Todd Rundgren, His Music and “Psychonautics"

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

iHeartPodcasts

Tv & Film, Music, Music Interviews, Arts, Performing Arts, Film Interviews

4.4 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Todd Rundgren is in a class all his own. Whether scoring Top 40 hits, playing all of the instruments on his albums or wildly experimenting with musical genres, Rundgren is continuously pushing the boundaries of creativity. That ethos and ingenuity can be found in his numerous solo albums from the 70s to present day, with his band Utopia and as a record producer for musicians like Patti Smith, The Psychedelic Furs and MeatLoaf. The trailblazing Rundgren is also a pioneer in computer technology and multimedia – creating the first color graphics tablet, first interactive album and first interactive concert tour. Todd Rundgren tells Alec how he pulls off making the music he wants to make, how he almost changed careers to become a computer programmer and how psychedelics helped him rethink music completely.

You can listen to all of the music from this episode and other selections from Todd Rundgren in a curated playlist here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from I Heart Radio.
0:26.4	You artists come close to the prolific accomplishments and influence on future generations.
0:33.5	As my guest today, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Todd Rungren.
0:41.8	Following his work in the band Nas, Rungren went solo and received widespread acclaim
0:48.0	with his 1972 double album Something Anything.
0:53.8	Run, wrote, produced and played almost every instrument on the album.
0:58.7	It landed him a top 10 hit with Hello It's Me and features this track, High Soul of Light.
1:06.9	Something Anything brought Rungren such commercial success that in its way key abandoned conventional
1:13.5	pop music to push the boundaries of his creativity.
1:18.3	The resulting album A Wizard of True Star was influenced by Soul, Jazz, Funk and various
1:25.8	psychedelics.
1:27.6	The album established Rungren as a pioneer of Prague Rock and Electronic Music.
1:34.4	Todd Rungren continued to explore musical styles in his numerous solo releases and with
1:40.4	his band Utopia.
1:42.4	He was also innovative behind the scenes with computer technology and as a prominent producer
1:48.7	for bands like XTC, The New York Dolls and Meatloaf.
1:54.0	I sort of backed into producing.
1:56.3	It was an unusual situation and I started very young and I had a band in Philadelphia and
2:04.2	we got signed when I was like 19 years old.
2:08.5	I was very much into what goes into making records and we thought that English producers
2:14.9	were better than American producers.
2:17.5	We didn't really know what a producer did and we thought he was responsible mostly for
	...

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