Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Todd Rundgren

Transcript

Todd Rundgren · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Todd Rundgren is a multi talented musician who has
0:27
Speaker 1: made a name for himself both as a solo artist
0:30
Speaker 1: and a visionary music producers. Rundgren's career started in Philly
0:50
Speaker 1: in the mid sixties as part of the garage rock
0:52
Speaker 1: band The Naz. After playing lead guitar in the band
0:56
Speaker 1: for two years, Rundgren left to pursue a solo career,
0:59
Speaker 1: and over the next two decades worked as a producer
1:01
Speaker 1: for bands like Grand Funk, Railroad, Bad Finger, and The
1:05
Speaker 1: New York Dolls. But Rundegren's crowning achievement was producing Meatloaf's
1:09
Speaker 1: Bat Out of Hell album, which is to this day
1:12
Speaker 1: one of the highest selling albums of all time. But
1:15
Speaker 1: now Rundgren is far away from the spotlight. In Hawaii,
1:19
Speaker 1: he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
1:21
Speaker 1: Famous past October, but skipped out on the ceremony to
1:24
Speaker 1: play a local club down the street instead. He also
1:27
Speaker 1: spent many months recording vocals for Kanye's Donda, but eventually
1:31
Speaker 1: bowed out of that as well. He is busy working
1:34
Speaker 1: on an album of his own, however, a collaborative project
1:37
Speaker 1: called Space Force with artists like Sparks, Rivers, Cuomo, and
1:41
Speaker 1: Ben Folds that'll be out later this year. On today's episode,
1:45
Speaker 1: we'll hear a conversation Rick Rubin had with run Gren
1:48
Speaker 1: just weeks before the start of the pandemic. They talk
1:51
Speaker 1: about why he was the only producer who would work
1:53
Speaker 1: on the debut album for Meatloaf, who just recently passed away.
1:57
Speaker 1: Todd also talks about engineering the third album for the
1:59
Speaker 1: band when the group was in the midst of turmoil,
2:02
Speaker 1: and why he always turns off Taylor Swift's music. This
2:09
Speaker 1: is broken record line of notes for the digital Age.
2:11
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin and Todd Rundergren. I've
2:20
Speaker 1: been going on. I'm in the middle of doing another
2:23
Speaker 1: collab record. So just in the last two weeks, I
2:27
Speaker 1: got stuff from Sparks Cool, Adrian Blue's new band that
2:32
Speaker 1: I've done a little work with called Lemon Twigs. Ben
2:35
Speaker 1: Folds sent me like ten things and I gotta pick
2:38
Speaker 1: one to focus on. How long have you been doing
2:41
Speaker 1: collaborations like this? Well, my last album was pretty much
2:44
Speaker 1: you know, it was mostly all collaborations, some songs by myself.
2:47
Speaker 1: But I made a conscious decision because I've been making
2:50
Speaker 1: all my records out here, I make them by myself,
2:53
Speaker 1: you know, in my own echo chamber. So I thought,
2:55
Speaker 1: I'm get some more influence in here, do some audience expansion.
3:00
Speaker 1: Does it always start by them sending you something? It
3:03
Speaker 1: was all different, at least the last time. It was different,
3:06
Speaker 1: different methods, Like, for instance, Robin, I thought, you know,
3:09
Speaker 1: maybe I can get Robin to do this song. I
3:12
Speaker 1: think she writes, but I just sent her the song,
3:15
Speaker 1: said you're interested in She said, yeah, I like the song,
3:17
Speaker 1: I'll do the song. So in that particular interstance, it
3:20
Speaker 1: was simply like I did the whole recording and she
3:23
Speaker 1: did the vocals on it. And there were ones in
3:28
Speaker 1: which somebody would send me something like Joe Walsh sent
3:33
Speaker 1: me a track that It's almost always like something that
3:37
Speaker 1: they were working on that went more abund you know.
3:39
Speaker 1: So you get excited at the beginning, and then somewhere
3:43
Speaker 1: in the middle of the process you kind of need
3:46
Speaker 1: to move on to something else or you lose interest
3:48
Speaker 1: in it. So a lot of people have these half
3:50
Speaker 1: finished things laying around, and those are actually the most
3:53
Speaker 1: fun for me because it's their idea. But it's still
3:57
Speaker 1: room for me to do something with it because it's
4:01
Speaker 1: not completely finished. Even that can take different sort of turns.
4:06
Speaker 1: Like Ben Fold sent me about a dozen very of
4:09
Speaker 1: a song that he does live, which turns out to
4:12
Speaker 1: be different every single night. It's called like rock this
4:15
Speaker 1: Bitch or something like that. It just turned out to
4:19
Speaker 1: be a gag that he does in all of his shows.
4:21
Speaker 1: And then he makes a song up on the spot
4:25
Speaker 1: but somewhere and they say, we're going to rock this
4:27
Speaker 1: Bitch in Norfolk tonight, you know, something like that. So
4:32
Speaker 1: they said, all I got to do is like find
4:34
Speaker 1: one get rid of the rock this Bitch part, figure
4:37
Speaker 1: out something else about you know what it's about, and
4:41
Speaker 1: we'll have a song somehow. But it's you know, it's
4:44
Speaker 1: not the same as doing your own record because I
4:46
Speaker 1: have control over the timeline. When you start involving other artists,
4:50
Speaker 1: it's harder to make demands and say finished this now
4:54
Speaker 1: because my record label wants to release it. Only certain
4:58
Speaker 1: artists are first of all willing to collaborate, and then
5:01
Speaker 1: sometimes there are conflicting schedules, like I think I'm doing
5:06
Speaker 1: something with Thomas Dolbium. Before he couldn't do it as
5:09
Speaker 1: he was too busy doing something else. But now he's
5:12
Speaker 1: got a window. So he didn't do anything for the
5:14
Speaker 1: first record, but we may get something done for this one.
5:17
Speaker 1: That's actually an interesting idea instead of them always being
5:22
Speaker 1: different artists really having a distant band you and one
5:26
Speaker 1: other artist. Yeah, it's hard to find artists that are
5:29
Speaker 1: fully comfortable with this process. Even a lot of the
5:32
Speaker 1: people that I assume you know, have the technical wherewithal
5:38
Speaker 1: to do things like runoff stems and stuff like that,
5:42
Speaker 1: you often find that they depend on an engineer to do,
5:45
Speaker 1: you know, to keep track of where stuff is and
5:47
Speaker 1: to run stuff off. That's an extra layer that you
5:50
Speaker 1: have to go through. So ideally you find an artist
5:53
Speaker 1: who is as experienced with the stuff as you are
5:57
Speaker 1: and it just like take what you give him, turn
5:59
Speaker 1: it around, send it back. In that sense, I can
6:02
Speaker 1: clear up any issues on my end ye by myself,
6:05
Speaker 1: because I can engineer. But maybe someone you can cast
6:09
Speaker 1: in that role who you really like, you know, someone
6:11
Speaker 1: whose music you love, would feel like fun to do
6:15
Speaker 1: that all, Well, it's funny. They're like, you know that
6:17
Speaker 1: there's a lot of music out there, Like for instance,
6:19
Speaker 1: Trent Resner on the last record he sent me a
6:23
Speaker 1: whole album's worth of stuff because he and Atticus Ross
6:29
Speaker 1: do a lot of film and TV soundtrack work, and
6:32
Speaker 1: so they just archive stuff. They come up with an idea,
6:35
Speaker 1: something that would be a mood for a film, and
6:39
Speaker 1: then the archive it. So when I asked him if
6:41
Speaker 1: he had anything, he sent me like almost two dozen
6:44
Speaker 1: of these various themes, you know, and said pick one.
6:48
Speaker 1: None of them had any lyrics or anything on him. So, yeah,
6:51
Speaker 1: it's funny. The last record, there was only one what
6:54
Speaker 1: you would consider traditional collaboration, and that was just a coincidence.
7:00
Speaker 1: I was pretty much done the record and I had
7:03
Speaker 1: this one orphan track and I didn't know what to
7:05
Speaker 1: do with it, and I was just going to leave it.
7:08
Speaker 1: And Donald Fagan was on the island and we were
7:12
Speaker 1: out at dinner and I said, oh, I got this
7:14
Speaker 1: orphan track. You know, I'm about to deliver my records.
7:16
Speaker 1: You want to listen to it? He said sure, And
7:18
Speaker 1: I thought it was a steely Danish kind of thing anyway,
7:20
Speaker 1: a little bit jazzy. So I sent it to him
7:23
Speaker 1: and the next day he starts sending back titles, you know,
7:26
Speaker 1: song titles. Some of them are just like out of
7:29
Speaker 1: the blue and ridiculous, but we sent back when it
7:31
Speaker 1: said tinfoil hat, and then we suddenly knew that's what
7:35
Speaker 1: we have to do. I had the track pretty much
7:37
Speaker 1: all recorded, but we wrote the song together in the
7:40
Speaker 1: way that you would think Paul McCartney and John Lennon
7:43
Speaker 1: would moon spooneeah tune. So that was the only time
7:50
Speaker 1: that I was physically in the same place as my collaborator,
7:56
Speaker 1: which was fun. But I've had episodes where I was
8:01
Speaker 1: supposed to like write with someone, and I'm not usually
8:06
Speaker 1: not very good at just, you know, sitting down and
8:09
Speaker 1: writing with someone. I had known Donald for a long time,
8:12
Speaker 1: so I think we were a little bit more sympatico
8:14
Speaker 1: than if I was meeting someone for the first time
8:17
Speaker 1: and supposed to write with them. But I remember, you know,
8:19
Speaker 1: an episode with like Rick Springfield, who came to my
8:23
Speaker 1: house when I was living in sas Alito wanting to
8:25
Speaker 1: write something, and all we did was just kind of
8:28
Speaker 1: sit there and look at each other, you know, Because
8:31
Speaker 1: for me, in some ways writing is it just a
8:33
Speaker 1: very personal thing. I usually try and find solitude when
8:37
Speaker 1: I have to write, so that I'm not distracted by
8:39
Speaker 1: anything and I can eventually hear what I'm thinking in
8:44
Speaker 1: the back of my head. Making music is the way
8:46
Speaker 1: I learn about myself and make changes in myself because
8:50
Speaker 1: I objectivize ideas, and once they're out there, you can say, oh,
8:54
Speaker 1: that was stupid or Okay, that's not so bad. Stick
8:56
Speaker 1: with that. Where do you think the ideas come from. Well,
8:59
Speaker 1: sometimes they just come from the process. Like the most
9:03
Speaker 1: financially rewarding song I ever recorded was banging the drum
9:07
Speaker 1: all day, But that was a song I dreams because
9:10
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of making a record. When
9:12
Speaker 1: it was time to make a I would go back
9:14
Speaker 1: to my house in Lake Hill, where I'd be completely
9:16
Speaker 1: alone with no distractions, and two weeks later I'd have
9:19
Speaker 1: a record, you know, because you remove all the distractions
9:23
Speaker 1: and suddenly you're thinking about music all the time, and
9:25
Speaker 1: the process just starts to set in. My brain starts
9:29
Speaker 1: writing songs when I'm asleep, but it doesn't write the
9:32
Speaker 1: songs that I would write. If I was conscious, I
9:34
Speaker 1: would never have thought of, let alone written a song
9:37
Speaker 1: so dumb as buying the drum all day. Yea. In
9:41
Speaker 1: that sense, it was a gift from my subconscious saying
9:44
Speaker 1: you won't understand why you're doing this now, but years
9:48
Speaker 1: from now you will understand why you're doing this. Years
9:52
Speaker 1: from now is when we started getting carnival cruise line deals.
9:56
Speaker 1: You know, how's your relationship to music changed over the
10:00
Speaker 1: course of your life. Everybody's relationship to music has changed.
10:04
Speaker 1: You know, my story is not any different than anyone else's.
10:08
Speaker 1: It's just I had the advantage of seeing it common
10:12
Speaker 1: in the way that many artists didn't because of other interests,
10:18
Speaker 1: my interest in computer technology and media in general, and
10:23
Speaker 1: I sort of knew that at one point music was
10:27
Speaker 1: no longer going to be a commodity, that it was
10:30
Speaker 1: going to go back to being a service, because it
10:32
Speaker 1: always was a service, and that we went through this
10:36
Speaker 1: entire illusory period when we figured out how to capture sounds,
10:39
Speaker 1: we started selling the artifacts that held the sound on them,
10:43
Speaker 1: and sorry to think that was music. You know, music
10:46
Speaker 1: is measured by the number of these things that you sell.
10:50
Speaker 1: But for the entire history of music, up until that point,
10:53
Speaker 1: the only way you got paid as a musician you performed,
10:58
Speaker 1: unless you had the talent of a transcriptionist. A lot
11:02
Speaker 1: of the famous composers actually didn't make money off of
11:05
Speaker 1: writing the music they made. They made money off of
11:09
Speaker 1: writing it down wow, making copies of it. This is
11:13
Speaker 1: the roots of music publishing. All of our recorded music
11:17
Speaker 1: publishing paradigms came from printed music. And before there was
11:21
Speaker 1: printed music, because there were not always printers to print
11:25
Speaker 1: the music, there were people who manually transcribe the music
11:28
Speaker 1: and that was how they made a living. And then
11:30
Speaker 1: they wrote symphonies. Unless you're a vinyl freak or something,
11:33
Speaker 1: you don't think about music as this thing anymore. You
11:37
Speaker 1: don't even think about albums anymore, unless you just think
11:40
Speaker 1: about songs and playlists and podcasts and that sort of thing.
11:46
Speaker 1: What we call the quality time listening experience is no
11:50
Speaker 1: longer part of the average person's life. When I was
11:53
Speaker 1: growing up, there was no such thing as portable music.
11:56
Speaker 1: There was the music that you heard on the radio,
11:58
Speaker 1: but the DJ decided what that was. If you wanted
12:01
Speaker 1: a personal listening experience, you had to go home and
12:05
Speaker 1: sit in the sweet spot. And once you made the
12:07
Speaker 1: trouble for that, well, the Beatles just released Revolver, Locked
12:11
Speaker 1: a Door, Unplug the phone, do not interrupt me. I'm
12:15
Speaker 1: going to sit here and I'm going to listen to it.
12:17
Speaker 1: Probably three times in a row. The Sony Walkman essentially
12:21
Speaker 1: blew all that away, because now the music becomes the
12:25
Speaker 1: soundtrack to your life, and you have the option of
12:28
Speaker 1: deciding what it is wherever you happen to be. And
12:33
Speaker 1: while it now services you in all of these other
12:36
Speaker 1: ways that it didn't before, like when you're jogging, when
12:40
Speaker 1: you're in the subway, reading your newspaper and stuff like that,
12:43
Speaker 1: you're not in the music anymore. Don't pretend you're listening
12:47
Speaker 1: to the music and the way you would if you like,
12:50
Speaker 1: shut down all your other senses. A little bit of
12:52
Speaker 1: a sidetrack, but it's based on what you just said.
12:54
Speaker 1: And I'm just picturing you as a kid. And one
12:58
Speaker 1: of the Beatles albums comes out, it's a big deal
13:01
Speaker 1: and the experience of listening to them those first times.
13:05
Speaker 1: Can you remember how different it was each time? I
13:10
Speaker 1: do remember that eventually you got to realize that the
13:15
Speaker 1: Beatles were an evolutionary phenomenon, that it wasn't going to
13:20
Speaker 1: be loved me to for ten years or something like that.
13:23
Speaker 1: And I think that started to dawn on me at
13:27
Speaker 1: least around Rubber Soult, because then they started incorporating other instruments,
13:31
Speaker 1: but more than just other instruments, other sorts of moods
13:35
Speaker 1: and textures. It was their most acoustic record up until
13:38
Speaker 1: that point, and yet it didn't flag in terms of
13:42
Speaker 1: the songwriting. The songwriting was evolving and getting into areas
13:47
Speaker 1: that weren't just about relationships with girls and things like that. Yeah,
13:53
Speaker 1: you realize that that you could grow to expect that
13:56
Speaker 1: there would be something different every record. Did they ever
14:00
Speaker 1: disappoint you? There are always little disappointments. They're always throwaway songs.
14:04
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure the Beatles knew they were throwaway
14:06
Speaker 1: songs in their catalogs. I know that when the Beatles
14:09
Speaker 1: first came out, I had to know every song. I
14:12
Speaker 1: had to know the guitar solo to every song. But
14:15
Speaker 1: I did not get Sergeant Pepper. Yeah, when it first
14:18
Speaker 1: came out, didn't come around for you eventually or no,
14:20
Speaker 1: not in the way that most people did. Because one
14:22
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I didn't get it was I
14:25
Speaker 1: was like Squeaky Clean didn't take any drugs of any kind.
14:28
Speaker 1: I didn't drink, and the word was that you had
14:31
Speaker 1: to be on acid to fully appreciate this record. And
14:35
Speaker 1: I said, well, then I guess I'm just not getting
14:37
Speaker 1: this record because I'm not going to take the acid
14:39
Speaker 1: to appreciate the record. If I can't appreciate the record
14:42
Speaker 1: without the acid, you know, then there must be something
14:45
Speaker 1: wrong with the record. Later, I actually got into it
14:49
Speaker 1: more for the sound of it, because it was a
14:52
Speaker 1: different sound than their previous records. The previous records all
14:56
Speaker 1: mostly were pretty dry, and they didn't use a lot
14:58
Speaker 1: of ambience or anything like that. Certainly didn't use a
15:01
Speaker 1: full symphony orchestra or anything. And so it was more
15:04
Speaker 1: the sound and a certain way that the voices were
15:07
Speaker 1: placed that gave them that separation that your psychedelic mind
15:12
Speaker 1: would have given it. In other words, I think the
15:14
Speaker 1: Beatles were influencing George Martin in some ways, you know,
15:18
Speaker 1: in terms of how they wanted the record to sound.
15:22
Speaker 1: We'll be back after this quick break with more from
15:24
Speaker 1: Todd Rundgren. We're back with Rick's conversation with Todd Rundegren.
15:32
Speaker 1: How did you connect with Albert Grossman? The choices that
15:36
Speaker 1: I made later in life were affected by what happened
15:38
Speaker 1: to me very early on when I formed my first band.
15:43
Speaker 1: I got out of high school and I got into
15:46
Speaker 1: a local blues band, which made me something of a
15:49
Speaker 1: celebrity in downtown Philadelphia. So when that band decided that
15:53
Speaker 1: they wanted to be the Grateful Dead and go to
15:55
Speaker 1: the country and drop acid and that sort of thing,
15:59
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, I'm done with that. I'm going to
16:01
Speaker 1: start my own band. And I had enough of a
16:04
Speaker 1: name at that point that I could just steal people
16:07
Speaker 1: from any other band. We had a quartet called the
16:10
Speaker 1: Naz We did cover songs like everybody did at first,
16:14
Speaker 1: because I had yet to write any material. I started
16:18
Speaker 1: writing songs. On the first song I ever wrote, Washi Hello,
16:21
Speaker 1: It's Me. I got whist away from Philadelphia to New York.
16:25
Speaker 1: Our manager was originally a publicist, so he knew everyone
16:29
Speaker 1: who edited the teen magazines. So before we were even signed,
16:33
Speaker 1: we were on the cover of sixteen magazine as some
16:36
Speaker 1: new discovery. We were experiencing it as if we had
16:40
Speaker 1: already done it, but we hadn't done anything yet. We
16:43
Speaker 1: hadn't even gotten signed yet. But our manager knew how
16:46
Speaker 1: to publicize it. Anytime there was a big event in
16:49
Speaker 1: New York City that everyone had to be at, he
16:52
Speaker 1: would get us invited and get us a limousine and
16:55
Speaker 1: we would show up at that event and everyone would say,
16:58
Speaker 1: who are those guys? Yeah, And so eventually we got
17:01
Speaker 1: signed to a really big contract. Two albums later. Band
17:05
Speaker 1: is done, It's all done. And after that I started
17:08
Speaker 1: to learn about out what the engineer does, because after
17:11
Speaker 1: mixing the second NAZ record and having a free run
17:14
Speaker 1: of the console, I'm just starting to absorb all of
17:17
Speaker 1: the basic engineering concepts. And after the second record, the
17:21
Speaker 1: band blew up and I'm on the street and the
17:25
Speaker 1: partner of the guy who managed the NAZ about six
17:28
Speaker 1: months later finds me spending my days doing lights in
17:32
Speaker 1: a discotheque, designing lights for a disco, doing nothing at
17:35
Speaker 1: all to do with music, hanging out with clothiers in
17:38
Speaker 1: the West village and he says, I'm working for Albert
17:41
Speaker 1: Grossman now and he's tasked me with finding new young talent.
17:45
Speaker 1: I saw how you worked on the last two records.
17:47
Speaker 1: We need someone to come in and modernize a lot
17:50
Speaker 1: of the old legacy artists. Because Albert Grossman he was
17:54
Speaker 1: no longer managing Bob Dylan, but that was how he
17:57
Speaker 1: got famous Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary. He was
18:00
Speaker 1: managing James Cotton and then eventually he did Janis Joplin,
18:06
Speaker 1: so he was like, you know, the world's most high
18:09
Speaker 1: powered manager at that point. One of the very first
18:13
Speaker 1: things they did was put me on a Jesse Winchester project.
18:18
Speaker 1: They asked me if I would engineer, thinking that I
18:21
Speaker 1: had more experience as an engineer than I actually had,
18:24
Speaker 1: but they liked what I did. I was really quick.
18:28
Speaker 1: I had learned a lot of things about mike placement
18:30
Speaker 1: during the second Naz album, and so after that was done,
18:34
Speaker 1: they asked me to engineer Stage Fright, which was the first,
18:37
Speaker 1: you know, really big, high profile gig that I had,
18:40
Speaker 1: and there were no producers on Stage Fright. It was
18:42
Speaker 1: like anybody who showed up was a producer. Is that
18:45
Speaker 1: the band's third album? It was the third one. Yeah,
18:48
Speaker 1: there was Big Pink, and then there was the Brown
18:51
Speaker 1: one that had Crippled Creak on it, and then there
18:54
Speaker 1: was Stage Fright. And that was a real trial by fire,
18:59
Speaker 1: not simply because it was the first major product that
19:01
Speaker 1: I did, but the band was in this state of
19:05
Speaker 1: I don't know whether to characterize it is turmoil. But
19:08
Speaker 1: they still working with Bob at the timer no more,
19:12
Speaker 1: they weren't working with Bob No, but there were issues
19:15
Speaker 1: they were starting a fester. Some of them had to
19:18
Speaker 1: do with the band's sudden success. This is a bunch
19:21
Speaker 1: of musicians who for years and years and years, you know,
19:25
Speaker 1: all they were was a backup band for Ronnie Hawks,
19:28
Speaker 1: a Canadian who rarely toured in the United States, you know,
19:32
Speaker 1: And then suddenly they're thrust into the spotlight by playing
19:36
Speaker 1: with Bob Dylan, and then their first album comes out
19:39
Speaker 1: and it's a big phenomenon. Second album comes out. By
19:42
Speaker 1: the time Stage Fright comes out, they're probably the biggest
19:45
Speaker 1: band in the world at this point. Yeah, and maybe
19:48
Speaker 1: most influential as well as popular. Yeah, because I mean
19:51
Speaker 1: it's like Elton John puts out a song called lev On.
19:55
Speaker 1: You know, how obvious can that be? You know, and
19:57
Speaker 1: it sounds just you know, it's got all of those
19:59
Speaker 1: sort of earmarks of what the band is. Essentially, I'd
20:03
Speaker 1: like to say fabricating, you know, because you listen to
20:08
Speaker 1: the band's record you think, oh, these guys are all
20:10
Speaker 1: from Arkansas. No, they're all from Canada. Only from Arkansas
20:15
Speaker 1: is leve On and everything else is fabricated. You know.
20:19
Speaker 1: Robbie who's writing all the material is essentially pretending to
20:22
Speaker 1: be Levon and in some ways that might even make
20:27
Speaker 1: it better. You know, sometimes sometimes the distance the fantasy
20:33
Speaker 1: makes it more thrilling for the writer. They're not just
20:38
Speaker 1: being themselves. They've an idealized version of this thing. But
20:42
Speaker 1: here's the reason why the band is in turmoil, because
20:45
Speaker 1: Robbie's writing all the material and not sharing the publishing
20:48
Speaker 1: with anyone else in the band, and they're getting they're
20:51
Speaker 1: starting to realize this by the third album. I mean,
20:54
Speaker 1: they haven't put out albums on their own before, so
20:56
Speaker 1: they don't know what publishing is. And then they get
20:58
Speaker 1: the third album, they realize that he's becoming a millionaire
21:02
Speaker 1: and they're not sharing in any of that because not
21:05
Speaker 1: only are their songs appearing on their records, people are
21:09
Speaker 1: ring the songs and having hit records with those songs,
21:13
Speaker 1: and so turmoil is starting to happen in the band.
21:16
Speaker 1: There's that. There's there's also the fact that after years
21:19
Speaker 1: and years and years and just being a band and
21:23
Speaker 1: you know, out of the limelight and doing this, suddenly
21:26
Speaker 1: these guys are in the limelight, publishing a side that
21:31
Speaker 1: more money than they've ever had before, and making some
21:36
Speaker 1: of the guys a little crazy. They are doing things
21:39
Speaker 1: that they never did before. They are taking drugs and
21:43
Speaker 1: quantities that they've never had available before, and drinking more
21:47
Speaker 1: than they ever had before, and that sort of thing.
21:50
Speaker 1: And so getting through the record with something of an
21:55
Speaker 1: exercise as well, because they're all dealing with critical personal
22:00
Speaker 1: issues while the whole record is going on. Then the
22:03
Speaker 1: complicate things even further. They have promised Glynn Johnson he
22:06
Speaker 1: will have a chance to make the mix the record.
22:09
Speaker 1: So so they realize, you know, they can't ask me
22:14
Speaker 1: to engineer the whole thing and then not mix it.
22:17
Speaker 1: So they send me to England with all the master tapes.
22:20
Speaker 1: We split them in half. Glint takes them somewhere and
22:24
Speaker 1: mixes them, and then they put me in at They've
22:26
Speaker 1: just booked me in a studio that you know, because
22:28
Speaker 1: I don't know many studios in England at this point.
22:32
Speaker 1: Where was I you're up to mixing the album. Oh yeah,
22:36
Speaker 1: we're mixing the album. Oh yeah. You can go back
22:39
Speaker 1: a little further though. You talk about making the album.
22:42
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about the what it was
22:44
Speaker 1: like to be in the studio with the band at
22:46
Speaker 1: that time. I understand that were there were internal problems
22:48
Speaker 1: going on, but we weren't in the studio. We recorded
22:52
Speaker 1: most all of the album, the basic tracks we recorded
22:55
Speaker 1: on the stage of the Woodstock Theater. Was that, by
22:58
Speaker 1: their choice, there was no bearzable studios yet, and I
23:01
Speaker 1: was somewhat by their choice because they didn't want to
23:03
Speaker 1: record in a New York studio. I guess that's where
23:07
Speaker 1: they had done. I don't know what studio they had
23:09
Speaker 1: used before, but there were no studios comparable in Woodstock,
23:12
Speaker 1: in the Woodstock area. So, but the studio was under construction,
23:18
Speaker 1: it was not built yet, not fully built yet, but
23:21
Speaker 1: they had bought a remote truck, and so we took
23:25
Speaker 1: all of the equipment out of the remote truck and
23:27
Speaker 1: put it in the prop tent behind the Woodstock Theater.
23:31
Speaker 1: It's an outdoor theater at summer Stock Theater. It was
23:34
Speaker 1: indoors but not heated or anything like that, so it
23:38
Speaker 1: would be sweltering hot in the daytime and the prop
23:41
Speaker 1: tent and freezing cold at night. And the sessions were
23:44
Speaker 1: just kind of had something of a stream of consciousness
23:50
Speaker 1: quality about them, with the songs written before before the
23:54
Speaker 1: songs are written and rehearsed before the sessions. You know,
23:58
Speaker 1: I had worked on the Jesse Winchester record, and various
24:01
Speaker 1: people had made contributions to that, but it wasn't like
24:04
Speaker 1: the whole band doing band material anything like that. They
24:10
Speaker 1: were kind of subjugated to whatever was good for Jesse Winchester.
24:14
Speaker 1: But you know, they are very different guys, and you know,
24:19
Speaker 1: there were five very different guys, and each with a
24:22
Speaker 1: certain kind of you know, personality. Robbie was squeaky clean,
24:29
Speaker 1: quite obviously in charge of everything and running, you know,
24:32
Speaker 1: running the show, writing everything, sober as a monk, you know,
24:38
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. There was Garth. Garth never, as
24:42
Speaker 1: far as I know, you know, did any kind of drugs.
24:45
Speaker 1: He was not. I don't think I ever saw him
24:47
Speaker 1: drinking anything. But Garth had narc ellipsey. You know, he
24:51
Speaker 1: would just drop off in the middle of the session,
24:53
Speaker 1: and I didn't know this. Nobody told me this, you know,
24:57
Speaker 1: so kind of like what's going on here, you know,
25:01
Speaker 1: and making wise cracks, and they're getting angry with me
25:03
Speaker 1: because I don't know that he has narc ellipsey. Rick
25:08
Speaker 1: was pretty dependable. Rick during the sessions would you know,
25:11
Speaker 1: would be pretty dependable. But Rick had his own issues
25:15
Speaker 1: that might take over another context, and ultimately did. Richard
25:21
Speaker 1: had a drinking issue, and I don't think it affected
25:24
Speaker 1: too much the sessions. But I say that the session
25:26
Speaker 1: would be hours and hours of getting ready and then
25:28
Speaker 1: maybe two takes, and then a bunch of needling around,
25:33
Speaker 1: and then maybe another another two takes. I'm not sure
25:37
Speaker 1: that any song went beyond eight takes, just because the
25:41
Speaker 1: amount of fuxing around in between takes. It like getting
25:45
Speaker 1: in the mood to do another take, which is not
25:48
Speaker 1: that unusual. I mean a lot of bands are like that,
25:51
Speaker 1: you know. I remember going to a Rolling Stones rehearsal
25:54
Speaker 1: which they call at around midnight and nobody makes a
25:58
Speaker 1: sound till four am, so, you know, not that unusual.
26:03
Speaker 1: But sometimes it would be like, Okay, were an hour
26:09
Speaker 1: into the session and Richard hasn't shown up yet. What
26:12
Speaker 1: do you think's going on? Finally we got a call
26:15
Speaker 1: somebody found Richard with his car nose down in a
26:18
Speaker 1: culvert and he's been there all night. You know, Okay,
26:24
Speaker 1: we're ready to do a take. We saw Levan was here,
26:27
Speaker 1: but where's Levan? We can't find it. Spent an hour
26:29
Speaker 1: looking for Levan. Levan has passed out under a pile
26:33
Speaker 1: of curtains because he has, you know, done a little
26:37
Speaker 1: bit too much of something during the session, you know,
26:40
Speaker 1: and just fell right asleep. So it was, you know,
26:46
Speaker 1: a kind of a thing like a celestial alignment. You know,
26:49
Speaker 1: you have to get all the planets to line up
26:52
Speaker 1: for everything to come together. And that for me, young
26:55
Speaker 1: whipper snapper, who ultimately like makes records in a matter
26:59
Speaker 1: of days, not weeks and months, you know, it was
27:04
Speaker 1: a little bit much for me, and every once in
27:08
Speaker 1: a while I had to be slapped down. How long
27:11
Speaker 1: did the recording take tracking, Well, there were you know,
27:14
Speaker 1: there were the sessions, which I don't think we took
27:18
Speaker 1: much more than two weeks to do the basic sessions.
27:21
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the end of it. We had one
27:23
Speaker 1: or two other songs to do, which we had to
27:26
Speaker 1: do in a studio in New York because they had
27:28
Speaker 1: finally finished the control room of studio be at Bearsville
27:32
Speaker 1: and they were removing all the equipment into there. So
27:35
Speaker 1: we did like WS Walcott Medicine Show, I think it
27:39
Speaker 1: was in a session in New York City. And those
27:41
Speaker 1: sessions turned out to be actually very productive, you know,
27:45
Speaker 1: because people weren't at home. They were away from home.
27:49
Speaker 1: They were in New York City. Sometimes in order to
27:51
Speaker 1: get that authentically kind of old timey sounds, you know,
27:58
Speaker 1: they would well, for instance, I played the baritone horn
28:03
Speaker 1: on that song, and I had never played baritone horn
28:06
Speaker 1: in my life. All I had to do is squeak
28:10
Speaker 1: out enough notes, you know, to make it sound like
28:13
Speaker 1: a thing, authentic, rinky dinky, weird band kind of thing.
28:18
Speaker 1: It was by lack of experience with the instrument that
28:21
Speaker 1: was necessary for this sound authentic. And so you know,
28:25
Speaker 1: they'd be the like moments of that, you know, where
28:27
Speaker 1: it's like, if you could do it too well, it
28:29
Speaker 1: doesn't work. You know. It has to have that sort
28:32
Speaker 1: of authentically kind of creaky, slightly sloppy aspect about it.
28:39
Speaker 1: Then there was the whole mixing episodes, you know, with
28:42
Speaker 1: Glynn doing some and then me doing some, and ultimately
28:48
Speaker 1: I came back with the mixes his and mine, and
28:52
Speaker 1: they weren't fully satisfied with either. So we started all
28:55
Speaker 1: over again in Studio B, a brand new Studio B,
28:59
Speaker 1: which nobody really knew what it sounded like, but we
29:02
Speaker 1: put our faith in John Stork and and then it
29:07
Speaker 1: was just you know, the the worst kind of experience
29:10
Speaker 1: for me, which I have you know, which I have
29:15
Speaker 1: resolved ever since. You know, in any sort of production,
29:19
Speaker 1: don't have the whole band in the room when you're
29:21
Speaker 1: building a mix, because people only hear themselves, you know,
29:26
Speaker 1: the drumming only hears the drums, the guitar from only
29:29
Speaker 1: hears the guitar, you know, especially when you're building a mix,
29:32
Speaker 1: you know. And one of the worst was when I
29:35
Speaker 1: was mixing the New York Dolls first album. It was
29:39
Speaker 1: compounded by the fact that they were in a hurry
29:41
Speaker 1: because they had to go to a gig. But it's
29:42
Speaker 1: one of these things really just like, no nobody hears
29:45
Speaker 1: the whole mix. They only hear themselves, and all the
29:49
Speaker 1: faders are pinned at the top, and you have to
29:52
Speaker 1: start all over again, you know. And so you know,
29:56
Speaker 1: my modus operandi now is like, go away, I will
29:59
Speaker 1: build a mix. Then you come back and tell me
30:02
Speaker 1: what you want different about it, you know, but don't
30:05
Speaker 1: allow them there for the process. Unfortunately, they'd be there
30:07
Speaker 1: for the whole mix and it would just take four ever,
30:10
Speaker 1: you know, and everyone would have an opinion, you know,
30:13
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't make it better, and it wouldn't necessarily
30:17
Speaker 1: make it better now, it might take weeks, you know,
30:19
Speaker 1: and often that kind of like dwelling on it makes
30:22
Speaker 1: it worse. Which is why Andy Partridge hated XTC when
30:26
Speaker 1: it was first completed, because I wouldn't allow that to happen.
30:32
Speaker 1: I wouldn't allow that anal business to ruin the record.
30:35
Speaker 1: You know. It was the first thing I did. I said,
30:37
Speaker 1: you're not listening to the mix. I'm going to build
30:39
Speaker 1: a mix. Then you can come over and listen to
30:41
Speaker 1: the mix. By the time I was done the third one,
30:43
Speaker 1: they said we're going home, either because they hated that
30:48
Speaker 1: aspect of the process even though they liked the mixes,
30:52
Speaker 1: or because they trusted me. Yeah, I didn't one or
30:54
Speaker 1: the other. But Andy was already determined to hate the
30:58
Speaker 1: record by the time he went home and made a
31:01
Speaker 1: point of telling everybody how much he hated the record
31:04
Speaker 1: before it came out. And then it turned out to
31:07
Speaker 1: be the most successful record they were released. So wow,
31:11
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Who would have been your contemporaries at that
31:14
Speaker 1: point in time. This was late nineteen sixty six, early
31:18
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. What would be on the radio at
31:20
Speaker 1: that time. Well, if you wanted to know I'll be
31:23
Speaker 1: on the radio, you listen to my album Faithful the
31:26
Speaker 1: First Side, because what I tried to do on that
31:30
Speaker 1: was that record I did in nineteen seventy six, ten
31:35
Speaker 1: years after I first got into the so called music business,
31:40
Speaker 1: and it was all covers, and I said, I want
31:42
Speaker 1: people to remember what it was like listening to the
31:44
Speaker 1: radio in nineteen sixty six. There was Yardbirds happening ten
31:50
Speaker 1: years time ago, Bob Dylan. Mostly you go your way
31:53
Speaker 1: and I go mine, Rain, the Beatles, Good Vibrations, Beach Boys.
31:58
Speaker 1: I just did dead on covers of all those songs
32:01
Speaker 1: if six was nine, Jimmy Andris. You know, that was
32:04
Speaker 1: just like to me, the golden Age of radio. What's
32:07
Speaker 1: happening in music is just more than anybody can keep
32:10
Speaker 1: up with. And so suddenly the cuffs are off for DJs.
32:14
Speaker 1: They can play anything they want because nobody can figure
32:17
Speaker 1: it out anyway, you know how it all goes together.
32:20
Speaker 1: And suddenly radio was such an exciting thing to listen
32:23
Speaker 1: to because you hear like a rock maybe Beatles song,
32:26
Speaker 1: then you hear Judy Collins after that. Then you might
32:29
Speaker 1: hear Bill Evans after that they would just it was
32:33
Speaker 1: wide open, you know, it was just terrific. It was
32:37
Speaker 1: the inception of what they called album oriented radio when
32:39
Speaker 1: people started playing not the singles, but you know, the
32:43
Speaker 1: cuts from the albums as well. That has all gone
32:47
Speaker 1: away and with it that sort of monolithic view of
32:52
Speaker 1: what audiences want to hear. And that's how I do
32:56
Speaker 1: research for records. I can't, you know, listen to radio.
32:58
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I'll hear something I don't want to hear
33:03
Speaker 1: stuck in there. So so instead I go to YouTube.
33:08
Speaker 1: You know, I asked, I'll I asked one of my kids,
33:10
Speaker 1: what should I listen to? Yeah, and it'll give me
33:12
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of names, and I'll go to YouTube.
33:14
Speaker 1: I'll look it up and then on the sidebar and
33:17
Speaker 1: then maybe I'll start clicking the sidebar and say, well,
33:19
Speaker 1: who's that? And so just by following these threads is
33:22
Speaker 1: how I learn about what's happening in music. And there's
33:25
Speaker 1: a lot of music out there that you don't hear
33:28
Speaker 1: about unless you go looking for it. But that's different
33:31
Speaker 1: from an era when that music would never get made,
33:35
Speaker 1: when that music would never get recorded in the first place.
33:38
Speaker 1: So to me, this is in some sense as a
33:40
Speaker 1: golden age of music, in that whatever you can imagine
33:45
Speaker 1: there is, it's out there. And if it isn't out there,
33:48
Speaker 1: and you can imagine how to make it, then you
33:50
Speaker 1: can put it out there. The entry level is really
33:54
Speaker 1: low now, the entry level is freaking zero. Put it
33:57
Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, you can get for ninety nine cents
34:00
Speaker 1: an app on your phone. It's got four tracks of
34:02
Speaker 1: recording on it, and another app that will allow you
34:05
Speaker 1: to post it to wherever you want it, and another
34:07
Speaker 1: app that'll allow you to tell all your friends where
34:10
Speaker 1: it is and how to find it. Yeah, there's really
34:12
Speaker 1: no excuse if you want to get into the so
34:14
Speaker 1: called music business. Do it. But in the end, you
34:17
Speaker 1: won't make any money until you go out and start
34:19
Speaker 1: playing it in front of people. Sometimes we'll hear something
34:24
Speaker 1: and it will resonate with us and we won't know why.
34:27
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying. It's like sometimes like
34:29
Speaker 1: can't put your finger on why something's good. Yeah, And
34:33
Speaker 1: well it isn't even why it's good, it's why it sticks. Yeah,
34:35
Speaker 1: because sometimes it's something you want out of your head.
34:38
Speaker 1: That's why I hit the mute button anytime I see
34:40
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift. I'm going to hit that mute button right now.
34:43
Speaker 1: The same thing goes for like when Donald Trump comes
34:45
Speaker 1: on the TV. Though I don't want any of that
34:47
Speaker 1: in my head. I hit the mute button. You know,
34:50
Speaker 1: do you like curate stuff that comes in I kind
34:52
Speaker 1: of do you? Oh? Yeah. There are things that you
34:54
Speaker 1: latch onto if you think that you could learn something
34:57
Speaker 1: from it, And sometimes they are really illogical things. But
35:01
Speaker 1: every once in a while you hear a song and
35:03
Speaker 1: you realize that that was the perfect pop song. We'll
35:07
Speaker 1: be right back with more from Todd Rundgren after this break.
35:14
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Rick's conversation with Todd Rudegren.
35:17
Speaker 1: Have you always made music either a commercial thing or
35:21
Speaker 1: an art project? Do you know what I'm saying, Like,
35:22
Speaker 1: when you're starting a project, do you decide, Okay, this
35:24
Speaker 1: one is for me and it's going to be artie,
35:27
Speaker 1: or this one's going to be I'm gonna try to
35:28
Speaker 1: get something on the radio and I'm gonna go in
35:30
Speaker 1: that direction. Well, I don't. I tend to think that way.
35:33
Speaker 1: When I'm producing for other people. I want to understand
35:36
Speaker 1: what their goals are so that I can try and
35:38
Speaker 1: guide things in that direction, and it isn't always necessarily
35:42
Speaker 1: commercial success. That's like when I did Grand Funk Railroad,
35:46
Speaker 1: they wanted critical acclaim, you know, because the critics just
35:50
Speaker 1: hated them. What stage were they at in that career
35:53
Speaker 1: when you came up with them, Well, they were a
35:55
Speaker 1: jam band, you know, essentially a jam band. They were like,
35:58
Speaker 1: we're like cream, you know, We're a trio based guitar
36:02
Speaker 1: and drums, and we go out and we have flimsy
36:04
Speaker 1: little song structures and then we jam a lot, you know.
36:08
Speaker 1: And albums were kind of the same way. They would
36:11
Speaker 1: just be kind of flabby, long songs occasionally something you know,
36:15
Speaker 1: concise and songwriterly. Their issue was that their manager Terry
36:20
Speaker 1: Knight from Terry and the Pack. I don't know if
36:23
Speaker 1: you remember them, but as one of these Michigan bands
36:26
Speaker 1: from the scene that produced Bob Seger and Ted Nugent
36:30
Speaker 1: that produced Grand Funk Railroad as well. But their manager
36:33
Speaker 1: was Terry Knight, and he was great from the standpoint of,
36:38
Speaker 1: you know, hyping the bands. Everybody knew who Graham Funk
36:41
Speaker 1: Railroad was. He bought the biggest billboard that had ever
36:44
Speaker 1: been purchased on Broadway in Times Square. This was a
36:49
Speaker 1: big thing that only made their reputation more controversial because
36:55
Speaker 1: music critics said, what are they doing up there? You know,
36:57
Speaker 1: they're not the fricking Beatles, you know, they're just a
37:00
Speaker 1: jam band. And they made the decision at a certain
37:03
Speaker 1: point to break away from Terry Knight. The other thing
37:05
Speaker 1: Terry Knight did was produce their records, and he was
37:07
Speaker 1: a terrible record producer. You know, they sounded bad, and
37:11
Speaker 1: he didn't editorialize at anything. You know, I just let
37:14
Speaker 1: them jam away. So they had kind of the success
37:20
Speaker 1: and an audience, and the one thing they didn't have
37:24
Speaker 1: was credibility. That's one reason why they came to me
37:27
Speaker 1: because my reputation at that point was taking projects that had,
37:33
Speaker 1: like for instance, Bad Finger, where like they were on
37:36
Speaker 1: their third try at making a record. If it required
37:40
Speaker 1: me to just go in and completely take over the process,
37:43
Speaker 1: I would do that. But I figured I'm not going
37:44
Speaker 1: to be the third producer to fail to get an
37:47
Speaker 1: album out of Bad Finger. So, for better or worse,
37:51
Speaker 1: they got what they needed out of it. They got
37:53
Speaker 1: a record that had two hit singles off of it,
37:55
Speaker 1: and they got the success out of it. They fired
37:58
Speaker 1: me after the next record and never had another hit.
38:01
Speaker 1: So and so the thing with Grand Funk was, we,
38:06
Speaker 1: you know, we need credibility somehow. We need somebody who
38:09
Speaker 1: knows how to make records to get involved in our
38:12
Speaker 1: next record. And they had everything all planned out beforehand.
38:15
Speaker 1: They had already written We're an American band because they knew, okay,
38:18
Speaker 1: we need a single, and I helped him arrange it,
38:22
Speaker 1: you know, so that just sounded more singly, So it
38:24
Speaker 1: sounded less like a jam band more like, you know,
38:27
Speaker 1: a single. They had hired a keyboard player, made their
38:30
Speaker 1: sound a little bit bigger and more well rounded. But
38:34
Speaker 1: I remember he was very indignant about the fact that
38:37
Speaker 1: I made him do this. Dink think think think think
38:39
Speaker 1: think we're kink think think think Think. He said, wait
38:42
Speaker 1: a minute, I'm a keyboard anybody can do that. You know,
38:45
Speaker 1: that's as much what makes it a hit record as anything.
38:49
Speaker 1: It's just that little dink think think coming into the chorus.
38:52
Speaker 1: You know, when you heard the song for the first time,
38:54
Speaker 1: did you know that it had potential. I knew they'd
38:57
Speaker 1: have had potential, but I never depend on the market,
38:59
Speaker 1: you know, I know that's a single. But then someone
39:03
Speaker 1: so puts out a single the same week and everyone
39:05
Speaker 1: forgets about your single. It's that kind of business there.
39:09
Speaker 1: It's still a lot of chance. Even in those days,
39:12
Speaker 1: there was a lot of crooked stuff that went on.
39:15
Speaker 1: This was even before Clyde Davis got busted. You can't
39:18
Speaker 1: guarantee anything, but they were so confident about it, and
39:21
Speaker 1: then the label was totally behind the plan. So the
39:26
Speaker 1: very first thing we did is we went to Criterion
39:28
Speaker 1: Studios and we recorded We're an American Band the track
39:31
Speaker 1: the first day. We got all the sounds. The first
39:33
Speaker 1: day we recorded the track. I don't mess around with
39:36
Speaker 1: the sounds all day long. Sound is the most subjective
39:39
Speaker 1: part of the process. People think when they hear a
39:42
Speaker 1: record for the first time that you intended for it
39:44
Speaker 1: to sound that way, and that's the only way that
39:47
Speaker 1: it possibly could have sounded. Of course, when you're making
39:50
Speaker 1: the record, you have all the range of possibilities and
39:53
Speaker 1: you can analyze it to death, you know, as has
39:57
Speaker 1: happened in some projects. But in any case, very early
40:01
Speaker 1: in the next day's session we finished it and then
40:04
Speaker 1: when right into the mastering room because they had announced
40:08
Speaker 1: the release a week later. A week after we went
40:11
Speaker 1: in to record the song. That was supposed to be
40:14
Speaker 1: the official release date of the song, and lo and behold.
40:17
Speaker 1: Because of the way the industry was in those days,
40:21
Speaker 1: if you had enough radio as and enough pre orders
40:24
Speaker 1: on the single, you charted. A week later, the single
40:28
Speaker 1: comes out and it charts in the twenties. Wow, a
40:32
Speaker 1: week later, after a week after we recorded it. You know,
40:36
Speaker 1: nobody's even heard it yet. Didn't take that much longer
40:39
Speaker 1: for us to get the album done than what, you know,
40:41
Speaker 1: the album's you know, a big giant hit. Now that
40:44
Speaker 1: doesn't happen a whole lot, but it's just not the
40:47
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you can depend on, you know.
40:49
Speaker 1: I mean there's a complete opposite end of the spectrum,
40:51
Speaker 1: which was meat Loaf, the opposite of like that confidence
40:54
Speaker 1: and knowing what you're gonna doing. You had to have
40:56
Speaker 1: a master plan, you know, to accomplish it. Meat Loaf,
41:00
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was just a crapshoot through the
41:02
Speaker 1: entire thing, even though by that album, because any time
41:08
Speaker 1: an anomaly breaks through, it's really interesting to me. Yeah,
41:12
Speaker 1: and that there's nothing else like that. Whatever that is,
41:16
Speaker 1: it's very unique. It's unlike other music going on at
41:20
Speaker 1: the time. Well, it was not completely unlike other music
41:24
Speaker 1: that was going on at the time, because when I
41:26
Speaker 1: went to see meat Loaf, I knew who meat Loaf was.
41:29
Speaker 1: I had seen him on the Rocky Horror Show. I
41:32
Speaker 1: knew who he was. I didn't know who Stimon was.
41:35
Speaker 1: Stimon actually the genius behind the whole thing. But they
41:38
Speaker 1: did a live audition for me, Stimon on the piano,
41:41
Speaker 1: meat Loaf and two background singers and essentially did the
41:43
Speaker 1: entire record with piano accompaniment, but did all of the
41:47
Speaker 1: highlights of the record, acted out with everything, with the historionics,
41:51
Speaker 1: paradise and dashboard light and all that stuff. And while
41:55
Speaker 1: I'm watching it, you know, and they're giving me the
41:57
Speaker 1: sob story. They said, no producer wants to touch this,
42:00
Speaker 1: the concept is too big. No producer really wanted to
42:03
Speaker 1: deal with it. And so they're doing this for me.
42:06
Speaker 1: And in my head, I'm thinking this is a of
42:09
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen. It's all the same, you know, Airstat's fifties stuff,
42:16
Speaker 1: you know, with motorcycles, switch blaze, leather jackets, all that
42:20
Speaker 1: rebel without a cause iconography, and I'm thinking this is
42:24
Speaker 1: a spoof of Bruce Springsteen and that's how I'm going
42:26
Speaker 1: to approach it. And he had a label at the time.
42:29
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have taken it on unless he had a label.
42:31
Speaker 1: But the day before we went into the studio and
42:34
Speaker 1: we had rehearsed the band for two weeks already, you know,
42:37
Speaker 1: we were ready to just go in there and do
42:38
Speaker 1: it live, which the record was mostly live, not the singing,
42:41
Speaker 1: but all of them playing on It was mostly all live.
42:44
Speaker 1: Meet Loof says, I want to go off my label.
42:46
Speaker 1: They don't understand me, and he said, whatever it says.
42:48
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'm not your manager. I can't you know,
42:52
Speaker 1: tell you what to do. But you know we're going
42:53
Speaker 1: into the studio tomorrow, and he says, well, I got
42:57
Speaker 1: to get off my label, you know, So I go
43:00
Speaker 1: to it was either Paul Fishkin or Albert Krossman, you know,
43:04
Speaker 1: was running Bearsville at the time. And I said, well,
43:08
Speaker 1: if you put this, it's too late. Now we're already rehearsed.
43:11
Speaker 1: We actually got members of Springsteen's band, We got Roy
43:14
Speaker 1: Bitten and Max Weinberg are in the bands. You know,
43:18
Speaker 1: this is how much of a spoof it is to me?
43:21
Speaker 1: And I say, well, put this on my tab, you know,
43:23
Speaker 1: underwrite the expenses like you would a regular record, and
43:25
Speaker 1: we'll give you right a first refusal on the record.
43:29
Speaker 1: We finished the record and Bearsville turns it down, as
43:33
Speaker 1: does Warner Brothers, who's distributing Bearsville, And it takes six
43:37
Speaker 1: months to find somebody to take the record. They shop
43:40
Speaker 1: it around everybody and everyone said, what is this, you know,
43:44
Speaker 1: a spoof of Bruce Briestein. And finally they find a
43:48
Speaker 1: you know, a small subsidiary of Epic Records called Cleveland International,
43:53
Speaker 1: and they have one act on the label. Ian Hunter
43:58
Speaker 1: is the only act they have on the label. Great guy,
44:01
Speaker 1: a great player. I should call him for a collab.
44:04
Speaker 1: You were the first person I ever heard talk about
44:07
Speaker 1: the revolution in the way music is consumed, maybe as
44:13
Speaker 1: far back as the late seventies to how it is today.
44:17
Speaker 1: If you look back at the things that allowed you
44:21
Speaker 1: to understand what was possible, were there any forks in
44:25
Speaker 1: the road where it went either a different way than
44:29
Speaker 1: you thought it was going to go, or had a
44:31
Speaker 1: potential to do something better than it did. I put
44:36
Speaker 1: out a thing called No World Order. It came out
44:39
Speaker 1: in the late eighties, and it came out in the
44:42
Speaker 1: number of different formats, and it was the first example
44:46
Speaker 1: if you had the right device of actual interactive music,
44:50
Speaker 1: music that you, as a listener could get some control over.
44:54
Speaker 1: I came up with the concept through a number of things,
44:58
Speaker 1: but it was not driven at first by the technology.
45:02
Speaker 1: It was driven by the realization that, first of all,
45:06
Speaker 1: music is ultimately going to be repeated, That music is
45:13
Speaker 1: too limited a language that for us to be like
45:16
Speaker 1: completely original all the time, you know, so it's just
45:18
Speaker 1: bound to be repeated. The audience no longer is attached
45:22
Speaker 1: to a particular form of it. And there were two
45:24
Speaker 1: phenomenon that caused me to realize that. One was Frankie
45:30
Speaker 1: goes to Hollywood Relax. It didn't happen in this country.
45:34
Speaker 1: It never became like the giant hit in this country
45:36
Speaker 1: that it was, for instance, in England. But suddenly, you know,
45:40
Speaker 1: innovation had moved back to England and Europe and stuff
45:43
Speaker 1: at its particular point in the mid to late eighties,
45:46
Speaker 1: and they released a new version of Relax like every
45:49
Speaker 1: two weeks, a new remix of Relax every two weeks,
45:53
Speaker 1: and everyone they released would go to the top of
45:55
Speaker 1: the charts. And I suddenly realized now the audiences is
45:59
Speaker 1: accepting the mutability of music, that it doesn't have to
46:03
Speaker 1: be this way and that's sacred, and you know it
46:05
Speaker 1: can't be any other way. Now that we realize this,
46:08
Speaker 1: how can we accelerate this process? How can we actually
46:11
Speaker 1: define it and make tools to do it and put
46:15
Speaker 1: them in people's hands. And that's when I came up
46:18
Speaker 1: with the idea of an album that didn't have a
46:22
Speaker 1: specific running order, and that was no world order, and
46:26
Speaker 1: it required a certain technology for it to be ultimately realized,
46:30
Speaker 1: but also it could be realized in non interactive technologies,
46:34
Speaker 1: but in a number of ways. But I wrote the
46:36
Speaker 1: songs and with a certain discipline. There had to be
46:41
Speaker 1: a clean break every four to eight bars, or maybe
46:44
Speaker 1: every two bars. But there had to be clean breaks
46:46
Speaker 1: in the music everywhere, you know, so there are not
46:50
Speaker 1: a lot of songs with like syncopation, with a lot
46:52
Speaker 1: of upbeats, you know, a lot of it's got lots
46:54
Speaker 1: of downbeats and stuff like that. And essentially record it
46:59
Speaker 1: like you usually would, but in the compositional part, you
47:01
Speaker 1: make sure you've got these breaks, then come up with
47:04
Speaker 1: the technology by which you can string them together in
47:06
Speaker 1: real time and found Philips CDI had just come out
47:11
Speaker 1: and the technology was in it to enable to do that.
47:14
Speaker 1: So I got together with a programmer that I was
47:16
Speaker 1: working with, and we came up with the no World
47:18
Speaker 1: Order concept, the whole engine that ran it. That allowed
47:22
Speaker 1: people to essentially go in and specify how they'd like
47:25
Speaker 1: to experience the music, and even like stop and loop
47:29
Speaker 1: on one piece of the music and change the parameters
47:32
Speaker 1: and that one piece of music. So say, I never
47:34
Speaker 1: did understand what the words were there, Let's take out
47:37
Speaker 1: some of the instruments. And so it allowed you to
47:41
Speaker 1: experience it in that way. It allowed you to utilize
47:44
Speaker 1: it or filter it so that let's say you want
47:47
Speaker 1: to use it for your aerobics, you said it, so
47:50
Speaker 1: it never goes below a certain tempo. As you asked
47:52
Speaker 1: me about the fork in the road. Yes, After I
47:55
Speaker 1: did this, I got approached by Time Warner Cable Network,
48:00
Speaker 1: which was doing an interactive TV experiment in Orlando, Florida,
48:04
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood. But they had fiber optic to the
48:07
Speaker 1: curve in the entire optic neighborhood, which is not unusual anymore,
48:11
Speaker 1: but in those days a big deal in the neighborhood
48:14
Speaker 1: had a prototype set top box that was supposed to
48:17
Speaker 1: be an interactive box, and since they were still prototyping
48:21
Speaker 1: the box, everyone got an SGI Indigo computer. And if
48:26
Speaker 1: you're not into computer graphs, you may not know what
48:28
Speaker 1: that is, but it's about the size of a carry
48:31
Speaker 1: on suitcase. And they're trying to figure out, okay, what
48:34
Speaker 1: kind of services do people want pre Internet? It's just
48:37
Speaker 1: pre Internet now people don't have Internet in their homes yet.
48:40
Speaker 1: So they figured, okay, we'll develop a pizza pie application.
48:45
Speaker 1: You know, you can go on your television, pick out
48:48
Speaker 1: your toppings, you know, and a piece of will be
48:50
Speaker 1: delivered with your toppings. But they had reasonable query what
48:55
Speaker 1: kind of interactive music services would people like in their homes.
48:59
Speaker 1: So they hired me to come up with a prototype
49:02
Speaker 1: so that they could make it part of this experiment.
49:04
Speaker 1: So we came up with an outline for it, impossible
49:08
Speaker 1: technological solution for it. But of course you can't do
49:10
Speaker 1: it unless you got some music on servers. So we
49:15
Speaker 1: went to what was then the Five Majors. So we
49:18
Speaker 1: set up meetings with all the special products divisions of
49:21
Speaker 1: the labels, and we went in and say we're just
49:24
Speaker 1: experimenting here. We want to see what kind of demand
49:26
Speaker 1: there is. So what you got to do is you
49:28
Speaker 1: got to put some music that people would be interested in,
49:31
Speaker 1: some name artists or something, some artists of some kind,
49:35
Speaker 1: and put their music on a server so that we
49:37
Speaker 1: can connect to it and deliver it to this particular audience,
49:41
Speaker 1: this experimental audience. Not a single label would hear of it.
49:46
Speaker 1: They say, we know, we don't even don't la la la,
49:50
Speaker 1: don't talk about this two years later, napster later. So
49:56
Speaker 1: I had gone in with the hope that somehow the
49:59
Speaker 1: labels would see the light and ease everything into this
50:04
Speaker 1: new area instead of it just collapsing into chaos, which
50:09
Speaker 1: is essentially what has done. And they're only now figuring
50:12
Speaker 1: out how do we recover from this? What is the
50:15
Speaker 1: role of the record label now in all of this,
50:18
Speaker 1: given that artists can do everything themselves. The thing that
50:21
Speaker 1: surprised me about the streaming revolution when it happened, I
50:24
Speaker 1: was really excited about it, and I just imagined as
50:27
Speaker 1: a real fanatical fan of music and going to the
50:32
Speaker 1: record store every day and walking around the record stores
50:34
Speaker 1: and just wanting to hear everything. The idea of living
50:37
Speaker 1: in the record store where everything was always available on
50:40
Speaker 1: demand when you want. It seemed like just the greatest
50:44
Speaker 1: thing that could ever happen. And I thought I would
50:48
Speaker 1: want a DJ all day. And what I've come to
50:51
Speaker 1: learn now that it's here is that actually, I really
50:56
Speaker 1: like being DJ two, and I spend much more time
50:59
Speaker 1: listening to curated music than picking what I want to
51:04
Speaker 1: listen to. I like the surprise of what comes next.
51:08
Speaker 1: You already know what you want to listen to. Yeah,
51:10
Speaker 1: such things that you didn't know were there, that you
51:12
Speaker 1: didn't know you wanted to listen to, you know, And yeah,
51:16
Speaker 1: those are the things that I try and find if
51:19
Speaker 1: I'm doing any research for where to move my own music. Well,
51:23
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this. Oh well done? Okay cool.
51:28
Speaker 1: Thanks the tot Runagren for chatting with Rick about his
51:31
Speaker 1: past and present work. You can turn out his new
51:33
Speaker 1: song with Sparks called Your Fandango, along with all of
51:36
Speaker 1: our favorite Runagren songs at Broken Record podcast dot com.
51:40
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
51:43
Speaker 1: dot com slash broken record Podcast, where you can find
51:46
Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
51:49
Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record, broken Record It's produced with help
51:52
Speaker 1: from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, and
51:57
Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive
52:01
Speaker 1: producer is Melabell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin
52:05
Speaker 1: Industries and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
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Speaker 1: expect Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, h