As he tours the UK, the musician answers your questions on making Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf, squabbles with XTC and the Band, and wiring his studio while highI Saw the Light is extraordinarily brilliant. How did you write it? Eamonmcc
I was still learning about songwriting and by the time I got to Something/Anything? [1972, featuring I Saw the Light] I was slipping into formula – verse, chorus, bridge and so on, always about the girl or boy who broke your heart. I moved my hands about the keyboard and 20 minutes later that song was done. It’s partly why I went completely off the grid for my next album, A Wizard, a True Star [1973] – because I realised I couldn’t keep cranking out songs in 20 minutes about that one relationship in high school. The prettiest girl in school had suddenly taken a shine to me – I think because I had long hair, which was also the reason her dad made her break up with me, which messed me up pretty bad.Wikipedia says A Wizard, a True Star was “heavily informed by Rundgren’s hallucinogenic experiences”. Were you actually taking LSD? mjhmjh
I didn’t smoke or drink anything until my first album [Runt, in 1970]. In my first band they’d smoke pot and the rehearsal would turn into a 30-minute giggling session. Then, when I was 21 I was living in [rhythm section] the Sales brothers’ house and their mom said “I can’t believe you’ve never had a drink” and got me drunk. Then my best friend who was studying to be a psychiatrist suggested I try psychoactives. I trusted him implicitly, so I did. I was taking drugs occasionally throughout the building of the studio. Not when we were doing the music – I had to run the sessions – but I remember lying on my back as high as a kite trying to do the wiring. Through psychoactives I discovered there was more going on in my head than that high school relationship. Continue reading...
Saturday 18 October 2025
theguardian - 2 days ago
Pop-rock wizard Todd Rundgren: ‘When I met John Lennon, he was a bundle of rags with nothing to say’
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