Episode 691 - Todd Rundgren
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Alright, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fucksters?
Guest:What the fuck sticks?
Guest:What the fuck wads?
Guest:What's happening?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, my podcast.
Marc:Thanks for coming by.
Marc:Thanks for sticking me in your head.
Marc:Thank you for taking me in wherever you may be.
Marc:In a cave, under the ground.
Marc:Todd Rundgren is on the show today.
Marc:Todd Rundgren, who I've known all my life just by virtue of seeing his albums my entire life.
Marc:I know his face.
Marc:I know I could identify him all my life.
Marc:I think since I've been cognizant of looking at records, I've known Todd Rundgren's face.
Marc:And I don't know that I really connected him with his music until not long ago.
Marc:Because how did I get to it?
Marc:Rundgren is one of these guys that, look, I know he's a genius.
Marc:I know he's made a million fucking records.
Marc:They just released a box set last month of all the Bearsville records.
Marc:He's also on tour.
Marc:He's taking a tour, making a tour, doing a tour all over the country in Canada.
Marc:You can go to Todd-Rundgren.com.
Marc:to find out where he's playing, but it was one of those situations where, and this has happened a lot on the show, most people, whether you may know a couple of Todd's hits, but a lot of you are sort of hung up, maybe not you, but I'm sure you've heard that Liv Tyler grew up with him as a father, basically, because Todd was with Liv's mother, B.B.
Marc:Buell, I believe is her name, Steve Tyler, kind of,
Marc:checked out on that front i guess i don't even know the story but i will tell you right now i wasn't going to talk to todd rundgren about that you can go find that kind of cultural detritus dialogue elsewhere
Marc:I wanted to talk about the genius.
Marc:I wanted to learn because I get very intimidated.
Marc:I don't know if some of you know this, but I don't have the power to book anybody I want.
Marc:I like when you assume I do, but I don't.
Marc:Some people aren't available.
Marc:Sometimes you've got to find a time window.
Marc:Some people don't want to.
Marc:And then some people are offered.
Marc:Some people are presented that want to do the show.
Marc:And Todd Rundgren was one of those people.
Marc:And we had him booked and I rescheduled it or kind of blew it off or pushed it up a bit because I felt insecure about my knowledge of Todd Rundgren.
Marc:When you're looking at somebody that's got a career that spans almost 50 years,
Marc:with his own music and with production and with, and knowing that there are full on Todd Rundgren nerds out there.
Marc:I, that's what always intimidates me when I, I, I have the opportunity to interview somebody with a massive careers that, uh, I, I just assume, you know, people are going to be out there going like, Oh, how could you not talk about that time?
Marc:He broke his toe in Woodstock because he was running from, uh, an angry guitar player.
Marc:You know, I made that up.
Marc:Why didn't you talk about the two notes that he took out of the thing?
Marc:Like I have a series of people I make up in my head and there's always the one voice.
Marc:One of the guys I make up in my head in relation to anybody I talk to is the guy that knows everything about him, even the most esoteric, nuanced stuff in that they're just waiting to call me out.
Marc:Didn't do a good job.
Marc:Didn't bring up the soundtrack for Pee Wee's Playhouse.
Marc:I didn't know that.
Marc:Yeah, you should have done some research.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe I just want to talk to the guy and learn about him.
Marc:Go experience it myself.
Marc:So that's what I do when I have somebody that has a career spanning the amount of time that Todd has is that that means I have to enter the world, you know, aggressively and fill my head up and try to understand that.
Marc:Because I wasn't a lifelong fan.
Marc:I had sort of a hard time with his music because it didn't necessarily resonate with me.
Marc:But you listen to some of the records and you're like, well, this guy's definitely touched.
Marc:He's definitely a genius.
Marc:But he might not be my genius.
Marc:But that doesn't mean I'm not interested.
Marc:So why don't I gather what I know, what I can know from listening to the records and some tidbits here and there.
Marc:And I relied on a friend of the show, Mr. Paul Myers.
Marc:who wrote a pretty thorough book about Todd in the studio.
Marc:It's called A Wizard, A True Star, Todd Rundgren in the Studio.
Marc:It is the book on Todd Rundgren's studio work.
Marc:So I emailed Paul and I'm like, dude, where do I start, man?
Marc:So he got me on it.
Marc:And the first time that I became sort of fascinated with Todd and I picked up one of his records that he used record store was because the sales brothers Hunt and Tony Hunt, who I've interviewed, who were both the offspring of super sales.
Marc:But Hunt is one of the great drummers, one of the great rock drummers, as is his brother, one of the great rock basis.
Marc:Played a bit with Todd and with Iggy Pop on Lust for Life and with Bowie in The Tin Machine.
Marc:And when I talked to Hunt, he said that he was playing with Todd when he was 18 years old, 17 years old.
Marc:So I became sort of fascinated with Todd then.
Marc:I listened to those records and I did what I could.
Marc:But I wanted to talk to him.
Marc:And I wanted to learn from him and just engage in that.
Marc:It's always amazing to me that when I'm insecure about an interview and that usually happens when they have amazingly long careers and are incredibly prolific or have created a lot of great stuff that I just know that I'm not I'm going to miss something.
Marc:So I overcompensate and I talk for a really long time and then I really learn some stuff.
Marc:So that's coming up here.
Marc:You're going to hear me talk to the wizard himself, Todd Rundgren, who great stories and a lot of stuff that, you know, in terms of the history of music and the music that I do listen to and enjoy that I didn't know.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:And he's got opinions, man.
Marc:The buzz.
Marc:So let me just loop you in.
Marc:Been having some trouble with the buzz.
Marc:My phono, fuck, when I talk about this, it's so stupid.
Marc:But it's, you know, I get obsessed with this stuff because I don't want to deal with my, you know, pending mortality and the terror of meaninglessness.
Marc:So I'm locked into the buzz situation.
Marc:I talked about building a Faraday box.
Marc:which is an insulated cage usually with grounded copper or something.
Marc:There's a lot of different variations on it that you put over the piece of equipment or over all your equipment.
Marc:So it'll fight off these intrusive electromagnetic waves from cell towers.
Marc:Well, here's the crux.
Marc:Here's the rub.
Marc:Here's what I found out.
Marc:I did all the troubleshooting I could and I thought that now I'd limited it to the wires because I brought my receiver down the hall to Brian's office and we plugged it in there.
Marc:Got no buzz.
Marc:Then I brought his amplifier, phono amplifier down to my office and the buzz was there.
Marc:So that means the buzz was on four different pieces of equipment that I rotated out and in.
Marc:in my office.
Marc:So I figure got to be the plugs, got to be the electrical system.
Marc:Now there's this mysterious door down the hallway.
Marc:That's why keep out, don't open.
Marc:It's got a card lock on it.
Marc:And all I know is that there's AT&T equipment in there, but I didn't know what that meant.
Marc:You know, I thought there was, I'd heard there was an AT&T antenna on top of the building, but I thought that was for the building wifi.
Marc:I wasn't thinking.
Marc:So what happens, what I learned is that it's not a Wi-Fi antenna.
Marc:AT&T actually rents space in that building, both in that hallway and on the roof for a fucking cell tower.
Marc:There's a fucking cell tower on the roof of my building.
Marc:And what I learned from the electrician who I had come over, all of the technological and mechanical infrastructure of the cell tower is situated behind a fake brick wall directly on top of my office.
Marc:So I am being bathed with waves all the time and no piece of equipment can stand up to the pummeling
Marc:No phono preamp is insulated enough to not share with me and whoever's listening the horrible frequency of people making calls everywhere in this area.
Marc:So what do I do?
Marc:I don't fucking know.
Marc:I talked to my landlord.
Marc:She don't want the thing there anymore.
Marc:I got to talk to AT&T.
Marc:Some guy said, you know, just to file a complaint with the FCC, man, they're not allowed to interfere with your shit.
Marc:And then the other side of it is I got people that say, well, maybe you should just listen to, you know, your iPod or your phone and just plug it in and get a jam box or something.
Marc:It's like, no, no, I don't want to lay down.
Marc:Because corporate intrusion is causing me a slight inconvenience that I find annoying.
Marc:It's my right to have freedom to listen to my records and not just bow down to the automobile-sized infrastructure of fucking Wi-Fi network on top, directly on top.
Marc:And what's it doing to my brain?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Probably nothing.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know, I'll let you know.
Marc:I thought it was really peaceful in there.
Marc:Maybe that's got something to do with it.
Marc:Maybe I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Marc:Is that how that saying goes?
Marc:Anyway, all I can foresee is that it may be a Davy and Goliath story.
Marc:David and Goliath, not the claymation.
Marc:And I, of course, would play the part of David, who only armed with a certain amount of disappointment and anger, is going to fight the waves that run the world.
Marc:What else do I got to tell you real quick?
Marc:Oh, Daniel Klaus, who I'm a huge fan of.
Marc:You may know him from the eight ball comic books or Ghost World, the graphic novel or, you know, several other great pieces of comic art has released a book called Patience.
Marc:This is new graphic novel, which I enjoyed a great deal.
Marc:And we're going to have him on the show soon.
Marc:We're going to put it up soon.
Marc:But I just wanted to tell you that patience, the new graphic novel by Daniel Klaus is out and it's great.
Marc:OK, so now watch me learn.
Marc:Don't watch me.
Marc:Listen to me learn from a true wizard, Todd Rundgren.
Marc:Todd Rundgren's here.
Marc:You're here at the garage.
Guest:Where were you today?
Guest:Well, I got in very early this morning.
Guest:From?
Guest:Kauai, where I live.
Marc:You live in Kauai the whole time?
Guest:The time I can live there, yeah.
Guest:We've been having this discussion all day, how much time I've been spending on the road.
Marc:With your manager, you've been having that discussion?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And does that discussion, is that like, how much fucking more dates can I do?
Marc:Or is it like, I got to keep doing dates?
Yeah.
Guest:No, it's how much less dates can I do, more or less.
Guest:I mean, when you live in Kauai, you want to spend at least some time at home.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:I've gone there.
Marc:It's the only place in Hawaii I've been.
Marc:I've been there like two or three times.
Guest:Wow, because I meet people all the time, and they say, oh, I've been to Oahu.
Guest:Oh, I've been to Maui.
Guest:Nope, never been.
Guest:Only Kauai?
Marc:Only Kauai.
Guest:For a honeymoon or something like that?
Marc:I've taken several different, three different women there.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, for a deflowering.
Guest:Is that what you're saying?
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:I just don't know where to go.
Marc:I'm a sort of an anxious guy.
Marc:And I think I went there with the first wife, not for a honeymoon, but for a vacation.
Marc:And we I was so taken with it.
Marc:I'm like, this is going to be the go to place.
Marc:I thought it might be with her for the rest of time.
Marc:It didn't pan out that way.
Guest:What where did you stay the first time?
Marc:The first time was the south on Poipu.
Marc:That was the mistake.
Guest:Yeah, that's a mistake.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's like, you know, hotel row.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Horrible.
Marc:But, you know, it was okay.
Marc:We got a condo.
Marc:And then the second time, I'm like, north side, north shore.
Marc:So I went up there.
Guest:Now, what was the date of your first visit?
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:96, 97, maybe?
Guest:Oh, gosh.
Guest:So you never had the opportunity to stay at the Coco Palms.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:How long have you been there?
Guest:uh well i've been going to the island since 70 the mid 70s is that well is that the one that they're still burned remains of uh up towards the north shore there's like a hotel that i've seen like two or three times where it's just it looks like well it's on the way to the north shore that's the coco palms on the left yeah that was where blue hawaii was filmed no shit with elvis
Guest:So is that the one that's like a haunted house kind of?
Guest:Well, no, no.
Guest:It's full of black moss and you'll die.
Guest:It's worse than haunted.
Guest:It's like a rotten shell, right?
Marc:But it's there.
Guest:Yeah, they keep saying they're going to rebuild it.
Guest:There's another consortium says they're going to rebuild it.
Guest:It'll never be what it used to be because it had just the perfect amount of tack.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was, like, everything you thought about.
Guest:Because you saw Blue Hawaii.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was everything you thought about when you went to the islands.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You're eating lunch in the lanai while birds come, you know, and eat out of your hands.
Guest:And it's right next to, like, a canal full of...
Guest:koi swimming around and every evening they have a you know a torch lighting ceremony a pig is roasted oh yeah and the guys in the pareos are rowing the little canoes down the canals and everything and it's just like and if you ever saw blue hawaii all of that is kind of reenacted in there right right but and gone it's gone
Guest:That was the first place that I stayed, the only place I ever stayed until 1993, Hurricane Iniki came through, and the eye of the hurricane, 200-mile-an-hour winds went right over the island.
Guest:Leveled it.
Guest:Totally leveled it.
Guest:So you were there maybe three years, three or four years after that happened.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:You know, the place took a real haircut.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, so, but you've been going there since the 70s?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What the hell was down there in the 70s?
Marc:Nothing?
Guest:I was getting away from an evil girlfriend.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:See, you took your girls there.
Guest:You ran away.
Guest:I went there to just get a little respite.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:As far away as I've, you know, I was living in New York at the time.
Marc:In the city.
Marc:So what are we talking, 71, 72?
Guest:About then, 73, 74.
Guest:Somebody suggested, you know, why don't, you know.
Guest:Go, get out.
Marc:She's going to kill you, man.
Guest:Well, no, all that came much later and I almost killed her, so.
Guest:Oh, where's that song?
Guest:Some things are not meant for publication.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yet.
Marc:Yeah, well, you know, there's always time.
Marc:You know, the deep, dark record that's when you can't quite sing anymore.
Marc:That's when you do that one.
Guest:Yeah, when I start to sound like... Where's just wisdom coming out?
Guest:Yeah, Johnny Cash.
Marc:Yeah, right, right.
Marc:You call Rick Rubin up and argue with him about it.
Marc:Here's the deal with me and you.
Marc:is that yeah why am i here you wanted to come i did want to come but i was surprised to be invited to come well the weird thing is is like i've spent my whole life you know saying like you know i got to get into todd runger and how do i start there seems like a lot here yeah how do i start you know and then like a few years ago i i started and i obviously it's it's very difficult because you continue to put out stuff
Marc:But that happens.
Marc:And then in a panic, when I knew you were coming, I DMed Paul Myers.
Marc:And I'm like, dude, which ones?
Marc:Well, he's pretty authoritative.
Guest:He's the guy, right?
Guest:He wrote the biography.
Guest:Well, he wrote the biography.
Guest:He wrote the story of my productions.
Guest:Essentially, it was...
Guest:Each chapter was about a particular record that got made.
Guest:And he interviewed me and he interviewed the musicians who were involved in the record and anybody else.
Guest:So it's real record-y stuff.
Guest:So, yeah, it's pretty much, it's not gossipy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, if there were any significant things going on, those were certainly related.
Guest:But otherwise, it was mostly an insight into the process.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, the thing that blew me away is that because I've gotten into vinyl again, right?
Marc:So I've got the ballad.
Marc:of Todd Runger, and I've got that one on- Wow, nobody has that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That was kind of the lost album.
Guest:It was my second album.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Guest:First album came out on what was originally Ampex Records.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What happened?
Marc:Wow, what happened to them?
Guest:Well, Albert Grossman, who was like the uber manager of- Let's talk about that.
Marc:Let's go in sequence then, if we're going to go.
Marc:Well, then we're going there.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:So-
Marc:So what happened was I started getting into psych rock.
Marc:So then somebody hips me to Naz.
Marc:And then I'm listening to Naz.
Marc:And I'm like, holy shit, that's Todd Rundgren.
Marc:He's in Naz.
Marc:So how old were you when Naz was in existence?
Guest:I was 18 when we put the band together.
Marc:And where were you from?
Marc:Where did that happen?
Guest:Philadelphia.
Marc:So you're a Philly guy.
Marc:Grew up in Philly.
Guest:I did not grow up in Philly.
Guest:I grew up in Westbrook Park, which was in Upper Darby, the westerly suburb of Philadelphia.
Guest:And I went to Upper Darby High School.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Other notable graduates were Jim Croce and Tina Fey.
Guest:Did you know Jim Croce?
Guest:Oh, sorry.
Guest:He graduated before I was there.
Guest:And of course, Tina Fey is much younger than me.
Guest:So anyway.
Marc:But when you were, so we're talking mid-60s, you're in high school.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I graduated in 66.
Guest:Graduated, air quotes, in 66.
Marc:So what's going on musically in Philly?
Marc:That was like an R&B town, right?
Guest:Well, we were sort of an R&B town because we're right on the Mason-Dixon line.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so like anything above the Mason-Dixon line, that's the North.
Guest:That's the Yankees.
Guest:And as you move below that, it gets more questionable until you get into the Deep South.
Guest:And in the Deep South, records by black people were called race records.
Guest:And they only got played on really low wattage stations in rural areas.
Guest:But in Philadelphia, right on that sort of cusp, and we had a DJ, his name was Jerry Blavitt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he played nothing but R&B records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, everybody else is playing white music, you know.
Marc:And Jerry Blavitt, the Jewish guy.
Guest:Jerry Blavitt, the geeter with the heater.
Guest:Yeah, he's playing the black records.
Guest:He plays all the black records.
Guest:He's still alive and he's still DJing.
Marc:Have you met with him and thanked him?
Guest:Never met him and never got to thank him.
Marc:There's time.
Marc:So is that what you were taking in?
Marc:Was that your thing?
Guest:well when we were growing up yeah yeah that was you know a thing that a lot of other areas didn't get they didn't get that sort of r&b music so that influence you know that's in me it's in daryl hall it's in you know a bunch of people who come out of philadelphia and what um when did you start like what kind of childhood were you in what'd your dad do
Guest:My dad was an engineer.
Guest:He worked for DuPont.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:In Philadelphia at a big plant there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Quiet guy?
Guest:Stern guy.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Well, he didn't really have a father figure.
Guest:So his father figure was Jackie Gleason on the Honeymooners, a childless couple.
Guest:So he never really kind of figured out how to deal with the kids.
Marc:How many were there?
Guest:Four, ultimately.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, he knew how to make them, but managing them was a different story.
Guest:Are you the oldest?
Guest:I'm the oldest, yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Everybody still okay?
Guest:They're still there.
Guest:We were never okay.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:but oh they're still in outside of philly and stuff uh still in yeah in the philadelphia area but when did you start like here's here's the thing i have when i when i listen to as much of the catalog as i can fit in my head is that it becomes sort of difficult to define you know what you do because you're singular and i and i i guess that's a good problem to have but like i don't know like i don't i don't even know what to call it
Marc:I know that you've spawned a lot of, like when you say Hall & Oates or Daryl Hall.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It feels to me that without you, there'd be no him.
Guest:Nah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I worked on Hall & Oates' third album.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And up until their third album and through the third album.
Guest:They're a pretty eclectic band.
Guest:You think of them now as those kind of blue-eyed soul, hit after hit after hit.
Guest:Before that, they were much more sort of... They were still trying to figure out what they wanted to do out of all the possibilities.
Guest:So their first album, which was called Whole Oats...
Guest:Almost had an acoustic sound to it.
Guest:Second one, called Abandoned Luncheonette, had this whole variety of songs.
Guest:And if you listened to the title song, you wouldn't even know who was singing it.
Guest:But no real identity as a... Well, no, it's just so different from what people now associate with hornos.
Guest:And they were still kind of in that mode when we did War Babies.
Guest:But at that point, you know, Darrell was starting to think a little more conceptually.
Guest:You know, he wanted to capture an era.
Guest:He also wanted to push the envelope, you know, to experiment a little bit more.
Guest:David Bowie was a big influence, you know, because he was doing all of this kind of...
Guest:It's hard to explain that, huh?
Guest:Yeah, it's hard to explain what it was.
Guest:What period is that?
Guest:What year are we talking?
Guest:Well, we're thinking... It's a little after Ziggy Stardust.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's past the science fiction thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did he have an influence on you as well?
Guest:I always thought he was an interesting artist, but I never...
Guest:Except for particular things that he did.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I never got into his process, which was essentially just trying to stay on the tip of whatever's hip.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or a little ahead of it, if possible.
Guest:A little ahead of it, as possible.
Guest:But...
Guest:Never really, you never write songs about yourself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You write songs about things that sometimes don't even make any sense.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, they use this process, him and Eno use this process sometimes where they just pull clippings of books and magazines out of a hat, you know, and that would be the next line and the lyric.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:You know, because lyrics are so hard to write.
Guest:But also, if you're the kind of artist who is constantly building artifice, in other words, you yourself are the art piece in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't write songs about your real self.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're creating an image for people, and you write songs about that image.
Marc:Well, you, on the other hand, I imagine, but I've gotten this wrong with songwriters before, but you, when I listen to your music, especially the earlier stuff, it seems very heavy hearted and a little painful.
Marc:Are you writing about yourself throughout?
Guest:Well, in those early years, my first three albums, I was learning how to be a songwriter and I was learning how to sing.
Guest:I already knew kind of how to be a producer.
Marc:Well, okay, let's get back to that.
Guest:When did you start playing all these instruments?
Guest:Well, we started playing other instruments like in the NAS.
Guest:But what was your first, as a kid, what'd you start on?
Guest:I started on, well, if you want to go way back to the beginning.
Guest:Well, they, you know, in those days they offered music lessons in school.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, it wasn't like they had a...
Guest:a great music department, but people would go around from school to school, and you could rent an instrument, and someone would come and give you some lessons on that instrument, ideally to teach you how to read music as well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the first instrument that I actually seriously tried to play was the flute.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Your choice?
Guest:I just liked the sound of it.
Guest:My dad didn't like a lot of pop music in the house, so we heard a whole lot of symphonic music all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you like it?
Guest:I loved it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you can hear that in all the records.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of layers.
Guest:I love all that stuff.
Guest:I love...
Guest:I love a band like Melt Banana.
Marc:Who's that?
Guest:Is it good?
Guest:It's a Japanese trio.
Guest:Find yourself some Melt Banana.
Guest:I'm going to write it down.
Guest:I'll make note.
Guest:They got a girl singer, a guy guitar player with a whole bunch of pedals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and a drummer right and they just torture everything out of their instruments that they can during these performances you know you can't believe how much they are better what this girl is doing to her voice and how crazy the drummer is he's like keith moon times two you know and the guitar player is doing everything possible you know with pedals and yeah yeah switches and stuff like that and creating these loops on the fly and it's just it's amazing and it makes no sense
Marc:And that's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's not pop music, but it's good.
Guest:No, but it's like, you know, part of music has always been, we've gone through this entire illusory period since Edison discovered how to record sound.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Illusory in what sense?
Guest:Well, before that, you couldn't hear music unless somebody played it for you.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:When's the guy coming over?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now we got able to capture the performance, the sound of the performance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we've really perfected that over 100 years or so, 100 or more years.
Guest:Too perfect sometimes.
Guest:Whatever, but people have lost the idea of the difference between like a performance, which is always there.
Guest:Imagine all the technology disappears tomorrow.
Guest:What are musicians going to go back to doing?
Guest:They're going to learn to get better at playing and stuff like that.
Guest:So that's the under layer that was always there, this whole thing about the recorded artifact.
Guest:has not really come into full perspective yet you know right i mean that just because this you know there is a performance and sometimes it isn't even a performance right it's a construction of sound right which you've done a lot of which i do yeah but you love to perform live clearly
Guest:Yes, and I also enjoy performing live.
Guest:And I realize that if you stop doing that, you take most of the joy out of making the music.
Guest:Yeah, that makes sense.
Guest:And it doesn't mean you can't perform in the studio, but that's the hardest part of all because you don't have an audience there.
Guest:And when you're producing records for other people, it's the hardest thing to get in their head.
Guest:Don't look at that as a microphone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What do you look at it as?
Guest:It's supposed to be the ear of the listener.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you start on flute, play that for a while?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My sister decided she would take clarinet lessons, but she sucked, and I got better at it than she did.
Guest:And I learned how to play like two strangers on the shore on the clarinet.
Guest:chuffed my dad no end you know that's when they started to realize that maybe i had some musical talent so they did buy me the guitar lessons that i really wanted uh-huh when the ventures came out with walk don't run right of course yeah and i said oh guitar yeah that's what i want to do now so then you get to guitar and you're jamming and it's the 60s and it's time
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Eventually, I get a real guitar.
Guest:Actually, I had crappy guitars, but I did have a band.
Guest:Played a little bit while I was still in high school.
Guest:Actually made some- Covers?
Guest:Originals?
Guest:Pocket change.
Guest:No, all covers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All covers.
Guest:But that was when we also started to incorporate a lot of blues into what we were doing.
Marc:Did you like playing blues?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I liked listening to it and playing it.
Marc:Who were your blues guys?
Guest:Well, in those days, of course, there were the old masters, Sonny Boy Williamson, of course, and Muddy, Wolf.
Guest:Oh, Junior Wells.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Buddy Guy.
Guest:And Buddy Guy, world's longest guitar chord.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're listening to that.
Guest:The Butterfield Band.
Marc:Oh, they were around already?
Guest:Yeah, the Butterfield Band.
Guest:I think their album came out in 65 or something like that.
Guest:And then we said, oh yeah, white guys playing the blues, all right.
Marc:Yeah, just before the English guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, the English guys had already done that.
Marc:Oh, they had?
Guest:No, see, the whole thing was...
Guest:In England, they had this merchant seaman tradition, and in a lot of towns, especially places like Liverpool and stuff like that, merchant seaman would just go back and forth to Mobile, to these port cities in the south, go out and buy singles in the little record shops and stuff like that, and bring back all this blues music to England.
Guest:None of it was getting played in America.
Guest:yeah i know i talked to may all about that you'd have to wait for it like you know you'd have to wait till the one guy who got those records got those exactly you know some merchant seaman can't have loads of all the kids home will love this you know buy a bunch of singles come back to liverpool you know and then suddenly all those kids are playing this music and we don't find out about it till the yard birds play i'm a man right you know
Marc:Yeah, and it's right down, it's a couple states down from you.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Just below the Mason-Dixon line.
Guest:You could have driven there, you know?
Marc:It's so weird to think about that, that it's sort of like the spice trade, that, you know, like, you know, the world didn't, certain places didn't have cinnamon until somebody brought it over on a boat.
Marc:But you don't think about the blues being like that, but that's what it's like.
Guest:Well, yeah, that's the interesting part about it, is it was so close and yet had to go so far, you know, to get back.
Marc:So how many records did you do at the NASS?
Guest:We did, in actuality, two.
Guest:We did a debut album, and then we did what was intended to be a double album, but the label was not happy with the double album concept.
Guest:So one album came out, and then after that, sort of a Leftovers album came out.
Marc:And you were writing all the songs?
Guest:Pretty much, yeah.
Guest:And that was part of the problem.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I suddenly got smitten by Laura Nero.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Eli and the 13th Confession came out and it totally like... Yeah?
Guest:Rocked my world.
Guest:Changed your whole way of thinking, didn't it?
Guest:Yeah, about music.
Guest:Up until that, you're writing for the group you're in.
Guest:This was like, holy crap.
Guest:What about it?
Guest:This girl's like 19 years old.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she is writing and singing like...
Guest:Yeah, transcending.
Guest:Like she was 50.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, she was like a star overnight, but she didn't know how to manage her career very well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But kind of what happened while I was still in the NAS, I got my manager to arrange for me to meet her.
Marc:It wasn't Albert Grossman yet, was it?
Marc:No, it wasn't.
Guest:It was the manager of the NAS.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:We were still in the NAS.
Guest:How's that guy doing?
Guest:Gone.
Guest:Gone, yeah.
Guest:But... So you meet Laura Nero.
Guest:So I meet Laura Nero.
Guest:I go up to her apartment, which is in the Dakota.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she makes tuna fish casseroles.
Guest:The only thing she knows how to make.
Guest:Because she's a kid, in a way.
Guest:Still pretty young.
Guest:But also, that's the name of her publishing company, Tuna Fish Music.
Guest:She loved it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, she made some tuna fish casseroles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was just really nervous the whole time.
Marc:So what were you expecting out of this encounter?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:I just wanted to meet her, maybe get some reflected inspiration or whatever, figure out how she did what she did.
Guest:And did you?
Guest:She called me like a week or two later to come visit her again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went to visit her, and she said, would you like to be my band leader?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the Nas had just signed the first record contract.
Guest:And I'm thinking, jeez, I'd love to be your band leader, but I have to do this thing with this band.
Guest:But the upshot was I started writing all these Laura Nero songs.
Marc:For her or for you?
Guest:No, for making the Nas record all these Laura Nero songs.
Yeah.
Guest:That just, you know, in the end, it just didn't mix well with our original kind of- No, I started writing everything on the piano at that point.
Guest:Before that, I wrote most everything on the guitar.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, I mean, even Hello, It's Me, the first song I ever wrote was written on a guitar before I ever figured out how to play it on the piano.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, it just didn't- With the other guys sort of like, what the fuck is this?
Marc:Yeah, kind of.
Marc:Yeah, what are we doing?
Guest:Yeah, kind of.
Marc:Where's the rock and roll, man?
Guest:Kind of, yeah.
Guest:I was thinking we could have rocked them up a little bit more, but they were not enthusiastic.
Marc:Well, what was it?
Marc:Because you have a very specific sound.
Marc:There are certain progressions that you like to use or certain chords you like to use.
Marc:And what was it about... And I imagine that all tracks back to that moment with Laura Nero, that there was a tone to it.
Marc:What was it essentially that changed for you in that moment?
Marc:What opened up?
Guest:Well...
Guest:In a broader sense, you know, it was the personal nature of the music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, is that, you know, she was really sort of pouring out her soul on every performance.
Guest:And that was something that was sort of rare generally in music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, most artists, I think of artists as being, you know, in two general categories.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:One is that they are revelatory.
Guest:In other words, you get the idea that they're really singing.
Guest:They really believe what they're singing.
Guest:And the others are obfuscatory.
Marc:Like David Bowie.
Guest:Somebody who's creating an image.
Guest:You don't want that image to crack.
Guest:So you can't be revealing too much of something that isn't that image.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But at some point, you entered a phase of stagecraft that certainly was large.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:You could call that maybe even a third category, which is, you know, a...
Marc:I'm showing too much of myself.
Marc:I better put on some eye makeup.
Guest:No, it isn't.
Guest:No, it isn't.
Guest:It's when you start thinking in actual theatrical terms and you write for that moment.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:You write for the stage.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know, like you're writing a musical or something like that.
Guest:And so you're trying to figure out what's the unifying theme here, if there is one.
Guest:That's how concept albums and the tours that follow them are built.
Marc:So it's like a theater piece almost.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Is there a unifying theme, first of all, that we should play off of?
Guest:Does it involve costumes?
Guest:Does it involve special effects?
Guest:Things like that.
Guest:We could totally dove into that when we could afford it.
Guest:And still will.
Marc:But those first records, did you see them as whole pieces, all of them?
Guest:No.
Guest:My very first record was a total pastiche.
Marc:I just was curious about how... So Runt and the one I have, Runt the Ballad of Todd Rundgren, and I guess the album after that... Something or anything.
Marc:That was a big record.
Marc:That was a double record, right?
Guest:That was a double album.
Guest:It had three hit singles off of it.
Marc:And that was a concept record, wasn't it?
Guest:Well, the only concept initially was that I was going to play all the instruments myself, which I had not previously attempted to do.
Marc:But would that take two years to make?
Marc:No.
Marc:Then you played all of them?
Guest:I played, well, except for the last side.
Guest:On the last side, those are all live tracks.
Guest:Like the Something Anything that everyone's familiar with, that was a live session that I called in the morning.
Guest:We did three songs that day.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why'd you decide to do that?
Marc:Did you just run out of steam?
Guest:No, I had already gone over the single album limit.
Guest:I already had an album and a half, and I thought, do I want to do four sides of just me, or do I want to do something that's like, oh, the good old days?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Good old days being like before you ever got a record contract.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You got demo time in a label studio.
Guest:In those days, there were those very few independent studios.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You wanted to demo for a label, you had to go into their studio.
Guest:So you had to do this over and over and over again until you got signed.
Guest:But you got like an hour, maybe even less, half hour.
Guest:Got an hour with an engineer, record as many songs as you can in an hour.
Guest:And you do them all live.
Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's no overdubbing.
Guest:No, we don't overdub.
Guest:You're only going to two track anyway.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's more exciting, isn't it, in a way?
Guest:It brings a whole lot more tension to it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that, in a way, can make a better record.
Marc:And Hello to Me was huge.
Marc:It was a huge song.
Guest:It did become huge.
Guest:It was like the second version of it, though.
Guest:Because the flip side of Open My Eyes, the first Naz single, was Hello, It's Me, done at a dirgy pace with me playing vibes instead of guitar.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And that's a whole different song.
Guest:A whole other thing, yeah.
Marc:And did that song, did you feel that, like the Hello, It's Me that became the huge hit, was that, did you feel like you defined a sound at that point?
Marc:No, it was nonplussed.
Marc:What were the other hits?
Marc:I Saw the Light.
Guest:I Saw the Light was the first hit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hello, It's Me.
Guest:And I think it wouldn't have made any difference was a lesser hit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it was a big record.
Guest:It was a great record.
Guest:As a matter of fact...
Guest:It opened a whole lot of very interesting doors for me.
Guest:Is that where Grossman comes in?
Guest:All of my solo albums are under the Grossman regime.
Guest:And he was a character, right, that guy?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He looked like Ben Franklin.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And who did he manage?
Marc:Dylan, Baez, the band?
Guest:Well, he managed like every significant folk act at one point because he had a club in Chicago called the Gate of Horn.
Guest:He was originally a restaurateur, but he decided he would put on these folk acts.
Guest:And anytime he saw somebody he liked, he signed them up to a management contract.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which they never got out of.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:Yeah, by the time I met him, the NAS, there was a partner in the management, like a junior partner, and he went on to work with Albert Grossman.
Guest:And after the NAS broke up, I was on the street.
Guest:I was living with clothiers in the West Village, people that I used to buy clothes from when I was in the NAS.
Guest:I wound up living with them.
Guest:I designed lights in a club.
Guest:I was doing anything.
Guest:And you were like 22?
Yeah.
Guest:uh less yeah yeah no that would be about 20. yeah and uh
Guest:And this guy approached me.
Guest:He said, you know, like, I watched you do the production and the mixing on the last Nas album.
Guest:You'd think you might have some talent here.
Guest:So come to the Grossman organization and help us modernize all these folk acts.
Guest:Oh, so that was your job.
Guest:So they started putting me, you know, with Ian and Sylvia and James Cotton and, you know, Butterfield Band and stuff like that, you know.
Guest:Just in the booth?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Essentially, I did the Jesse Winchester album, I did Stage Fright, I did... Wow.
Guest:Stage Fright.
Guest:That's just in-house stuff.
Marc:Did you like those guys, the band?
Guest:What's that?
Guest:Well, I was a really... Those guys were very, very experienced.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was not.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They had already been like the Hawks for Ronnie Hawkins.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And played probably forever doing that.
Marc:Were they impressive when you looked at them?
Marc:Were you like, holy shit?
Guest:No, I was not.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I think we got along.
Guest:They found me amusing in certain ways.
Guest:But also I got things done.
Guest:I exuded a certain confidence about what I was doing, which always sells.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And did you find, did you, did you, when you listen to that record, can you identify your sound as a producer?
Guest:No.
Guest:And I wasn't, I was not a producer.
Guest:There was no producer on stage fright.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They were kind of scrupulous about that, that you were just mixing.
Yeah.
Guest:I did all of the recording and mixing and enduring.
Guest:And after that, I was in England and I helped to mix the Albert Hall show that they did there.
Guest:And then I had on my first solo album, Levon and Rick Danko did a song for me.
Guest:I got along with all those guys.
Guest:They had an internal dynamic that was so tense anyway.
Guest:There was a lot of tension about the fact that Robbie wrote everything and therefore owned the publishing to everything.
Guest:And so they kind of felt sometimes like sidemen to Robbie's thing.
Guest:I never really got into the... I never thankfully had to get into the details of that, but I knew that that was kind of a constant source of tension.
Guest:During the sessions, it got very hard.
Guest:It was hurting felines.
Guest:It was trying to get everyone all at their instruments and ready and in the mood to do a take.
Guest:seemed to take most of the time.
Guest:Most of the time was not spent doing takes.
Guest:It was getting everyone onto their instrument to do a take.
Guest:Well, you know, a lot of things, you know, would impinge.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:One is that Garth was and likely still is a narcoleptic.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So he would just fall asleep at some point, even in the middle of a song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Levon, unfortunately, was involved with opiates and stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'd be trying to do a take.
Guest:We're at the Woodstock Theater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we can't find Levon.
Guest:We're ready to do a take.
Guest:Can't finally find him under a pile of curtains somewhere fast asleep.
Guest:We do a session one day and Richard doesn't show up.
Guest:Where's Richard?
Guest:Nobody knows where Richard is.
Guest:Richard apparently has spent the night in his car, nose face down in a culvert all night long.
Guest:they had issues but that's how you got into that with grossman but that's kind of like you know that character it characterizes them you know yeah you kind of channel those issues into the music ultimately and that's a job of a producer ultimately but as i say i was not the producer i did not i know i did not have the authority to say hey
Guest:Let's get to that.
Marc:But you had the authority to say, come on, guys.
Marc:Can we just, hey, leave on.
Guest:Well, I did.
Guest:Apparently, I don't remember literally what I did, but I could be very sarcastic and needling and stuff like that.
Guest:I remember they all got angry with me because at one point I referred to Garth as an old man.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Because relative to me he was, but... All right, so after... Okay, so that's how you got in with Grossman.
Marc:So what happened?
Marc:What were these opportunities that opened up for you after you did the big one, something, anything?
Marc:You were about to say a lot of doors opened.
Guest:Well, this is essentially what characterized my...
Guest:output right from that point on and why it is so difficult for you to absorb it right oh good because answer all my questions yeah because i was making more money as a producer than most people make as an artist okay at that point i had done bad finger i was doing grand funk railroad grand funk yeah eventually i did meatloaf you know so that out of hell right yes that's a big record
Guest:It was a very large record.
Marc:Still a big record.
Marc:Big boy, big record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Still pretty large, actually, ironically enough.
Marc:You guys friends?
Guest:We never see each other.
Guest:I always wondered about that.
Marc:Not about you and him specifically, but the relationship.
Marc:We were never close, thankfully.
Marc:So you were hired by the label after something, anything?
Marc:No.
Marc:No?
Marc:No, exactly wrong.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I'm just throwing by you.
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:Assume nothing.
Guest:Now, Meatloaf and Jim Steinman essentially came to me after they had demoed for everybody in the business, and nobody could figure out
Guest:what to do with this big, fat guy with the overly long songs.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And the weird, creepy guy with the white hair and the white gloves playing the piano.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they rented a demo studio, and I came in, and they performed most of what turned out to be Bad Out of Hell live.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With four people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Stymon on the piano.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ellen Foley and Rory Dodd on vocals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the big guy.
Guest:So anyway, I watched them do this thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at that time, I could afford really to take on anything.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:As long as they were just like sort of a minimal production advance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought...
Guest:This is a spoof of Bruce Springsteen.
Guest:This is the ultimate Springsteen spoof.
Guest:Springsteen was just starting to happen.
Guest:He's on the cover of Time magazine.
Guest:And what does Springsteen do?
Guest:These overwrought, overlong songs.
Guest:So I thought, this is like the anti-Springsteen.
Guest:It's the same sort of thing, but it's all like taking it to some other extreme.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also, it's like you don't look at him and think, what a hunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unless you think, whoa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What a hunk of something, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I thought that I got to do this.
Guest:It's going to be a spoof of Bruce Springsteen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he had a label at the time, really.
Guest:They just couldn't find the producer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who was sympathetic to what they were trying to do.
Guest:And so we rehearsed for two weeks.
Guest:And to put a little icing on the cake, I think we had...
Guest:at least two i'm trying to remember we had three members of the east street band yeah on the record yeah we had roy bitten and max weinberg played on the record so it's kind of like almost east street band now and we rehearsed for you know like 10 days or something like that you know worked out the arrangements and rehearsed so we could go in the studio and bang it out
Guest:And the day before we're supposed to come in to the studio, Meatloaf comes to me and says, I don't think my label understands me.
Guest:I want off my label.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not his manager.
Guest:I can't tell him what to do.
Guest:I said, well, you can do that.
Guest:But, you know, we just rehearsed for two weeks.
Guest:We already run up considerable bill on this record already.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now you want to fire your label.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I wound up underwriting the record.
Guest:I went to Bearsville and said, if you let me use the studio and if you pay for the expenses of making this record, then you get right of first refusal on the record.
Marc:But this means you had money in the record, so you were on the back end as well.
Guest:Essentially, if they didn't want to take the record...
Guest:I, essentially, all of that is my bill to them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They have to collect all that money from my future... Right.
Guest:...residuals of something or other, but... Or they won't give me something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:We finish the record, and Bearsville doesn't want the record.
Guest:And neither does Warner Brothers, the distributor of Bearsville.
Guest:They decide they don't want the record.
Marc:So you got no labeling, you got no distributor.
Guest:Yeah, they don't get it.
Guest:They don't get the record.
Guest:They shop it everywhere.
Guest:It takes them like six months.
Guest:They can't find anyone to put the record out.
Guest:Really?
Guest:yes so finally the find this guy steve popovich with a little subsidiary of i think was epic records or something like that cleveland international yeah he had one other artist yeah and uh ian hunter the artist yeah and uh
Guest:For some reason, he thought he could make something of the record.
Guest:And I think three things happened at the time that really turned it into what we now remember it being, but it could have been just on the ash heap of history.
Guest:Three things happened.
Guest:One was Steven Popovich never gave up on the record.
Guest:He put out a single, nothing happened.
Guest:Hell, I'm putting out another single.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He put out three singles before anything ever happened with the record.
Guest:So he never gave up on the record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Second thing that happened was during that whole period, Meat Loaf was touring incessantly.
Guest:Just never came off the road.
Guest:He played anywhere anybody would have him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And word of mouth started to happen.
Guest:We didn't have social media then.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But some sort of word of mouth started happening about this big, fat guy who's running around the stage, and he's got this little sexy girl on his leg and that sort of thing.
Guest:People say, oh, you got to see this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that started to happen.
Guest:Then the third thing that happened, maybe the most significant thing, was MTV came on the air.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Paradise by the Dashboard Light was the longest video that they had.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just like any other DJ, this is where you go get high.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You put on Dark Side of the Moon and you go up to the roof.
Guest:Smoke a bone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come back later.
Guest:you know so this was the equivalent you know right seven minutes of i don't have to do nothing you know yeah and that's what i think you know kind of pushed it all over the top and then they re-released the other singles and they all became hits and that was big payday for you too
Guest:Ultimately, it was the biggest payday I ever had.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because I hadn't gotten anything.
Guest:And here's where Albert Grossman came in a little handy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He went with me to their management office or their lawyer, whoever it was who was dealing with their business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, the record had been selling and I had never been recouped or compensated.
Guest:So we went to negotiate the terms of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he negotiated for me more points than both Steinman and Meatloaf got combined.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Did he bring a bat with him?
Guest:And the check that I got was just under, well, by about 30% a million dollars.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That day, I remember when I'm looking at this check and counting the digits in it and saying, seriously, six digits?
Guest:Yeah, now I have the opportunity to do really stupid things with money.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's when I bought a video studio after that.
Marc:Well, you're a creative guy.
Marc:You needed equipment.
Marc:You need a lot of, you know.
Marc:So when you say that they would explain your output, how does that explain your output, the production opportunities?
Guest:Because most artists, when they make a record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:or make anything that they make whatever it is that's intrinsically linked with their economic well-being in a sense in other words if you don't put out the hit you don't get the money you don't get the money you don't get the power you don't get the woman you know it's like it's uh it's all they have in a way yeah
Guest:I'm making money off other people's records.
Guest:Why do I have to think that way when I make my own records?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm just out there like musical explorer.
Guest:Music is like other planets to me.
Marc:So you were able to detach from the pressure of making hits.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Or even honoring the system.
Guest:in a sense you have to deal with the physical limitations of the you know the disc you know right but that's your that's your limiting factor but when i put out a wizard a true star that was exactly my philosophy i got i don't know 20 to 30 minutes i can put anything on there i want and were you challenging yourself or did you think it was a joke that was definitely not a joke you were like now i can really cut loose
Guest:No, it was like, you know, there's all this stuff.
Guest:I figured out the formula to write a pop song in something, anything.
Guest:And I realized at that point it's a formula.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I could do this over and over again.
Guest:I could continually refer to that high school relationship that inspired all the earlier lyrics, even though I'm well beyond that now.
Marc:You're in trouble now, right?
Guest:Well, no, there's other things to think about.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, besides getting laid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not a bad thing to think about, but there are other things to think about.
Guest:And I realized that...
Guest:never bothered to try and make anything musical or turn it into sound or anything like that all those things that are floating in there yeah and i essentially said okay i think i understand the songwriting formula now i'm going to destroy it right i am not going to abide by that songwriting formula
Guest:Drugs involved?
Guest:If I do, it's because I'm paying tribute to it.
Marc:Which you did.
Guest:In an arch sort of way.
Marc:You did some covers in a way.
Guest:Yeah, when I did the sort of R&B trilogy.
Guest:This is also in my head.
Guest:This is my influences, stuff like that.
Guest:This is my aspirations in some way.
Guest:Geez, I'd like to be able to sing this stuff well.
Marc:Yeah, but you also wanted to deconstruct it entirely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In a sense.
Guest:The expectations.
Guest:That's why it became medleys, and after you take it more and more seriously as you're going through the thing, it gets sillier and sillier.
Marc:But that record's almost like it's completely progressive in some points where you're almost doing something that doesn't make inherent sense in a pop music sense, mind.
Marc:It's almost like, I don't know if the comparison would offend you, but it's almost like a Zappa record in your own style in some ways.
Guest:I'm certainly not offended to be conflated with Frank Zappa.
Guest:But do you see that conflation?
Guest:Well, Frank Zappa was also an influence.
Marc:A destroyer, in a way, too.
Guest:Yeah, in a way, it was almost my version of absolutely free.
Guest:Right.
Guest:which was one of my favorite records and a real revelation for me, where you're just throwing musical fragments out.
Guest:They don't turn into whole songs.
Guest:Some of them are just little transitional elements to another thing that he did probably more coherently than I did.
Guest:In other words, he has an overarching message of...
Guest:sarcasm, I guess you would call it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, definitely.
Marc:He was, you know, cutting.
Marc:But he had some humor.
Marc:There was like, you know, on Wizard of Tristar.
Guest:Well, I had some humor.
Guest:That's the other thing about Frank Zappa.
Guest:It's like he doesn't mind being silly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you did a little of that when you were playing with the sounds.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I love being silly.
Guest:It's part of your...
Guest:You know, when you were a kid, you know, really young.
Guest:And kind of the first time you hear music or you start experiencing music and the just nearly spastic response you have to it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And sometimes, you know, you'd like to be able to get back to, you know, to some sort of nursery rhyme level.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just silly things that rhyme.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but...
Guest:the kind of things that a naive mind can find enjoyment in.
Marc:Yeah, and you can do that with music too.
Marc:So you blew it all apart with that record, but then you sort of reconverge a bit.
Guest:Well, then things sort of split.
Guest:After that record, then we sort of officially founded the utopian concept.
Guest:So I had a band that I played with, and then I continued to make solo records, although most of the touring through that era was with the band.
Marc:Was there a manifesto to the utopian concept?
Guest:Yeah, it was kind of this collaborative, aggressive musical exploration again.
Guest:There were a lot of, for us as players, when you start to think of yourself as a player, you play enough to get kind of good at what you're doing.
Guest:There are these...
Guest:gravitational influences that come by.
Guest:One of them was Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Guest:That blew your mind?
Guest:It blew everybody's mind.
Guest:Not just my mind, but we were collectively blown.
Guest:And what those things do usually is open you to possibilities you didn't think of.
Guest:Playing in modes that you didn't think of before.
Guest:Creating melodies that
Guest:don't have the typical cadences that you're used to and that sort of thing.
Guest:Creating textures that are hard to pin down in terms of their tonality but add to the... Right.
Guest:It's like when Joe Zavanagh puts the ring modulator on the piano.
Guest:How the hell do you put that in standard notation?
Guest:There's so many weird harmonic things coming out.
Marc:So it was jazz, essentially...
Guest:That's what we call it.
Guest:They call it jazz fusion or fusion rock, but it was all about having those jazz chops.
Guest:After all, John McLaughlin was a famous jazz musician.
Guest:A lot of the guys that he played with had some reputation before, but weren't as well known.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I just watched I had Flea and Robert Trujillo in here.
Marc:He produced a documentary on Jocko, which I just saw.
Marc:And I didn't know.
Marc:I don't like I never registered fusion.
Marc:Like I like bebop, but fusion just never resonated with me.
Marc:So I had to go back with it in the last month and try to wrap my brain around weather report and stuff.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, there's, you know, whenever you hear like an apathem-like fusion, it always conjures up assumptions about what you're about to hear.
Guest:But these are...
Guest:Very vague reference points.
Guest:You know, that's the reason why there isn't a word or a genre that describes what I'm trying to do, although people will struggle to find one.
Marc:What do they usually label you as?
Guest:Alt rock, maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the point is, you know, rock is a thing you apply to anything that has bass and drums nowadays.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you have a problem with...
Marc:What's going on musically now?
Marc:Are there people... You must be able to find whatever you want.
Marc:But, I mean, in terms of pop music, do you feel like... You mean, do I listen to the radio?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I haven't for a long time.
Marc:Well, no one has a radio anymore.
Marc:You just kind of poke around.
Guest:No, but the point is, it's kind of... It's very weird.
Guest:Things are...
Guest:It's pretty dynamic nowadays, but a lot of it is because of social media and the fact that memes travel way faster than they used to.
Guest:It used to be literally word of mouth.
Marc:Well, before we get to that, so Utopia was this thing that you created to explore music without any boundaries.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:And personally, it was an opportunity for me to be more principally a guitar player than a singer, songwriter, frontman.
Marc:So that's going on.
Marc:That's your vacation almost.
Marc:That's your vacation.
Guest:No, it was my vocation.
Guest:We were playing arenas at that point, and we had huge productions with lasers and smoke and stuff like that.
Marc:Costumes.
Guest:That's where I met this guy back then.
Marc:Your new manager.
Guest:Right.
Yeah.
Marc:But you were still doing the solo records.
Guest:Yeah, but during the course of that, all this bombast, I'll do an album like A Hermit of McHallo.
Marc:And then you get a hit out of that.
Guest:Accidentally.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Because I didn't write a hit, it just became a hit.
Marc:But that was a big, big song.
Guest:No, it's a familiar song.
Guest:It was not a big... Can We Still Be Friends is a pretty big song.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Where did it top off?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't have that information.
Marc:I could probably find it.
Marc:Where did it top off?
Guest:If it made the top 40, I think that maybe.
Guest:U.S.
Guest:Billboard 36.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's what I mean.
Guest:I have things that people think are hits, but they're actually just fan favorites.
Marc:Well, I know the song.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's like a Beatles song or any other song.
Guest:Yeah, but also you may know it because two other artists recorded it.
Guest:Rod Stewart and Robert Palmer both recorded that song.
Marc:No, it wasn't Rod Stewart's version.
Marc:I remember your version.
Guest:I know.
Guest:But I mean, that's the reason why more people remember a song that only got to 36.
Guest:I like the song, Todd.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I don't dislike the song.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You're just saying you didn't do it on purpose.
Marc:No.
Guest:And you told me it was more important.
Guest:No.
Guest:All I'm saying is it was not a hit in the usual sense.
Marc:Do you think that most of the people, because you are a guy that has a specific following, a specific audience that stayed with you for many years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:um and and you have these two lives in in there there's something about some of the hits which can be classified as pop rock or or or uh you know softer rock and utopia is fucking you know you're a spaceman you're an astronaut where do you think you garnered most of what you're known for in terms of an audience
Guest:I would say that the larger audiences were at Utopia shows.
Guest:Sure, right, because it's the live experience.
Guest:Partly that, the big show, but we got into a certain sweet spot there, where the big production and stuff like that.
Marc:How many people on stage usually?
Marc:How many people in the band?
Marc:Only four.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Always?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:Originally, we were six...
Guest:Wait a minute, two keyboards, drums.
Guest:It's like a Parliament show.
Guest:And a synthesizer player, yeah.
Guest:It's like Parliament.
Guest:Yeah, so it's usually six people on stage.
Guest:And we would carry out big heavy sets and set them up every night.
Guest:We designed the stage in a certain way and had people doing our lights.
Guest:It was very important to production and people in those days,
Guest:I think, appreciated that idea.
Guest:Now everyone's numb to it.
Guest:Production is so intense at this point that most people are numb.
Marc:And that's a bad thing, numb.
Marc:Numb's not good.
Guest:Well, you know, it's...
Guest:don't get me started why well i'm just saying don't you know sometimes yeah you gotta get comfortably numb sure because at least for me i try to be optimistic you know and whatever i write you know is not
Guest:You know, I don't write death metal sort of thing.
Guest:I like to challenge, you know, conventional ideas.
Guest:But it's founded in a certain sort of basic...
Guest:belief that there is a better nature somewhere yeah in people yeah yet we're going through times which makes you really almost ashamed to be a human being and that's the hard part you know is to continue to search for that you know like
Guest:utopia how do well how do we justify ourselves right you know and you think through art is there's a purity to music that that enables that ability to transcend no music you know talking about music as if it's all the same is still the problem okay yeah it's like there is music that you know neo nazis like to listen to yeah you know there might be a few neo nazis that love can we still be friends yeah even that you know and they're more tender moments but you know when they're breaking down on the stand before
Guest:But otherwise, to me, it's a challenge.
Marc:To stay in that groove of hope.
Guest:Yeah, to not just go out and write a record and say,
Guest:You feckless motherfucker.
Guest:I'm just so tired of looking for what's good in you.
Guest:If you don't freaking care.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're just angry.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Give me a break.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody's got an excuse to be angry.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was that one of the reasons that, because it seems to me that in most of your performances and in a lot of the music, for me even, there's a vulnerability there, a sensitivity that's almost painful.
Marc:And it's part of what, I'm not saying that in a negative way, but I mean, it seems like some of your stagecraft is around vulnerability.
Marc:Do you feel that?
Yeah.
Guest:i'm not satisfied unless i feel like it's coming from a certain place which is what makes it so hard to sing certain songs over and over and over and over again because you get that you get numb because yeah you get numb to it and the only way you can get through it is like don't torture yourself through the song you know just do the freaking song you know right
Marc:uh yeah there is something to be said for numbness and just focusing you know yeah go numb but don't lose focus you have to be going somewhere you know right and now to talk about memes as as being somewhat uh you know destructive and part of the problem that you know the song bang the drum all day has got to be is has to be considered a meme at this point
Guest:Yeah, and it used to be an extremely lucrative meme until Carnival Cruise Line started sinking all those ships.
Marc:That's right, that was their theme song.
Guest:Yeah, now they had to change their image to I don't know what.
Marc:But I feel like it's like one of those songs that they have.
Marc:They always run on the radio or they play baseball games almost.
Marc:It's like an anthem of some kind.
Guest:Green Bay Packers.
Guest:Oh, do they?
Guest:Touchdown song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was for the Rams for a while.
Guest:I don't know if it still is, you know.
Guest:So that was it.
Guest:Yeah, for the amount of times that people hear it, you'd think I'd be a rich man.
Guest:But no.
Guest:Now, the irony of it is and the reason why I don't really care that much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was making an album at the time.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:I think it was Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect is the album that appears on.
Guest:And, you know, I was...
Guest:Not happy with my label, hence the title, which is they constantly hector you with expectations and don't see kind of what you've buried in there that they could kind of go and run with.
Guest:They want their job to be really easy.
Guest:So...
Guest:I was, at that particular point, a little cynical about the whole process, and I just look at the album as a deliverable.
Guest:But I came up with a few songs you got to write, still got to write.
Guest:So I came up with a few songs, and when I get into that moment, especially when I'm in my ideal environment, which is alone, and sometimes I don't see people for days.
Guest:In Kauai?
Guest:Well, nowadays, but that album was recorded in Mink Hollow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:where's minkawa it's uh upstate new york it's a little beyond bearsville yeah it was at the very end of a of a so you're up there and you're like i got a service no i am not in that mode i'm saying no i don't give a crap at all you know right i'm just making a deliverable here right well collect my money
Guest:And give me a deliverable and try not to think about it too much.
Guest:But what happens is when I get into the mode of writing, sometimes I write subconsciously.
Guest:In fact, most of my writing is subconscious.
Guest:It will permeate every aspect of my life as long as I'm not disturbed by something.
Guest:And so I will start to write songs in my sleep.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I don't actually write them.
Guest:They just come like completely written.
Marc:And you wake up with them and go do it.
Guest:And then I wake up and I have to remember them long enough to go do that.
Marc:Really?
Guest:And that's something-
Guest:Really?
Guest:Literally.
Guest:Exactly the way you hear the chorus, that's exactly what I dreamed.
Guest:I didn't have verses yet.
Guest:I knew I had to build verses around it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that chorus just came to me fully realized.
Guest:And that happens a lot in your life?
Guest:No, only when I'm...
Guest:When I have the luxury to be fully immersed in the process.
Guest:And that means not being disturbed by other people.
Guest:In other words, for me, see a lot of people, they thrive on interaction with other people and they get a lot of inspiration from, you know, things that get input maybe during the course of the process.
Guest:because they go into most people kind of go into the studio they don't have a whole you know like 12 15 songs all done ready to go let's just bang them out yeah it's not frank sinatra anymore you know it's you know you go in the studio it's something of a dragging things out process well if you get into that mode where there isn't you know which is opposite of the collaboration in a way where it's just internalization constant incessant internalization the only time you've actually
Guest:You know, that noise level comes down and you suddenly realize, oh, that's what I'm thinking, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't have all these other little details that are like gnats flying around you all the time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, a lot of people can, you know, somehow get to that space without having the solitude.
Guest:But when I have the solitude, that's kind of what happens.
Guest:It becomes all about just making the music all the time.
Guest:and a song will come to me in my sleep, and then I'll go and try and jot it down.
Guest:I had a song come to me in my sleep when I was in Kathmandu, and I had to visualize a piano in my head and teach myself how to play it because I was nowhere near any way to record it.
Guest:And I had to do that night after night until I got home two months later.
Guest:Did you record it on your phone?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It became the song.
Guest:Which song?
Guest:That was Lost Horizon.
Guest:And then there was a song called The Waiting Game.
Guest:It was the most incredibly complex song that I ever dreamed.
Guest:And I can't figure out how I ever managed to capture a track of it.
Guest:What album is that on?
Guest:That's on Nearly Human.
Guest:And that was like you blew your own mind.
Guest:I was in the studio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I dreamt I was in the studio producing Manhattan Transfer.
Guest:And that was the song they were singing was coming out of the speakers.
Guest:did you actually produce a manhattan transfer no i think at one point i i was approached to do that so you're dreaming you're producing yeah but they covered uh one or two of my songs too and you did almost like you you did a vocal album like that you almost did acapella yeah
Marc:Yeah, so you've tried a lot of things.
Guest:A few, yeah.
Guest:At one point, I thought I wanted to do an album with a marching band.
Guest:Why didn't you do it?
Guest:Well, Tusk came out, and they kind of- They fucked it up.
Guest:Yeah, took the bloom off the rose in a way.
Marc:I remember, am I wrong in this memory?
Marc:I think one of the first times I ever remember listening to you was I had a 45 of like a cover of Good Vibrations.
Marc:Is that possible?
Marc:That is possible.
Marc:Like it was like perfectly reproduced.
Guest:Yeah, I did an album called Faithful.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it was done in what was essentially the 10th year after I had left high school and became a professional musician.
Guest:And one side of it was a tribute to everything you would have heard in 1966.
Guest:What was coming out of the radio, what was in the boutiques, music store, and all that other stuff.
Guest:so i picked out i think a half a dozen songs that represented that right and made my own radio show i did them as literally as i could more or less as an homage yeah as an homage but also it was like as if you were listening to the radio in 1966 wow what you might have heard that was the idea yeah and you did it and then i did another side of original songs
Marc:Yeah, so I remember having that 45.
Marc:So now, like, are you exhausted?
Marc:Is your cynicism invading?
Marc:Because I know you keep, I mean, you put out a record every year almost.
Guest:Mentally, I'm not exhausted, no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Being on the road is exhausting.
Marc:Do you have to do it?
Marc:Sorry, we can pretend like your manager's not here.
Guest:No, he's heard all this already.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, being on the road works for me in a certain way.
Guest:You like it.
Guest:But the problem is I have two gigs now, at least for the last four years, which is whatever I do as Todd Rundgren, and whatever I do with Ringo and the All-Stars, which is at least two or three months a year, and some years has been more than that.
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:He's doing great, as far as I know.
Guest:I haven't seen him yet this week.
Guest:And what happened with the Cars thing?
Guest:Ah, that was sad.
Guest:There were possibilities there, I think.
Marc:You were approached by a couple of the guys?
Guest:I was approached by Elliot, whom I knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they approached me.
Guest:I guess they approached a couple people, but they thought it might work.
Guest:We did a little bit of a run-through in a studio here in LA, and we thought, okay, let's give this a try.
Guest:We'll incorporate...
Guest:That's the new cars.
Guest:Rick would not let us use the cars as a name.
Guest:So that hobbled things a little bit because people are thinking, is this the old cars or just a different, you know?
Marc:Was he mad, Ocasek?
Guest:Was he mad?
Yeah.
Guest:Jealous?
Guest:Jealous.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, it's funny.
Guest:Stephen Colbert made a whole freaking riff about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Something to do with me being in the new cars and Rico Kasich, you know, like trying to assassinate me or something.
Guest:I don't remember what it was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was pretty hysterical for a while to hear your name just pulled out of the blue.
Guest:But you guys toured?
Guest:No, we never...
Guest:You didn't hear this?
Guest:I don't pay that much attention.
Guest:We were so heavily invested in this.
Guest:We financed the whole thing on a giant merchandising advance.
Guest:We're about two, two and a half weeks on the road, and I wasn't there at the time because I was hanging out with my son in Cleveland and was going to fly to the next gig.
Guest:But the bus is pulling into Washington.
Guest:Somebody, some jerk-off, you know, doesn't think a bus is a big deal, and pulls in front of the bus without signaling.
Guest:The bus driver slams on the brake.
Guest:Elliot has just woken up to go to the John.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He gets thrown against the bulkhead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Breaks his collarbone.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He soldiers on for like another three gigs, but if you look at his, you know, over here, the bone is starting to...
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Poke up.
Guest:See, fortunately, he's left-handed, so the strap was on the other side.
Guest:But eventually, the doctor says, this is crazy.
Guest:You have to have surgery.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that was just the end of the day.
Guest:And recuperation and stuff.
Guest:So essentially, two and a half weeks into what was supposed to be like three months.
Guest:Is he all right now?
Guest:And lost all of our investment and everything in it.
Guest:Sorry, buddy.
Guest:That's ancient history.
Guest:Is Elliot already?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:And the one thing I didn't cover- Greg plays with me all the time, and whenever I see Elliot, we have a good time together.
Guest:There's nothing- I mean, between the guys and the band, there was never any sort of- Right, right.
Guest:It's just bad luck.
Guest:Yeah, bad luck.
Marc:So I didn't ask you about the, like, you know, I listened to when I found out you produced that New York Dolls first record.
Marc:I listened to that a lot, too.
Marc:I really try to identify it because I've talked to a couple of producers and it seems like that you actually, when you do produce, you like some guys are like, you know, I'm just going to get out of the way.
Marc:But it seems like, you know, you actually make things clearer.
Yeah.
Guest:my philosophy is you do what you have to do it isn't like doing a certain thing right because every band's or every act you know it's not always a band but they always come to the studio with strengths and weaknesses and things you can count on and things that maybe you know you're not sure you can count on right like for instance the songwriting yeah at a certain point
Guest:Well, up to a certain point.
Guest:I thought, well, if the band comes in the studio and they don't actually have the songwriting all together, I will ghostwrite for them.
Marc:Yeah, and they don't mind that usually?
Guest:Well, they want to get the record done and get paid.
Guest:And if they don't have any other ideas, yeah, you kind of have to do that.
Marc:But do a lot of them go like, oh, shit, you made it better most of the time?
Marc:Or is it most of the time like, oh, Christ, Rundgren wants to...
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:If they have something, I'd always rather use what they have, but they'd have nothing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's the problem.
Guest:You got a song, you got all these great chords, no lyrics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Somebody's got to write some lyrics eventually to this song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you don't come up with some, we're going to get this done.
Yeah.
Guest:so you know i mean the example would be like remote control the album that i did first album i did with the tubes yeah lots and lots of great musical ideas but no kind of overarching concept so i kind of had to invent a lot of that for them and
Guest:And nobody's particularly bothered about that.
Guest:I think for them being still at the time essentially a theatrical act, they're looking for music to turn into a show.
Guest:And so there's not a whole lot of...
Guest:Especially if I'm ghostwriting, because I'm not taking any freaking royalties.
Marc:Well, what about someone like XTC, when you produce them?
Marc:And they're a pretty together outfit.
Guest:Together in the sense that, yeah, there's a lot of music to work with there.
Guest:I kind of got lucky, because I caught them at a point of vulnerability.
Guest:Because they'd already... When I say they, we mean Andy.
Guest:Let's face it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a band, but essentially Andy was the one who called the shots most of the time.
Guest:Probably the guy that said to Colin, hey, let's make a band.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was contacted by their label, by the A&R man at the label, and said, well, you know, their records have been selling less and less.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And costing more and more, you know.
Guest:And I knew about the band.
Guest:I was a big fan of the band, and I knew about their history.
Guest:You know, why don't they ever perform?
Guest:Well, it's because Andy has debilitating agoraphobia or something like that.
Guest:You know, he can't get stage fright, can't play.
Guest:And also that he was notorious for driving his own producers out of the studio with his constant sort of anal demands and things like that.
Guest:I mean, eventually you got another project you gotta do.
Guest:You can't mix this album for another year.
Guest:So I knew about the situation.
Guest:I had been listening to their music anyway, even before they even approached me.
Guest:You were a fan?
Guest:I was a fan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I also knew what was wrong with the records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was listening to them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And essentially, what was wrong is that Andy had too much of a free hand.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And the reason why Andy had too much of a free hand or why so much time was being invested in these remakes and stuff is because they never played live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Once the album was over, the fun was done.
Guest:You go home, you sit around until you come up with another album.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Unlike most musicians.
Guest:You go tour the record.
Guest:Who go out and play the record and stuff like that.
Guest:So they didn't mind if it took forever, or at least he didn't mind if it took forever to make a record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, I knew from listening to the records, they were getting more and more anal.
Guest:The sound of them was getting, in a subjective sense, worse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for reasons that wouldn't be obvious to most people.
Right.
Guest:There's a thing called psychoacoustics, which has nothing to do with the actual music that's happening, but with the kind of stress that sound puts on you.
Guest:So, for instance, if you mix the vocals at just that level, you can just kind of hear them.
Guest:Psycho-acoustically, you are squinting through the record.
Guest:Right, why can't I hear that guy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, and plus, you know, he's like...
Guest:The process usually is you go in the studio, spend a day mixing a song, you take it home, and then you listen to it more.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At least that's essentially Andy's process, listening to it to see whether there's something else you can do to it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he comes back the next day, he's got an idea for something else to do to it.
Guest:And usually what that is is to take out more air, to fill in some space with more sound.
Guest:I don't think the hi-hat is high enough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:let's make that even higher you know so he's anal and he's yeah and the bass is not like low enough so you wind up with like you know if you were look looking at it on a spectrometer or something like that spectrum analyzer right it would be completely flat right across there you know because like every freaking space is filled in right with sound and you don't realize how hard it is to listen to that yeah
Guest:Because you're constantly straining to pick things out of it.
Guest:And so they had completely lost track of that as well.
Guest:And fortunately, as I say, it caught them at a vulnerable point.
Guest:They didn't know exactly what to do.
Guest:They had gotten an ultimatum from the label.
Guest:Which record was it?
Guest:Skylarking.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So they had done like what?
Marc:Three records?
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:More than that.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So they were vulnerable, they were in trouble?
Guest:They were a little bit in trouble and vulnerable, and they just sent me their song demos.
Guest:And I listened to the songs, and this whole idea of a song cycle came to me, that you could make it all a piece like it's from...
Guest:Dawn till dusk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It could be a day or it could be a week or it could be a year.
Guest:It could be a lifetime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, traveling through all these phases, but it's coming from one place and going to another place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I essentially took a reel of tape, and I did it before with an album with the tubes where we kind of mapped everything out beforehand.
Guest:Mapped out all the tempos, came up with a running order before we ever recorded anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The only question was refining tempos and then doing some overdubs, laying some stuff.
Guest:We went to San Francisco, laid on all the drums and orchestras and things like that.
Guest:Came back, did a few more vocals in Woodstock.
Guest:But essentially, it was kind of preordained by me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The order.
Guest:What the record was going to be like, which is something that they never had endured before.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so they trusted you.
Guest:I think 60% of the band trusted me.
Guest:Andy never trusted me.
Guest:Was he happy with the record?
Guest:Initially, no.
Guest:He went back to England immediately after we finished the record and took every press opportunity to say it was the worst record they ever made.
Guest:He hated me at that point, and he was willing to sabotage his own career immediately.
Guest:through his vitriol over me and the fact that I did not give up what I said I was going to do at the beginning of the record.
Guest:I said, I'm going to be here at the end of the record.
Guest:You may have driven these other producers off.
Guest:I'm going to be here when this record is done.
Guest:All right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And lo and behold, we got through three mixes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We got back to my studio, three mixes, and they went home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They went back to England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Said they were homesick.
Guest:Said there was something wrong with the well water.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To explain whatever, you know.
Guest:But in any case, I finished mixing the album myself without Andy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Without anyone looking over my shoulder.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And delivered the record.
Guest:And then what happened was...
Guest:and it was perfect at that point yeah it was a perfect record you know took it to greg calvey one of the world's premier masterers sterling sound in new york and we got the best master we could possibly get out of it we delivered it i hear a couple weeks later okay we're going to change the running order on the record we're taking dear god off the record
Guest:yeah we're going to take the hit record off the record right that's andy that's andy and his a and r man andy because he was afraid that you know he would like there would be repercussions personally for him for taking on such a thorny subject what a pussy yeah and then the a and r man who didn't like it because there was a child singing on it and he hated children singing on the records so you had to fight that fight
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, I did.
Guest:See, I never do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I deliver the record.
Guest:So I'm here to make the product.
Guest:You have to market the product.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You figure that out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I did call him and said, this is a mistake.
Guest:To take this off, to put on this other crappy song that Andy made us record called Another Satellite had nothing to do with the record at all.
Guest:He made us essentially re-record his demo note for note.
Guest:Just to mollify him, we did it.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:But the point is it had nothing to do with the record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Was not in the running order.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he decided to take Dear God off so he could stick that stupid song on there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Next thing you know, they put Dear God on the B side of grass, what's supposed to be the first single.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody flips the record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dear God becomes like a giant phenomenon, saves their career.
Guest:They have to go and remask the record again and put Dear God back on it.
Guest:Your mix.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, there were no other mixes.
Guest:There were only changes in running order.
Guest:Did he thank you?
Guest:No, he did not.
Guest:What he did was he's such a...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Such a brat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even at his age, he's such a brat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That he's decided that his campaign is the original record was not mastered properly.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:That there was something out of phase in the original record and these new vinyl releases that I've just come out with have fixed that.
Guest:Which is essentially him trying to impugn me, but not just me, Greg Calbee, one of the world's, somebody who's mastered every record you've ever heard of.
Marc:Did they make a mess of it?
Marc:I mean, they re-released it?
Guest:Well, if there was something, I think it's just total bullshit.
Guest:They did nothing.
Guest:Complete bullshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But if such a thing existed, it's because they changed the running owner of the record and had to remaster it.
Yeah.
Guest:Which I had nothing to do with.
Guest:That's fucking ridiculous.
Guest:What a prick.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And nothing's happened in the 30 years since.
Guest:Since what?
Guest:Since Skylarking.
Marc:It's been that long?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:But you keep working.
Marc:When was the last full record you put out?
Marc:It was called Global.
Marc:It's sort of like I listen to some of that.
Marc:So synthesizers, it's almost dance music, right?
Guest:There's a bit of EDM, but it isn't as EDM as the one before.
Guest:And how did those do for you?
Guest:We had great shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we're independently distributed now.
Guest:So it's really not like the good old days.
Guest:But then that's a new reality.
Guest:Selling recorded music...
Guest:People used to think that was what music is, what the goal is.
Guest:From an artist standpoint,
Guest:Under that old commoditized model, you're selling a thing, an object you can hold.
Marc:I'm buying records.
Guest:Yeah, but the artist and whoever recorded that record, depending on the deal he got, could be making like five cents.
Guest:Library game?
Guest:God knows.
Guest:They were issued Runt.
Guest:Do you get any of that?
Guest:I don't even know what the terms of that are, but I would guarantee you that original...
Guest:Under the old commoditized model, there are all these so-called material expenses.
Guest:The actual manufacturing of the product and the carting the product to the retailers where it gets sold and stuff like that.
Guest:And that was considered to be...
Guest:considerably significant aspect of the process plus the label figures you know our expertise in terms of promotion the fact that we're a bank for you yeah you know we loan you money to make these projects right and things like that that justifies a major participation by us right you know we should be able to take a lot of money back
Marc:But when they reissue a record like Run, whoever bought the rights to that material, because it's not the label anymore.
Marc:No, it isn't.
Guest:But I'm trying to make the distinction between a commodity and a service.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And...
Guest:What we have now is, and what I've always believed was the proper model, is more of a service model.
Guest:Music is a service.
Guest:You pay Rhapsody $10 a month, you listen to anything you want.
Guest:The idea of ownership of music never was real.
Guest:You owned a piece of plastic, but until you put it on the...
Guest:table yeah that didn't have the value that the artist intended right which was for you to hear it yeah so people with giant racks and racks of vinyl doesn't mean crap right yeah anyway okay you got the thing but you're not hearing the music you know got a lot of things yeah
Guest:We all got things.
Guest:So, you know, from that standpoint, I'm perfectly happy with the service model.
Guest:But we're still in this phase where, you know, figuring out how to compensate people for the service model.
Guest:It's much easier to keep track of a thing than it is bits flying through the air.
Marc:And it's easier to pirate bits.
Guest:but also you know we're reevaluating where the value is right you know and a lot of it's in the live performing again right as i say the greatest value is in live performance you know whatever small percentage 12 if you're lucky if it's michael jackson 20 maybe of the recorded song you get 80 of the ticket price right and it costs at least twice as much for a concert ticket
Guest:So that's where your payoff always was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The music is promotion, and a lot of bands have started to realize that.
Guest:And T-shirts.
Guest:T-shirts are big.
Guest:T-shirts.
Guest:And if you want to sell CDs, at your merch table.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many CDs do you think Jimmy Buffett sells not at his merch table?
Guest:none exactly so you know i mean bands like radiohead they realize this you know yeah pay whatever you want for the record download the music and pay whatever you want but they realize that that's going to encourage them to buy concert tickets right and other merch and stuff like that the music recorded music was always promotion for the live performance right and
Marc:Now, okay, in closing, you produced Grand Funks.
Marc:We're an American band, did you?
Marc:Yes, I did.
Marc:Was the cowbell your idea?
Marc:Likely.
Marc:More cowbell.
Marc:More cowbell.
Marc:Thanks for talking, Todd.
Marc:My pleasure.
Marc:Wow, right?
Marc:Good stories, man.
Marc:He's a little prickly, but I enjoy talking to him.
Marc:That Todd Rundgren.
Marc:It's always nice to have to sit as audience with a genius.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Check my schedule.
Marc:I'm going to be in...
Marc:Mission Creek Festival at the Ingler Theater in Iowa City on April 8th.
Marc:The Lococo Theater in Lincoln, Nebraska April 9th.
Marc:And Harvest Bank Theater at the Midland in Kansas City, Missouri on April 10th.
Marc:The last I heard, that one's a little weak, a little slow, so come on out.
Marc:It doesn't matter to me if it's just me and 50, 60 a year in a place that seats however many thousand.
Marc:It'll be interesting.
Marc:It'll be a little intimate and
Marc:And it'll be hard to transcend the weird sadness and absence of others, but it will be an experience that none of us will forget.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives!