June 22 – Runt Went It Alone

Who among us hasn’t stopped dead and listened in awe to a great guitar solo, or sax bit, or piano flourish and wondered how anyone can get to be so good at playing that instrument? Maybe wished we had that level of talent too. Well how’d you like to be able to play just about all the instruments like that! Today we look at one guy who seemingly can do just that. Todd Rundgren turns 76 today!

Rundgren, or “Runt” as many call him, played in bands along the way including Nazz and Utopia, and often has used his musical friends to help out on his solo works (as most musicians do)…but not always. Take his 1978 hit “Can We Still Be Friends?” for instance. The single off his eighth album, Hermit of Mink Hollow, is all Todd. The whole album is really; even the title references that – Mink Hollow Road, in Woodstock, is where his house was and where he recorded the whole thing himself. The haunting song sounds like an entire band, but was just Todd playing instrument after instrument and over-dubbing the tapes. Even all those backing vocals are him. He wrote and produced the whole album at home all by himself, in fact, two decades before Pro Tools and other computer software would make such tasks semi-easy.

“Can We Still Be Friends” was a top 30 hit for Todd in the U.S. Later Robert Palmer also had a hit with his version of it… but Robert needed four backing musicians.

So, Todd went it alone, which leads us to the Stunningly Solo Seven – seven musicians who’ve done it all – literally – on their records. Like…

Paul McCartney. McC, who turned 82 this week by the way, was at his best with a good band around him. A group called The Beatles comes to mind. Wings wasn’t half-bad either. But once in awhile, he’d follow his own instincts without even trying to listen to other opinions or get others involved. The results have been three albums titled McCartney, McCartney II and recently, McCartney III. We always knew he could write a fantastic tune and play bass well but those albums show us his range was quite a bit broader than that. Take the synthesizer-heavy “Coming Up” from the second such album in 1980. Everything on it was “come up” with by Paul – the writing, the singing, the instruments, the engineering and production. And it became his first North American hit of the ’80s. Mind you, he’d had a few more of those in the preceding two decades!

Steve Winwood. Stevie had been a teen prodigy in the ’60s, a good singer, songwriter and keyboardist. He helped both the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic become major acts all before he was 20. But when he decided to go it alone, he often seemed to do just that. His second solo record, Arc of a Diver is a great example of that. He was the main writer of all seven songs (on the title track, Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band is listed as a co-writer) and the producer. The album went platinum in North America and scored him a major hit with “While You See A Chance” and got a bit more airplay for the tasteful song “Arc of a Diver”. On that one, he plays synthesizers of course, but also piano, electric and acoustic guitars, fretless bass, drums and a mandolin!

Dave Grohl, aka Foo Fighters. He was barely noticed behind the drums (and Kurt Cobain) in Nirvana, but when that band came to a crashing halt, Dave went for it, (or took a chance in Steve Winwood’s parlance). Although not as “iconic” as Nirvana, the Foo Fighters have been running for close to 30 years, have a bevy of platinum albums and a museum’s worth of Grammy Awards. Now, of course, as anyone who’s seen them knows, the Foos are a band, led by Grohl. But it wasn’t always that way. The first, self-titled album in 1995, including this great tune, was Dave and … well, just Dave. Except for a wee bit of added guitar from Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs on one single track, Grohl did it all. Wrote the songs, played the guitars, drums, bass, anything else he deemed necessary, recorded it and produced it. He really only started assembling a band when he realized he loved playing live and wasn’t quite good enough to play a guitar, drums, bass and sing all simultaneously on stage.

John Fogerty. Whereas Grohl is Mr. Gregarious it would seem, Fogerty seems… well, possibly just a tiny wee bit prickly to be around. He blew up Creedence Clearwater Revival essentially because he couldn’t get along with the others (including his brother Tom) and seemed to feel that he was the only one in the band with any writing skills. He might not have been totally wrong on that, but it didn’t make him popular with the bandmates. So when it was time to make more music, not surprisingly, John seemed to go it alone. His huge 1985 hit album Centerfield, with the title track baseball anthem and the hit “The Old Man Down The Road” was written entirely by him and produced, and played. He’d done about the same thing with his 1973 solo debut The Blue Ridge Rangers , although that one consisted of cover songs like the old country standard “Jambalaya”.

Stevie Wonder. Like Winwood, this Stevie was a teen sensation in the ’60s and quickly established himself as a fantastic piano player and singer, but by the time he was leaving his teens he showed he was a lot more than just that. In sharp contrast to many other big Motown acts who tended to be micromanaged by label boss Berry Gordy Jr., Wonder showed increasing control over his records in the ’70s and by 1972’s Talking Book, was close to a one-man show. The great song “I Believe” on it, used to great effect at the end of the movie High Fidelity, was all-Wonder. Although his then sister-in-law Yvonne Wright helped write it with him, Stevie played everything – piano, clavinet, Moog synthesizer and bass, sang it and produced it himself.

Lenny Kravitz. Unlike Stevie, Lenny pretty much started out doing it all by himself. His 1989 debut album Let Love Rule was mostly just Lenny. He wrote the songs, played most of the instruments and produced it himself. Although the title track did have a couple of session musicians joining him, the song “Sittin’ on top of the World” was entirely by him.

So there you have it. The Stunningly Solo Seven, great artists who took “DIY” to another level!

December 22 – Runt A Giant Among His Peers

They called him “Runt” but he had a big day on this day in 1973 – Todd Rundgren‘s great “Hello It’s Me” peaked at #5 on Billboard, making it, not surprisingly, his biggest hit to date.

Rundgren grew up in Philadelphia and quickly grew to become a versatile musician capable of playing just about any instrument it seemed. He joined a couple of bands there while still a teen, most notably Nazz. It was with them that he recorded the original version of this song, the first one he ever wrote, in 1969. That version was a little slower and more psychedelic than the one we know that became a hit in the ’70s.

After striking out on his own, he quickly developed a following with the early-’70s hits “We Gotta Get You A Woman” and “I Saw the Light”. He became increasingly creative, talented in the studio and on any number of instruments and tired of working with other musicians who didn’t share his energy (large amounts of Ritalin and pot “caused me to crank out the songs at an incredible rate” he says of the period) or visions. He came to work for Bearsville Records at their studio in upstate New York and help produce albums from Ian and Sylvia, Paul Buttersfield and Jesse Winchester (whom he helped Robbie Robertson of The Band with) before getting to work on his third album, Something/Anything? .

He decided at first to do that album entirely on his own, and seeking a change of pace and inspiration, took off to L.A. to record it. He wrote and recorded a good chunk of the opus there all by himself, including the hit “I Saw the Light”. But an earthquake caused problems at the studio, causing him to retreat back to Bearsville where he finished off what ended up being a 90-minute double album. While he had no help on sides 1 through 3 of the LP, side 4 in New York, he tried to record as a live record in the studio, and utilized a number of session musicians including Rick Derringer on guitar, Randy Brecker, one of Blood, Sweat & Tears’ great horn-virtuosos and Vickie Sue Robinson (who later had a hit with “Turn the Beat Around”) among the backing singers. Side 4 he termed “Baby Needs A New Pair of Snakeskin Shoes – a Pop Operetta” and included “Hello It’s Me”.

The album earned him his only solo gold record in the U.S. and won rave reviews. Rolling Stone, for example, graded it 4.5-stars when it came out calling it “perfectly composed.” Later the publication would rank it as the 117th best album of all-time, naming it his “tour de force” which “demonstrates his command of the studio …over a kaleidoscope of rock genres.”

The command of the studio’s served him well. Since then he’s produced a large number of popular and well-received records including Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell and XTC’s Skylarking. Between his own work and his band Utopia he’s put out some 18 more studio albums since Something/anything? but few have rivaled it in sales or acclaim.

“Hello It’s Me” remains one of the more popular singles of the early-’70s and among the myriad of artists to cover it are Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, as well as John Legend on a Gap (jeans) promo CD.

By the way, in case you were wondering, “Runt’s” really not that tiny. Most sources put him as 5’10” or 5’11” tall.

August 17 – From Big Pink To Little Blue?

Chances are if you close to create a new genre of music and start out with not one, but two records that quickly become considered classics, there’s nowhere much to go but downhill. That’s what The Band found out in 1970, with their third album, Stage Fright, which came out this day 53 years ago.

Over the previous couple of years, they’d broken away from being Bob Dylan’s backing band and made themselves international superstars with Music From Big Pink and the self-titled album. Hits like “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” had opened ears up to a new blend of country, rock and bluegrass soon to be referred to as “Americana.” As Pitchfork put it, they’d “established themselves as the thinking fan’s alternative to the diminishing returns of psychedelia and the counter-culture.” It’s tough to top that, so perhaps they didn’t try.

Stage Fright was a little more rock than the previous ones, and a little less coherent. They lyrics leaned less on history and tales of downhome folk and a bit more with the low state of mind they were in with things like constant touring and “a lot of drug experimenting” according to Robbie Robertson, whom the musical world is mourning this month. Many commented on what was seen as a disconnect between downbeat lyrics and up-tempo, at times jovial-sounding tunes.

They recorded in an old playhouse in Woodstock, producing it themselves but having Todd Rundgren around for engineer work and mixing; Robertson has suggested they weren’t used to him and didn’t get along terrifically, nor was the sound in the building all that good.

All that notwithstanding, the ten-song, 35 minute album is, by almost all accounts, good. Just not as good as the first two. There was less harmonizing on the vocals, but Rick Danko, Levon Helm and Richard Manuel all took turns doing lead vocals; Danko on the title track. Likewise, they showed off their musical prowess well, with each of them playing multiple instruments – Garth Hudson for instance played sax and accordion as well as the various keyboards.

Reviews, then and now, seem to all echo off each other noting the difference between lyrical mood and melody, the less cohesive feel of the entity and end concluding it was good, but not great unlike the previous ones. Tellingly, it isn’t listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, unlike the first pair. Rolling Stone gave it 3.5-stars then, Billboard liked it calling it a “candid and confessional, genuinely comic and gently satiric” record but again pointing out “the relationship of music to message is noticeably off.” Later Pitchfork rated it 8.3/10, Entertainment Weekly an “A-” (saying “they slipped a notch”) and allmusic, 4.5-stars. Q had it at 4-stars and noted a few songs like “Daniel and the Sacred Harp”, “W.S. Walcott Medicine Show” and “the Shape I’m In” qualified as “career highlights.”

The album lacked a real “hit” single but “Time to Kill”, which had “The Shape I’m In” on the flipside got to #45 in Canada, with many stations playing the B-side more than the A. Overall, Capitol were likely still pleased with the performance of the record, with it hitting #5 in the U.S., #6 in Canada and #15 in the UK. In the States it went gold, just as the first two had.

However, the spark of genius seemed to be dimming for The Band and they’d have few career highlights after this one until the famous Last Waltz concert in 1976.

October 26 – The Pursuit Of Happiness Captured Some Great Riffs

A few years before Kurt Cobain gave a voice to the generation experiencing teen angst, another singer and band eloquently voiced what comes after – young adult angst! Canada’s The Pursuit of Happiness never got recognition even close to that which Nirvana would enjoy but probably did at least as good a job in putting life’s frustrations into music with their debut album, Love Junk, out this day in 1988.

The Pursuit of Happiness was, and always has been, the band of and vehicle for Moe Berg’s musical imagination. Berg not only is the lead vocalist and a guitarist for them but the only songwriter. And while not exactly punk in sound or sneer, Moe definitely learned from the punk movement when it comes to having a DIY attitude. He’d started the band about three years earlier after moving from Alberta to Canada’s musical mecca, Toronto.

Debuts often don’t live upto the band’s full promise or to future works, but in The Pursuit’s case, it probably did. The witty power-pop single “I’m An Adult Now” contains a great guitar riff tailor-made to be an earworm and some of the wryest lyrics about growing up in any song – “I can sleep in til noon any day I want, but there’s not many days that I do/ Gotta get up and take on that world, when you’re an adult it’s no cliche, it’s the truth” and so on. The band really went the DIY route with it, filming a low-fi video on the streets of Toronto for it and rounding up the money to press 1500 copies of it as a single. The video took off on Canada’s version of MTV, Much Music, and the very indie single got played on Toronto’s FM alt-rock station, CFNY. Its popularity in those two outlets got Warner Brothers interested, and they signed the band briefly and put “I’m An Adult Now” out nation-wide. It hit the Canadian top 40 in ’86, but then inexplicably, Warner bid them adieu. Enter Chrysalis Records, which signed them and financed a whole album – this one. It contained a re-recorded version of their single and several other catchy reflections on the voyage from kid to adult, most notably “Hard to Laugh” and  “She’s So Young”, which getting to #20 technically made it their biggest hit at home.

The album hit the Canuck top 30 with its clean yet rocking sounds, polished up by producer Todd Rundgren. By the end of the decade, it was platinum in the Great White North. Elsewhere, success was harder to come by, even with a famous name in the studio for it. The album didn’t do much anywhere else, but at least “I’m An Adult Now” got them heard in Australia (top 40 there) and in the all-important U.S. market, where it got to #6 on Billboard‘s alternative rock chart early in 1990.

Allmusic graded it 4-stars, suggesting “it set a standard for Canadian pop/rock… tight arrangements, self-deprecating lyrics and a bitter yet funny cynicism.”

Berg looked back at the record this year and figures the secret to its success lay in the fact “we weren’t following any trends… also, Todd Rundgren had his own sonic perception that was different from what many producers were doing.” He was surprised that the reflective singles like “I’m An Adult Now” “feel more true to me now than when I wrote them.”

Moe and his band, in various incarnations, has been going ever since, although they’ve not put out any albums of new material since the late-’90s and now are typically restricted to just a few shows around Canada a year. But who’s to say he won’t get up and take on that musical world one more time?

August 1 – The Turntable Talk, Round 5 : Cover Songs, The Good, The Bad, The Unnecessary

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! By now, if you’re a regular reader here – and if you are, thank you, I appreciate your time here – you know how this runs. We’ve invited several interesting and talented music writers to sound off on the same topic. In the past we’ve looked at topics like why the Beatles are still relevant, whether MTV and the video sensation helped or harmed music and great debut records which took them by surprise. This time around, it’s “Cover Me”. Much of what we hear and love is songs which aren’t original to the artists we hear. So we’re asking what makes a great cover song? Are there any that stand out as being very good, or even better than the original? (I add that we’re restricting this to cover songs in which the original was fairly popular or well-known. Thus ones which are cover songs but where the original was obscure, like perhaps The Clique’s “Superman,” made a hit by R.E.M., wouldn’t be counted.)

Today, we finish off the topic with a few more thoughts from A Sound Day. We thank the six writers who took the time to share their ideas about it, as well as some great tunes, in the past week..

Cover songs. Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re an integral part of the music of the past 50 or more years. And I think the safest thing to say is that it’s silly to uniformly “love” them or “hate” them. Each one deserves to be judged on its own merits. And whether or not you like a particular song, an artist is well within their rights to record a cover version, as long as they give the appropriate credit to the original writers. Even the worst cover of a song that you love the original of will help the first artist by earning them some money from the writing credits.

That said, here at A Sound Day, we agree with the sentiments several people expressed…namely that it’s redundant at best, almost insulting at worst, to merely duplicate an already well-known song. One example that was mentioned here by other contributors was Todd Rundgren’s “Good Vibrations.” I don’t like disparaging Todd; in fact regular readers know that we lobbied for his inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He’s a fine songwriter, performer and producer. That said, his take on the Beach Boys classic was so good it was bad. “Runt” set out to make a version as close to the Beach Boys original as he possibly could. He succeeded. In fact, if you’re not listening carefully or the record is on in the background in a store, for example, you’ll likely think it is the Beach Boys original. But therein lies the problem – it was utterly unnecessary. It didn’t do anything much different with the song. Even his voice comes close to the Beach Boys on it. And as it came out in 1976, it followed the “real” one by a little under ten years. Fans of Todd’s were by and large entirely old enough to remember the original version. Heck, they likely had the Beach Boys original in their collection. So, in the end, Todd’s little experiment was neat in a scientific sort of way – how close to the original could he come. But he should have done it for his own pleasure if he was so determined, and not wasted anyone’s time by releasing it.

Which leads me to the two reasons I think an artist can make a cover song which stands up and is entirely worthwhile. One, if it introduces a song to a whole new audience. Or two, if they take it and do something utterly different with the song, in effect make it their own…the sort of anti-Rundgren if you will.

Let’s look at the first one. Rundgren’s fault with “Good Vibrations” was probably picking a song so very well-known. Had he picked say, “I Know There’s An Answer”, a Beach Boys song from around the same time but one which was a little-heard album track, it might have been better. He could have still proved his studio prowess to those who cared, but he’d have been presenting a song to the masses that most didn’t know. So, if you’re going to pick a song to do a cover of, pick one that your fans probably don’t know by heart. Usually this would mean doing an obscure track, or a track from long ago, or one from a different genre of music altogether. If you’re a thrash metal band, doing a cover of a Hank Williams song would be an opportunity to do something different and in all likelihood, very, very few of your fans would know the original, even if it was once a big hit on the country charts. Van Halen followed that plan, to some degree on Diver Down that Deke wrote about. Even though some of their fans likely were Kinks fans on some level, they probably didn’t know “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?:. After all, it wasn’t released as an A-side to a single and it came out 17 years earlier. 14 year-old Dekes, and all those like him, took it at face value as a cool, new Van Halen song.

One more way to introduce a song to a new audience is to take a song which was a regional hit and record it for another market. We Canadians know something of that. 54/40 had many fans at home, and “I Go Blind” was well-known there and got a fair bit of FM radio play. But outside of the Great White North, essentially no one at all knew it. Except Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish apparently, who recorded a cover only three or four years after the original. It was an American hit with very few of their fans having a clue as to who 54/40 was. Ditto for Santana’s fine take on Ian Thomas’ “Hold On.” It was a U.S. top 20 less than two years after Thomas had the original on Canadian -but not other lands’ – charts.  The same holds true for other smaller markets. For every Men at Work or Crowded House we come to love worldwide out of Australia or New Zealand, there are scores of Hunters & Collectors and Mental as Anythings, fine acts with a great following – and good songs – there, but virtually unknown elsewhere. A good source of a quick, “new” song for internationally-loved artists and source of new revenue for the Aussie musicians.

But if you choose to do a well-known song, as Rundgren had done, the way to make it stand out and live on is to make it your own. Do something entirely different than the original, give it a whole new approach or even meaning with your presentation. Johnny Cash did that with the NIN’s “Hurt” written about yesterday by Max. So too, Devo with their whimsical, electronic version of the Stones’ all-time classic, “Satisfaction.” Everyone knew the song, but no one was saying “hey is that Mick Jagger?” . Perhaps the best-loved example of this was Joe Cocker, a man who made a big career out of doing little other than covers. His first big hit? A cover of the Beatles “With A Little Help From My Friends.” He released it in 1968, barely a year after the original.

To do that was astonishing. It took…well, let’s say “chutzpah.” To take a well-known song by the best-loved band in the world, from their opus which was still on the charts at the time no less, and put it out as a single so soon after the one the masses knew and loved. Imagine if some loud British prog rock act tried to put out their own version of “Stairway to Heaven” at Christmas, 1972…then multiply that a few times over. To do so risked not only having a flop, but something close to career suicide. Cocker ran the risk of winning the wrath of Beatles fans everywhere (which was much the same as saying “pop or rock fans everywhere” back then). They could have easily taken offense at his gall and received it as him – close to a new kid on the block – telling the world “I’m better than the Beatles. You don’t need them if you have me.” A similar actual comment from Terrence Trent Darby derailed his career almost before it got started two decades later. Yet Cocker ended up being lauded for his song, which went to #1 in Britain! Because he took the song and made it something different… heartfelt, bluesy, gritty, busting with emotion. A lightweight, poppy ditty was made into a blues number that tore at people’s heartstrings. Even its detractors – and yes there were a few (to be candid, yours truly among them) – had to admit, he made the song interesting and new. It didn’t sound like him saying “I’m out of ideas, so I’m going to copy a hit song you already know”. It was “this song has emotion and depth you never knew and it speaks to my soul.” And it spoke to many others too apparently.

As we wrap it up, although we’ve had a lot of great examples, well “covered” by our guest writers the past week, a few songs came to mind that hadn’t been mentioned but deserve some mention. Like “You Can’t Hurry Love” by Phil Collins (which was pretty true to the original but doubtless introduced some to the pleasures of early Motown) , “The Runner” – another Ian Thomas song – by Mannfred Mann and just about anything at all by the duo of Susanna Hoffs & Matthew Sweet. You could probably quickly come up with your own list of a dozen or more.

So there you have it. Cover songs. No right or wrong. Some good, some bad, some pointless…but if they make you happy, ultimately they’ve done something good.

December 22 – Hello, It Was Todd, And A Hit

They called him “Runt” but he had a big day on this day in 1973 – Todd Rundgren‘s great “Hello It’s Me” peaked at #5 on Billboard, making it, not surprisingly, his biggest hit to date.

Rundgren grew up in Philadelphia and quickly grew to become a versatile musician capable of playing just about any instrument it seemed. He joined a couple of bands there while still a teen, most notably Nazz. It was with them that he recorded the original version of this song, the first one he ever wrote, in 1969. That version was a little slower and more psychedelic than the one we know that became a hit in the ’70s.

After striking out on his own, he quickly developed a following with the early-’70s hits “We Gotta Get You A Woman” and “I Saw the Light”. He became increasingly creative, talented in the studio and on any number of instruments and tired of working with other musicians who didn’t share his energy (large amounts of Ritalin and pot “caused me to crank out the songs at an incredible rate” he says of the period) or visions. He came to work for Bearsville Records at their studio in upstate New York and help produce albums from Ian and Sylvia, Paul Buttersfield and Jesse Winchester (whom he helped Robbie Robertson of The Band with) before getting to work on his third album, Something/Anything?.

He decided at first to do that album entirely on his own, and seeking a change of pace and inspiration, took off to L.A. to record it. He wrote and recorded a good chunk of the opus there all by himself, including the hit “I Saw the Light”. But an earthquake caused problems at the studio, causing him to retreat back to Bearsville where he finished off what ended up being a 90-minute double album. While he had no help on sides 1 through 3 of the LP, side 4 in New York, he tried to record as a live record in the studio, and utilized a number of session musicians including Rick Derringer on guitar, Randy Brecker, one of Blood, Sweat & Tears’ great horn-virtuosos and Vickie Sue Robinson (who later had a hit with “Turn the Beat Around”) among the backing singers. Side 4 he termed “Baby Needs A New Pair of Snakeskin Shoes – a Pop Operetta” and included “Hello It’s Me”.

The album earned him his only solo gold record in the U.S. and won rave reviews. Rolling Stone, for example, graded it 4.5-stars when it came out calling it “perfectly composed.” Later the publication would rank it as the 117th best album of all-time, naming it his “tour de force” which “demonstrates his command of the studio …over a kaleidoscope of rock genres.”

The command of the studio’s served him well. Since then he’s produced a large number of popular and well-received records including Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell and XTC’s Skylarking. Between his own work and his band Utopia he’s put out some 18 more studio albums since Something/anything? but few have rivaled it in sales or acclaim.

“Hello It’s Me” remains one of the more popular singles of the early-’70s; just recently it was featured prominently in the HBO show And Just Like That, being played at the funeral of a prominent character. Among the myriad of artists to cover it are Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, as well as John Legend on a Gap (jeans) promo CD.

September 25 – More People Began To Love The Furs Way

A creative and talented producer can bring a lot to the game and really help make a band’s sound. On this day in 1982 we heard what happens when a veteran American rock producer began to work with a rising British post-punk/new wave outfit. The results were quite good, as any Psychedelic Furs fan will tell you. The Todd Rundgren-produced Forever Now came out 39 years ago today.

For the Furs, it was their third album in as many years, and there’d been some turmoil leading up to the record. In the Furs case, it was two members quitting prior to the recording, and difficulties with the drummer, Vince Ely, who wasn’t present for many of the demo sessions and would quit soon after the recording was finished. This left the band as essentially a trio, led by singer/ writer Richard Butler and his brother Tim.

Rising Brit producer Steve Lillywhite had produced the first couple of P. Furs records, but for this one he was busy at the time, and the band rather wanted a different take on their sound. The label liked the idea of David Bowie as producer, and he was on record as a fan of the Furs, but he too was busy (presumably putting together Let’s Dance) and they didn’t want to wait around for an opening in his schedule. Not to mention, according to Richard, the media were already making too many comparisons between them and Bowie and he didn’t want to accentuate the similarities.

They opted for Todd Rundgren and flew over to the States to record at his New York state studio over a six-week period. Rundgren, as ever, was full of ideas and challenges to the band. He at once seemed to streamline their sound a little yet add all sorts of elements simultaneously, including his own keyboard work and backing vocalists (which the band wasn’t pleased about.) Among them were ’60s veterans Flo & Eddie, from the Turtles. Butler thought them superfluous and too “establishment”, but their voices stayed, including on the single “Love My Way”. When he heard the demo of that, “Flo” (Howard Kaylan) said “we have got to sing on this one – this is the f** hit!”

He was close to right. “Love My Way” was the first Furs song to chart in North America, hitting #44 in the U.S. It did marginally better at home for them, making #42 . It was a biggie in New Zealand where it broke into the top 10. The song itself has had a great after-life, with use in movies like Valley Girl and the Wedding Singer and is probably aired more on radio now than it was in the early-’80s.

The album itself met with mixed reviews and so-so sales. It hit #4 in New Zealand, #20 in the UK. There it was given a boost by having one of their concerts in October broadcast live on the BBC. It didn’t impact American charts much, but eventually did go gold, something the two prior ones failed to. “Love My Way” was big on college radio and stations like CFNY in Canada, and “Sleep Comes Down” also got them MTV airplay.

Rolling Stone at the time gave it a 3-star rating, noting that Richard “Butler’s voice carries” the album and his voice was either “ineffably fascinating (or would cause people) to run from the room upon hearing his unique vocal cords.” While they considered it “alluring” they felt only “Danger” stood out, “the most ferocious, impassioned song the Furs have ever recorded.” All in all, an interesting album with some great tracks that, as Entertainment Weekly would go on to note later was “a shaky move toward their eventual mainstream success” in the form of their next album, 1984’s Mirror Moves.

September 18 – Meat’s Squeeze Play To Score…A Top 40 Hit

One of the most iconic songs of the ’70s topped out on the chart this day in 1978 and introduced us to a new musical dish. Meat Loaf’s epic baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-sex- “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” – hit #39 on Billboard. Which is quite surprising considering how well-known and oft-played on radio the lengthy tune is.

Presumably people just wanted to buy the LP instead; Bat Out of Hell has sold well over 30 million copies worldwide, 14 million or so of those in the States and at 25X platinum is the biggest-ever in Australia. At 7:55, “Paradise…” is also one of the longest songs ever crammed onto a 7″ single in the U.S.; many other countries got a much shorter version with the baseball content edited out.

Baseball seemed the obvious tie-in for writer Jim Steinman; after all both baseball and teenage sex are great American pastimes and sexual slang has long included baseball references – getting to second base and so on. The innuendo-laden play-by-play (“he’s out-no wait- safe, safe at second base…”) is provided by famous Yankees commentator Phil Rizzuto, who perhaps was a little out of the loop as to what his play-by-play was going to be used for. He turned Meat down cold when the singer offered to take him on tour. Other well-knowns helped out on it too. The girl who sings the counterpoint to Meat Loaf is actress Ellen Foley (Night Court, Cocktail) and the drummer and pianist were from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan respectively. The Springsteen tie-in was also no random occurrence. Producer Todd Rundgren and Steinman both thought the song was similar in feel to Springsteen’s “Jungleland” and “Thunder Road”, but with a bit more pizzazz and revved up a few notches. Kasim Sulton, from Rundgren’s own band, did the bass and says “I remember distinctly saying to myself ‘this is just the biggest joke…I cannot believe these people got a record deal!” they did, and it paid off! Rundgren himself said “I thought, ‘this is really out of time…maybe it’ll sell a few copies.’”

An interesting example of how savvy Meat Loaf and Co. were was that they shot a video for it – this was pre-MTV remember – and had it played in theaters that were playing The Rocky Horror Picture Show which he acted in . Although it only barely cracked the top 40 at home, it did run up to #11 in Canada and topped the charts in the Netherlands. 

December 22 – Hello, It’s Runt!

“Runt” had a big day on this day in 1973 – Todd Rundgren‘s great “Hello It’s Me” peaked at #5 on Billboard, making it, not surprisingly, his biggest hit to date.

Rudgren grew up in Philadelphia and quickly grew to become a versatile musician capable of playing just about any instrument it seemed. He joined a couple of bands there while still a teen, most notably Nazz. It was with them that he recorded the original version of this song, the first one he ever wrote, in 1969. That version was a little slower and more psychedelic than the one we know that became a hit in the ’70s.

After striking out on his own, he quickly developed a following with the early-’70s hits “We Gotta Get You A Woman” and “I Saw the Light”. He became increasingly creative, talented in the studio and on any number of instruments and tired of working with other musicians who didn’t share his energy (large amounts of ritalin and pot “caused me to crank out the songs at an incredible rate” he says of the period) or visions. He came to work for Bearsville Records at their studio in upstate New York and help produce albums from Ian and Sylvia, Paul Buttersfield and Jesse Winchester (whom he helped Robbie Robertson of The Band with) before getting to work on his third album, Something/Anything? .

He decided at first to do that album entirely on his own, and seeking a change of pace and inspiration, took off to L.A. to record it. He wrote and recorded a good chunk of the opus there all by himself, including the hit “I Saw the Light”. But an earthquake caused problems at the studio, causing him to retreat back to Bearsville where he finished off what ended up being a 90-minute double album. While he had no help on sides 1 through 3 of the LP, side 4 in New York, he tried to record as a live record in the studio, and utilized a number of session musicians including Rick Derringer on guitar, Randy Brecker, one of Blood, Sweat & Tears’ great horn-virtuosos and Vickie Sue Robinson (who later had a hit with “Turn the Beat Around”) among the backing singers. Side 4 he termed “Baby Needs A New Pair of Snakeskin Shoes – a Pop Operetta” and included “Hello It’s Me”.

The album earned him his only solo gold record in the U.S. and won rave reviews. Rolling Stone, for example, graded it 4.5-stars when it came out calling it “perfectly composed.” Later the publication would rank it as the 117th best album of all-time, naming it his “tour de force” which “demonstrates his command of the studio …over a kaleidoscope of rock genres.”

The command of the studio’s served him well. Since then he’s produced a large number of popular and well-received records including Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell and XTC’s Skylarking. Between his own work and his band Utopia he’s put out some 18 more studio albums since Something/anything? but few have rivaled it in sales or acclaim.

“Hello It’s Me” remains one of the more popular singles of the early-’70s and among the myriad of artists to cover it are Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, as well as John Legend on a Gap (jeans) promo CD.

June 22 – ‘Runt’s A Big Name In The Business

He called his recent autobiography The Individualist. The book was 181 pages long and had 181 chapters. Yep, the title fits the man. Happy birthday, “Runt.” Todd Rundgren turns 72 today. The Philadelphia-born rocker’s impact stretches far beyond the one hit song the casual listener know him for.

Runt’s rock import is three-fold. He’s an artist, writer and producer, having pretty good success in all three categories. His career began while he was still in his teens with the band Nazz. He began as their guitarist but quickly through their three albums came to be their chief writer, producer and singer as well.

Around that time, at the beginning of the ’70s, he struck up a friendship with Albert Grossman who ran Bearsville Records and Studios, in upstate New York. Grossman hired him on to work in the studio and promised him if he worked hard he’d make him “the highest-paid producer in the world,” which actually happened for Todd, briefly at least. He quickly worked on The Band’s Stage Fright and was recruited to do Janis Joplin’s Pearl, though their personalities clashed and eventually she went to California and had the Doors’ Paul Rothchild produce it. Soon he’d be working on Grand Funk’s We’re An American Band, and keeping busy making the first few of his own 21 studio albums to date. The most impressive of those was ’72’s Something/Anything? a sprawling double album which yielded his biggest hit, “Hello It’s Me” (he’d recorded it originally with Nazz but re-did it for this album) and featured him playing all the instruments and producing three of the four sides. The record was unusual in its free-form, live to tape sort of feel with songs at times stopping and re-starting and seguing into one another. Rundgren explained it as “my act of tyranny…I threw out all the rules of record-making and decided I would try to imprint the chaos in my head onto a record.” He adds, “this became my model for life.”