he became one of the first artists signed to Grossman's Bearsville Records label (distributed through Warner Bros. Records).

After signing with Bearsville, Rundgren worked almost constantly on production projects through the early 1970s. His first project for Bearsville was a Philadelphia band called The American Dream, followed by a trip to Nashville to produce Ian and Sylvia Tyson's group Great Speckled Bird, with a backing band featuring guitarist Amos Garrett, pedal steel player Buddy Cage, pianist David Briggs and bassist Norbert Putnam and drummer N. D. Smart, with whom Rundgren worked on several later projects. During this period, Rundgren also made an abortive attempt to record with Janis Joplin and her band for Joplin's next studio album, but the sessions came to nothing and the project was eventually taken over by Paul A. Rothchild; the result was Joplin's final LP Pearl, which Rothchild pieced together from the incomplete session tapes, following the singer's death from a heroin overdose.

Grossman recommended Rundgren to Robbie Robertson of The Band as the engineer for an album Robertson was producing, by singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester, who was at the time living in exile in Canada to avoid the draft. This was followed by a live album for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Having impressed Robertson with his work on the Winchester LP, Rundgren was then asked to engineer The Band's third album, Stage Fright, which was recorded in a series of sessions at the Woodstock Playhouse. One of these was attended by New York writer Patti Smith, and their chance meeting led to an enduring friendship. Smith wrote several strongly positive reviews of Rundgren's early solo work in the rock press, and in 1979 Rundgren produced the final Patti Smith Group album Wave.

His work for The Band was followed by a second album for Winchester (which was then shelved for two years) and the album Taking Care of Business by the James Cotton Blues Band. This project resulted in Rundgren meeting Cotton's keyboard player Mark "Moogy" Klingman, who in turn introduced Rundgren to keyboard player Ralph Schuckett, both of whom worked extensively with Rundgren over the next few years.^[10]

Although he had originally intended to concentrate on production rather than his own music, in 1970 Todd formed the 'band' Runt, consisting of himself, teenagers Hunt Sales on drums, and his brother Tony Sales on bass (the Sales brothers, sons of US comedian Soupy Sales, were in a short-lived band called Tony and the Tigers and went on to play with Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Tin Machine). Rundgren himself wrote, produced, sang and played guitars, keyboards and other instruments. Whether Runt is best described as a band or simply as a pseudonym for Rundgren as a solo artist is unclear—for the album Runt (1970) the group appeared to be a bona fide trio, but on their second album Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971), Hunt Sales plays only on two tracks and is replaced by N. D. Smart on the rest of the album. Furthermore, only Rundgren is pictured on the covers of both albums, and both albums have been subsequently reissued with the same titles and cover art, but bearing the artist credit "Todd Rundgren". Whether a solo project or a band, Runt had a No. 20 hit in the United States with "We Gotta Get You a Woman" in 1970, and two other Runt songs placed in the lower reaches of the Hot 100.

By this time, Rundgren had effectively moved his base to Los Angeles. As he prepared for his second solo album, he was introduced to aspiring L.A. band Halfnelson, led by brothers Ron Mael and Russell Mael and guitarist Earle Mankey. After attending an elaborate, self-staged 'showcase' performance by the group at their L.A. rehearsal space, Rundgren became intrigued by their music and agreed to produce their debut album, originally released as Halfnelson and later retitled Sparks. The brothers later credited Rundgren as being instrumental in launching their career and in 2010 Russell Mael commented that when reviewing the album in 2008 they were still "... really happy with the way it sounded. There's nothing there that really sounds 'of an era' because it didn't exactly sound 'of an era' at the time."^[11]

Something/Anything?

By 1972, the Runt persona/band identity had been abandoned, and Rundgren's next project, the ambitious double LP Something/Anything? (1972) was credited simply to Rundgren, who wrote, played, sang, engineered, and produced everything on three of the four sides of the album. Something/Anything? featured the Top 20 U.S. hits "I Saw the Light" (#16; not to be confused with the Hank Williams song of the same name), and a remake of the Nazz near-hit "Hello It's Me", which reached No. 5 in the United States and is Rundgren's biggest hit. The former song featured Rundgren on all vocals and instruments. On his ensuing concert tour, his backing band was the Hello People, whose own album he later produced.

The Something/Anything? period marked a significant change in Rundgren's lifestyle. Up until that time he neither drank nor took any drugs:

"I was a complete teetotaller. I didn't take any kind of drugs or drink or anything. In fact, I had found the behavior of my peers, while they were high, to be somewhat questionable."^[12]

However, he began to change his views after a visit to Philadelphia to see Randy Reed, his closest friend from his school days. Reed introduced Todd to cannabis, and he credited this with having a big effect on his songwriting for his second solo album, The Ballad of Todd Rundgren. In the lead-up to his third album, Something/Anything?, he was experimenting with various mind-altering substances including cannabis, and a range of psychedelics including DMT, psilocybin mushrooms, and peyote – although he says he never (to his knowledge) took LSD. During the recording of Something/Anything?, he began using the stimulant Ritalin and he later said that it had a marked effect both on the style of his music and on his productivity:

"It (Ritalin) caused me to crank out songs at an incredible pace. 'I Saw the Light' took me all of 20 minutes. You can see why, too, the rhymes are just moon/June/spoon kind of stuff..."^[13]

A Wizard, a True Star, Todd, and Utopia

Shortly after he had completed work on Something/Anything?, Los Angeles was struck by a strong earthquake, and Rundgren was sufficiently unnerved by this to move back to New York. His return east led to a long and fruitful working relationship with Moogy Klingman and the pair collaborated extensively over the next few years. They built a recording facility in Manhattan which they dubbed Secret Sound Studios, and a large proportion of Rundgren's solo and production work was done there, until his relocation to Woodstock, New York in the mid-1970s. Rundgren commented:

"With drugs I could suddenly abstract my thought processes in a certain way, and I wanted to see if I could put them on a record. A lot of people recognized it as the dynamics of a psychedelic trip—it was almost like painting with your head."^[13]

A Wizard, a True Star (1973), which was sequenced as a continuous medley, featured a wildly eclectic range of songs set in dazzling arrangements and production, with Rundgren experimenting with the synthesizer and exploiting virtually every studio effect and technique then available. Backing musicians included renowned horn players Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker, guitarist Rick Derringer and several other musicians, who subsequently joined the original incarnation of Utopia. Although it featured predominantly original material (including the anthemic "Just One Victory", which became a concert favorite), the album set a pattern followed on subsequent solo albums, with Rundgren recording cover versions of his favorite songs – in this case, "Never Never Land", from the Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, and a medley of soul classics, including a unique version of the Capitols' "Cool Jerk" played in the 7/8 time signature. The album was also notable for its extended running time – over 55 minutes in length, compared to around 40–45 minutes for a typical pop-rock LP of the period. This reflected Rundgren's skills as a mastering engineer, since this extended running time took the album close to the practical maximum for an LP. Due to the inherent physical limitations of the vinyl LP medium, on records with running times over 45 minutes there is an unfavorable trade-off between duration and the audio quality and volume. On the album cover, packed with his handwritten notes, he advised listeners to crank up their Victrolas accordingly.

Rundgren playing in concert during his early years

Rundgren's back-up band for A Wizard, a True Star evolved into the first version of Utopia, a larger prog-rock ensemble, which included multiple keyboards, synthesizers and brass and featured a character completely disguised in a silver suit, "M. Frog Labat" (Jean-Yves Labat de Rossi) on synthesizers, who also put out his own electronics/keyboards-based solo album. This incarnation premiered on Todd Rundgren's Utopia (1974), which was book-ended by the 14-minute "Utopia Theme" (recorded live in concert) and the 30-minute suite "The Ikon", which occupied the whole of Side 2 of the album. Like Wizard, the album also showcased Rundgren's skills as a recording and mastering engineer, clocking in at over 30 minutes per side.

If I get that one minute of total illumination then I don't care if my whole career goes down the drain. I'd know there was an answer to everything—to existence, to death.

— NME—September 1974^[14]

Todd (1974) continued in the vein of Wizard and featured similarly diverse material. Alongside originals such as "A Dream Goes on Forever" and "Heavy Metal Kids", both of which became concert staples, Rundgren also satirized his chosen profession with the song "An Elpees' Worth of Tunes" and revisited his teenage obsession with the music of Gilbert & Sullivan in a rendition of "The Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song" (from Iolanthe).

Initiation, Faithful, and Hermit of Mink Hollow

In contrast to Todd, Rundgren's work with Utopia and his next solo album took him decisively into progressive rock. Initiation (1975) addressed cosmic themes, showed a strong interest in spirituality (particularly Far Eastern religion and philosophy), and displayed the musical influence of psychedelic rock, as well as the avant-garde jazz fusion of contemporary acts such as the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Frank Zappa. Once again the original LP issue saw Rundgren pushing the medium to its physical limits, with the side-long suite "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire" clocking in at over 35 minutes.

The 1976 album Faithful saw Rundgren marking his tenth year as a professional musician by return to the pop/rock genre, featuring one side of original songs and one side of covers of significant songs from 1966, including The Yardbirds' "Happening Ten Years Time Ago" (the B-side of that Yardbirds single gave Nazz its name) and a nearly identical recreation of The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations".

In the latter half of the 1970s, Rundgren moved to Woodstock, New York, where Bearsville Records established a studio under Rundgren's direction. He bought a home nearby and a property adjoining the studio was taken over as accommodation for artists who used the studio. The Woodstock complex became Rundgren's base until his eventual relocation to the Hawaiian island of Kauai in the 1990s. That move was in part prompted by a violent home invasion at Woodstock in the late 1970s, in which Rundgren and girlfriend (who was pregnant at the time) were tied up while the house was ransacked by a group of armed men. According to Rundgren's account, the men appeared to believe that he possessed a large quantity of cocaine (which he never used); although the family was unharmed, the men stole some valuable items including a custom-made Alembic bass guitar. Todd recovered it years later after Alembic staff spotted it for sale on eBay and it was returned to him, but was by then so badly damaged that it could not be restored.

Utopia, touring to support the Ra album at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia; 1977, L to R: Roger Powell, Rundgren, Kasim Sulton

When touring, Rundgren presented the music in a lavish stage setting that echoed the ambitious space-themed shows of acts like Parliament/Funkadelic and he adopted an outlandish space-rock image on stage, including multi-colored dyed hair.

After the prog-rock fusion homage, Ra (1977), Utopia moved toward a more concise pop-oriented style with Oops! Wrong Planet (1977), which included "Love Is the Answer", later a hit for England Dan & John Ford Coley, followed by the more successful Adventures in Utopia in 1980, which spawned the hits "Road to Utopia", "Set Me Free" and "Caravan". During that year, Utopia also acted as the backing band for the Rundgren-produced Shaun Cassidy solo album Wasp. Rundgren disbanded Utopia in the mid 1980s.

Faithful was followed by Hermit of Mink Hollow (1978); this included the hit ballad "Can We Still Be Friends" (covered a year later by Robert Palmer), which reached No. 29 in the United States (Palmer's version reached No. 52) and was accompanied by an innovative self-produced music video, and the album became the second most successful of his career (after Something/Anything?), reaching No. 36 in the United States. During 1978, Rundgren undertook an American tour playing at smaller venues including The Bottom Line in New York and The Roxy in Los Angeles; this resulted in the double live album Back to the Bars, which featured a mixture of material from his solo work and Utopia, performed with backing musicians including Utopia, Edgar Winter, Spencer Davis, Daryl Hall and John Oates and Stevie Nicks.

During 1977 and 1978, Rundgren attempted to tour with a true quadraphonic sound system, however it proved ultimately unworkable – despite successfully delivering high-quality sound in a concert setting – due to the enormous technical requirements involved. Since most concert arenas of the day were ill-equipped to host large towers of sound equipment in the rear of the halls, the speakers often had to be hung from the ceiling rigging. This installation could take up to two days to complete, meaning that it was necessary to send two separate sound systems, each with its own, complete set-up crew, out on the road, so that they could "leapfrog" and allow Rundgren to play dates on consecutive days, which would have otherwise been impossible. The system featured a then-new technology called "signal analysis", which required white and pink noise to be pumped through the speakers, in order to set the active equalizers so as to minimize feedback and distortion. The pink and white noise analysis had to be performed twice: once with the hall empty, and then again with the audience present, which many concertgoers found annoying. Additionally, Rundgren's insistence on personally overseeing the acoustic set-up of the system left him exhausted and unable to continue, and he pulled the plug on the experiment.

During the mid-to-late 1970s, Rundgren regularly played the eye-catching psychedelic Gibson SG (known variously as "Sunny" or "The Fool"), which Eric Clapton had played in Cream. After he had stopped using it ca. 1968, Clapton gave the guitar to George Harrison, who subsequently 'loaned' it to British singer Jackie Lomax. In 1972, after meeting at a recording session, Lomax sold the guitar to Rundgren for $500 with an option to buy it back, which he never took up.^[15] Rundgren played it extensively during the early years of Utopia before retiring the instrument for a short time in the mid to late 1970s, which in that time he had the guitar restored having a lacquer finish applied to protect the paint and replaced the talpiece and bridge to stabilize tuning, bringing the guitar back out on tour during the 1980 Deface the Music tour and using it on and off throughout the 1980s until 1993 when he permanently retired the guitar, eventually auctioning it off in 1999; he now uses a reproduction given to him in 1988 by a Japanese fan.^[16]

Healing and Tortured Artist Effect

1981 saw the album-long concept work Healing (1981). His music video for the song "Time Heals" was among the first videos aired on MTV, and a video he produced for RCA, accompanied by Gustav Holst's The Planets, was used as a demo for their videodisc players. His experience with computer graphics dates back to 1981, when he developed one of the first computer paint programs, dubbed the Utopia Graphics System; it ran on an Apple II with Apple's digitizer tablet.^[17] He is also the co-developer of the computer screensaver system Flowfazer.

The new wave-tinged The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect (1982), included a cover of The Small Faces' hit "Tin Soldier". "Bang the Drum All Day", from The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect was a minor chart hit, which has become more prominent in subsequent years, having been adopted as an unofficial theme by several professional sports franchises, notably the Green Bay Packers, and becoming popular on radio, where it was often featured on Friday afternoons. "Bang..." was also used prominently in a Carnival Cruise television advertising campaign. It is now considered one of Rundgren's most popular songs.^[18]Tortured Artist marked the end of Rundgren's tenure with Bearsville Records.

1980s–1990s: A Cappella, Nearly Human, and 2nd Wind

Rundgren signed with Warner Bros. Records, who issued his next album, A Cappella (1985), which was recorded using Rundgren's multi-tracked voice, accompanied by arrangements constructed entirely from programmed vocal samples. In 1986, Rundgren scored four episodes of the popular children's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Nearly Human (1989) and 2nd Wind (1991) were both recorded live—the former in the studio, the latter in a theater before a live audience, who were instructed to remain silent. Each song on these albums was recorded as a complete single take with no later overdubbing. Both albums marked, in part, a return to his Philly soul roots. 2nd Wind also included several excerpts from Rundgren's musical Up Against It, which was adapted from the screenplay (originally titled "Prick Up Your Ears"), that British playwright Joe Orton had originally offered to the Beatles for their never-made follow-up to Help!. 2nd Wind was Rundgren's last release through a major label and all his subsequent recordings have been self-released.

Rundgren was an early adopter of the NewTek Video Toaster and made several videos with it. The first, for "Change Myself" from 2nd Wind, was widely distributed as a demo reel for the Toaster. Later, he set up a company to produce 3D animation using the Toaster; this company's first demo, "Theology" (a look at religious architecture through the ages featuring music by former Utopia bandmate Roger Powell) also became a widely circulated item among Toaster users. Most of Rundgren's Toaster work is available on the video compilation The Desktop Collection.

After a long absence from touring, Rundgren hit the road with Nearly Human—2nd Wind band, which included brass and a trio of slinky backup singers (one of whom, Michele Gray, Rundgren married). He also toured during this period with Ringo Starr's All-Starr band.

In 1992, a brief tour of Japan reunited the Rundgren/Powell/Sulton/Wilcox lineup, and Redux '92: Live in Japan was released on Rhino Records.

1990s–2000s: Interactive albums and PatroNet

The mid 1990s saw Rundgren recording under the pseudonym TR-i ("Todd Rundgren interactive") for two albums. The first of these, 1993's No World Order, consisted of hundreds of seconds-long snippets of music, that could be combined in various ways to suit the listener. Initially targeted for the Philips CD-i platform, No World Order featured interactive controls for tempo, mood, and other parameters, along with pre-programmed mixes by Rundgren himself, Bob Clearmountain, Don Was and Jerry Harrison. The disc was also released for PC and Macintosh and in two versions on standard audio CD, the continuous mix disc No World Order and, later, the more song-oriented No World Order Lite. The music itself was quite a departure from Rundgren's previous work, with a dance/techno feel and much rapping by Rundgren. The follow-up, The Individualist (1995), featured interactive video content, that could be viewed or in one case, played; it was a simple video game along with the music, which was more rock-oriented than No World Order.

Rundgren returned to recording under his own name for With a Twist... (1997), an album of bossa-nova covers of his older material. His Patronet work, which trickled out to subscribers over more than a year, was released in 2000 as One Long Year. In 2004, Rundgren released Liars, a concept album about "paucity of truth", that features a mixture of his older and newer sounds.

As the Internet gained mass acceptance, Rundgren, along with longtime manager Eric Gardner and Apple digital music exec Kelli Richards, started Patronet, which offered fans (patrons) access to his works-in-progress and new unreleased tracks in exchange for a subscription fee, cutting out record labels. The songs from Rundgren's first Patronet run were later released as the album One Long Year. Since then, Rundgren has severed his connections with major record labels and continues to offer new music direct to subscribers via his website, although he also continues to record and release CDs through independent labels. (However, as of November 2007, the PatroNet.com website offers the following message: "PatroNet is undergoing a major software revision and is not accepting memberships at this time.")

In the summer of 2001, Rundgren joined artists such as Alan Parsons, the Who's John Entwistle, Heart's Ann Wilson and Ambrosia's David Pack for the tour "A Walk Down Abbey Road", in which the musicians played their own hits alongside Beatles favorites. They also did a short tour of Japan in the winter of 2001, and another the following year, which included Jack Bruce of Cream, Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, Christopher Cross and Eric Carmen.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks Rundgren created the score for the film A Face to a Name, directed by Douglas Sloan. The film depicted the many photographs of NY's missing, that were displayed on Bellevue Hospital's 'wall of prayers' following the attacks. The film was part of a special screening at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2002.^[19]

Rundgren toured the United States and Europe in 2004 with Joe Jackson and the string quartet Ethel, appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien performing their collaborative cover of the Beatles song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".^[20]

Rundgren, with Tony Levin in Toronto, September 4, 2006.

In late 2005, the Boston-based band The Cars were planning to re-form despite bassist Benjamin Orr's death and lack of interest on the part of former lead singer Ric Ocasek. Rumors followed that Rundgren had joined Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes in rehearsals for a possible new Cars lineup. Initial speculation pointed to The New Cars being fleshed out with Clem Burke of Blondie and Art Alexakis of Everclear. Eventually the group completed their lineup with former Rundgren bassist Kasim Sulton and studio drummer Prairie Prince of The Tubes, who had played on XTC's Rundgren-produced Skylarking and who has recorded and toured with Rundgren.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}

In early 2006, the new lineup played a few private shows for industry professionals, played live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and made other media appearances before commencing a 2006 summer tour with the re-formed Blondie. Rundgren referred to the project as "an opportunity ... for me to pay my bills, play to a larger audience, work with musicians I know and like, and ideally have some fun for a year."^[21] The New Cars' first single, "Not Tonight", was released on March 20, 2006. A live album/greatest hits collection, The New Cars: It's Alive, was released in June 2006. The album includes classic Cars songs (and two Rundgren hits) recorded live plus three new studio tracks ("Not Tonight", "Warm" and "More").

2010s

April 2011 saw the release of Todd Rundgren's Johnson, a collection of Robert Johnson covers, which had been recorded more than a year earlier. On another 2011 release, scheduled for September 13, a further album of covers entitled (re)Production sees him performing tracks he had previously produced for other acts, including Grand Funk Railroad's "Walk Like a Man" and XTC's "Dear God".

In May 2017, Rundgren released White Knight, which features collaborations with Trent Reznor, Robyn, Daryl Hall, Joe Walsh and Donald Fagen, among others. That same month, he was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from Berklee College of Music and DePauw University in the midst of a tour in support of the new album. In 2018, Rundgren performed vocals on an album, Go to School by The Lemon Twigs, released on August 24 on 4AD. The album is a musical and Rundgren plays the part of the adoptive father of a monkey called Shane, the main character.^[22]

Personal life

In 1972, Rundgren began a relationship with model Bebe Buell. During a break in their relationship, Buell had a brief relationship with Steven Tyler, which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. On July 1, 1977, Buell gave birth to Liv Tyler, the future model and actress. To protect the child from Tyler's drug addiction, Buell initially claimed that Todd Rundgren was the biological father and named the child Liv Rundgren. Shortly after Liv's birth, Rundgren and Buell ended their romantic relationship, but Rundgren remained committed to Liv. At age eight, Liv learned that the identity of her biological father was Steven Tyler.^{[23][24][25][text–source integrity?]} According to Liv Tyler "...Todd basically decided when I was born that I needed a father so he signed my birth certificate. He knew that there was a chance that I might not be his, but…" He paid to put her through private school, and she visited him several times a year.^[26] As of 2012, Tyler maintains a close relationship with Rundgren. "I'm so grateful to him, I have so much love for him. You know, when he holds me it feels like Daddy. And he's very protective and strong."^[26]

Rundgren had a long-term relationship with Karen Darvin, with whom he had two sons, Rex (born 1980) and Randy (born 1985). Rex was a minor league baseball player (infielder) for nine seasons.^[27]

In 1998, Rundgren married Michele Gray. Gray had been a dancer with The Tubes and had performed with Rundgren as a backup singer on the tour for his album Nearly Human which led to a number of appearances on the David Letterman Show as one of The World's Most Dangerous Backup Singers.^[28] Together, they have a son, named Rebop.

Awards and honors

• 2017: Honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music, where he delivered the commencement address, and an honorary doctorate from DePauw University.^[29][30]

Discography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Todd Rundgren.

• 
  Todd Rundgren at AllMusic
  


• 
  The Nazz at AllMusic
  


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  Hello People at AllMusic
  


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  Utopia at AllMusic
  


• 
  Todd Rundgren & Utopia at AllMusic
  


• 
  Ubben Lecture at DePauw University (April 8, 2009)


• 
  Todd Rundgren Interview NAMM Oral History Program
  


• Todd Rundgren Radio