Todd Rundgren – Underappreciated Rock Icon

Truly one of the most innovative and under-appreciated artists of the rock world, Todd Rundgren has led the way into the future of recorded music for over thirty years.  While the measure of success as we know it is calculated in how many gold and platinum records an artist can sell or how many top 10 chart records he scores, the true measure of the achievements of Todd Rundgren can be seen in a number of “firsts” that he has created.  He is a true pioneer of what we now take for granted as rock videos and interactive CDs.  The career of Todd Rundgren has taken him from garage band, to producer, to master of technology that is used by thousands, if not millions of artists and fans from around the world.

Playing rock ‘n’ roll since his high school days in local bands in the Philadelphia area, he formed his first serious group The Nazz in 1967.  Their first “hit” was “Hello, It’s Me” that made local radio chards but failed to achieve national acclaim and the band broke up by 1969.  His next band, Runt, hit the US top 20 in 1971 with the single “We Gotta Get You A Woman” and Rundgren had now become involved in production and the engineering aspects of the recording industry.  He began working on projects for Badfinger, The Band, Paul Butterfield, James Cotton, the all girl rockers Fanny and Grand Funk Railroad.  He also embarked on a solo career and released the album Something/Anything in ’72, playing all the instruments and over-dubbing his own voice to create his most successful project to date.  The album yielded two top-20 singles, “I saw the Light” #16-1972 and a new version of “Hello, It’s Me” that peaked at #5 in ’73.  his fan base was growing and the album peaked at #29 on the charts.  While he released two more solo projects to critical acclaim, he didn’t find the chart success that he had enjoyed with Something/Anything.  Always the innovator, Rundgren formed his next group Utopia that played a new more progressive blend of rock mixed in with expansive instrumental tracks.  The musicians that joined him, Kasim Sultan, Roger Powell and Willie Wilcox were highly skilled players who could carry out the music both live and in the studio with perfection and their fan base grew with each album.  They went on to record eleven albums together.

As a producer, Rundgren was acknowledged as a genius.  His success with Grand Funk Railroad led to opportunities with The Tubes, Patty Smith and a new un-known theatrical outcast named Meatloaf.  Released in 1978, Bat Out of Hell went on to become one of the biggest selling albums of all time and created a legend out of all associated with the project, namely Meatloaf, Jim Steinman and Todd Rundgren.

By the early ‘80s, Rundgren had become infatuated with the technology of video and began creating enhanced music videos via computer before there was an MTV.  He also toured as a solo act, at times backed by his videos and pre-taped musical arrangements, totally unheard of in those days.  By the early 90s he had created the first interactive music CD that allowed the listener the ability to reshape the songs into alternative versions.

Back To Homepage