the wasted motions of teaching the engineers their own jobs, Todd taught himself with a resigned sigh at the inability of recording "professionals" to keep up with their own technology.
When the Bearsville label became a reality, Todd evolved into a kind of resident production trouble shooter and was soon flying all over North America to take care of business. In the next couple of years, he produced Ian and Sylvia's Great Speckled Bird, Jericho, a James Cotton album, a Moogy Klingman album, a Paul Butterfield album, the first Halfnelson album, and engineered for The Band (STAGE FRIGHT) and Jesse Winchester.
Todd had also been writing, material considerably less explosive and more personal than his Nazz songs and conceived of a loosely, organized "group" called Runt in which he would be the only real constant, as producer, arranger, writer and multi-instrumentalist and vocalist
Runt is an album of questions, secrets, promises, and trying hard to make things work within the possibility of them always falling apart. It has rocking experiments like "I'm In The Clique", and ballads like "Believe In Me". Todd's voice is self-assured, the arrangements simple, clear, melodic. His instrumental abilities on guitar, piano, and percussion lend presence to the music rather than ego, and in his first hit, "We Gotta Get You A Woman" there is the first glimpse of a Rundgren persona.
Ironically, "We Gotta Get You A Woman" was so teenage and easy to take that on the basis of the hit alone, many were led to believe Todd a contender in the teeny sweepstakes, a Bobby Sherman with talent. His "image" was too honest and straight forward to be heavy. It was necessary to hear "I'm In The Clique", "Devils Bite", and the "Baby let's Swing" medley to appreciate most completely the multiplicity of the newest Rundgren.
By late 1971, with Todd and Jesse Winchester having attracted about as much attention as Ampex in its death throes could stimulate, Bearsville had signed a new distribution deal with Warner/Reprise, and went to work establishing itself as a small company with big artists, while Todd prepared for his biggest assault on the music media yet.
He had recently undertaken to produce Badfinger when George Harrison's Bangla Desh commitments left them once again without a sympathetic ear.
Even before his mixing mastery had given them their third and fourth hits in "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue" respectively, Todd's reputation was at an all time high. He was in some danger, however, of his ideas and talent as an artist being kept in the shadow of his increasingly requested ear, so SOMETHING/ANYTHING was a two record tour de force of musicianly ego that excited much controversy among critics and thrilled more record buyers than either of the Runt albums.
On the first three sides, as is now rock history, Todd played all the instruments himself, commenting to Ben Edmonds of Creem "that the whole thing is just a dense arrangement of simple parts. I'm trying to show people what they can do themselves - to understand the inherent simplicity in things that seem complicated."
Todd wanted to give a complete account of what he could do, rather than a perfect one. On the last side, Todd's ability to work with other musicians on short notice. was exemplified by a Pop Operetta including a reworked "Hello It's Me", now a smash single. For this impromptu extravaganza, recording as you hear it, Todd brought in Rick Derringer, Randy Brecker, Billy Mundi, Bugsy Maugh, Ben Keith and Jim Horn, testifying to the breadth of his acquaintance in the music world.
Less than a year ago, Todd talked about, his then new album, A WIZARD, A TRUE STAR, on which the Utopian ideal he is advancing first became manifest."For a while I was into vocals," he understates, "but now
I'm getting away from a standard vocal approach. I'm less into singing words and more into maximizing the instrumental, because once people think they know where you're at, they're sure that's where you should be. As soon as people start to expect something from me, I feel compelled to do something else..."
Todd revealed a higher purpose to" Ben Edmonds last summer, "It's hard for me to say that what I'm doing isn't even really music, because deep inside of me, what I want to do is much greater than music. Music is the way I understand how to communicate now, the way that I've learned how to communicate ... but it will eventually have to go beyond that... You see I've realized that music is not what keeps people involved - it's the attitude behind the music."
And even more specifically, he told Rock Magazine's Anne Marie Micklo, "There's a certain level of communication that people just aren't using, and the place I'm going involves turning that on. Once I do, it'll be easy for everybody to understand it, it'll be easy for everyone to get to that place, too. That's what I'm doing musically ... Two or three albums from now people will realize it. They'll realize that my music is like a map to get to that place."
Todd Rundgren, an articulate inquiring rock executive almost in spite of himself, has managed to maintain his dignity and his capacity for feeling without ever having had to project the viciousness of attitude that makes much contemporary rock and roll work. If this isn't enough of an accomplishment, then simply consider this: is there anyone else around who sings so sweetly, who plays so beboppin' bad, or speaks as intelligently of a life past thirty who's willing to state unequivocally: The Dream Goes on Forever?