The poobahs who run the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame finally got around to admitting Todd Rundgren this year, in his 25th year of eligibility as a solo artist. That says a lot more about the people making these decisions than it does about Todd Rundgren, who has disdained the institution from the first.
“I’ve never taken it seriously … When they decided that this was a good idea, I already had like three careers (laughs). So personally, I never saw that kind of acknowledgment — you know, just some arbitrary bunch of people get together and hand out awards at a fancy event according to rules nobody really understands. I never cared about it. I have made no secret about that. For years, I have tried to get [my audience] to be realistic about it. But for years, they felt it was an important thing for them, for me to be up there.”
Most people remember Rundgren because of his 1983 song “Bang on the Drum All Day,” a classic-rock and NFL-stadium staple that made Rundgren a bundle when he let Carnival Cruise Lines build its advertising around it in the ’90s. As most fans from around here know, Rundgren co-founded one of the Philly area’s first nationally successful rock bands. Nazz burst onto the scene in 1967, playing its first gig opening for the Doors in Philadelphia, wearing their British Invasion influences on their ruffled sleeves. Rundgren was the guitarist and primary songwriter, but the band came apart when Rundgren entered what he has called his “Laura Nyro period,” represented by the soul-influenced soft rock of his first two solo albums in the early ’70s.
He broke out of that phase with 1972’s one-man tour de force “Something/Anything?” a double LP which featured Rundgren playing all the instruments on the first three genre-spanning sides and leading a live-in-studio band on the fourth. He said he learned to play bass and drums because it was no harder than trying to explain what he wanted to studio musicians. This song from side 3, The Kid Gets Heavy (each side was subtitled), isn’t as widely known as the LP’s hits, “I Saw the Light” and a remake of the Nazz tune “Hello It’s Me,” but it’s considered one of the foundation stones of power pop.
Rundgren quickly moved on to progressive rock, both solo and with his band Utopia. He was also a sought-after producer in the ’70s and ’80s. He was just 21 when he recorded the Band’s “Stage Fright,” and went on to produce hit albums for Grand Funk Railroad (“We’re an American Band”), Badfinger (“Straight Up”) and Meat Loaf (“Bat Out of Hell”) and worked with everyone from XTC to Patti Smith to the Tubes.
I dunno about you, but it sounds like a first-ballot Hall of Famer to me.