Todd Rundgren has returned to his 1970's roots with the release of his new album, Arena. The music is guitar oriented and rocks hard and loud. We have not seen this side of Rundgren in some time. Perhaps it was his recent tour with The New Cars that got Todd’s wheels turning. Whatever the reason, it worked. Arena is his strongest solo album since his Utopia heyday.

At the end of the day, it is obvious Rundgren is both a creative and an academic genius. His answers are well articulated and thought provoking. Suffice it to say this is not so much an interview about new music as it is about the process of writing, producing and recording music—something Rundgren knows as much about as anyone on the planet.

Todd: I planned it that way. I have been touring with a guitar quartet. I have been playing with larger configurations with The New Cars or my own band. I have, now, returned to an approach that I was more noted for in the Seventies. My audience responded well to that. It is a nostalgia thing, I suppose. So, I returned to a guitar oriented presentation. It is fun to get up there and noodle away, so I decided to stick with it. When I got around to doing a new record, I knew it was going to be a guitar-oriented record.

Todd: A lot of it was feedback I got from the audience when I was performing within this guise. We were getting a terrific response and my conviction is that a lot of people became fans when I was fronting Utopia, as the lead singer and lead guitar player. When I started doing a lot of the older, guitar oriented material,, the audience response indicated that people still had affection for that approach and may want to hear some new music in that style.

Todd: Sometimes I am not starting with as clear and concise an agenda, as I did with this record. I got back into the whole concept record thing with Liars. I was experimenting with non-concept, concepts. I would write a song and then make it available to my fans through a subscription service. Essentially, I would wait until I had enough songs and then make it into a CD. I discovered that I don’t work as well in that format as I do in a more traditional, concept album format. I do better when all the songs are somewhat related in subject matter. The end result has a theme to it, in a sense. The whole thing can be looked at as an extended work, as opposed to a collection of songs.

Todd: I spend a lot of time ruminating before hand. Once I have settled on a concept, I don’t rush into the studio and start recording stuff. First, I start a progressive refinement process. I begin with the most fragmentary bits of stuff. I don’t feel any sort of pressure to bring them to completion. I wait until I think that I have accumulated enough of those fragments and ideas, and then I step into the next phase, which is bringing them all up to a song-like form. The very last thing that I do is write the lyrics and the melodies. I do things somewhat backwards from the way a lot of people compose. A lot of people come up with a lyrical idea and then a melody.

Todd: It seems that way. It is probably the result of spending so much time in the studio. I have my own studio, so instead of writing outside the studio, I tend to write in the studio. Instead of having to memorize –I am not a very good transcriptionist— so instead of memorizing a piano part, I record it and have it captured. Even if I replace it later with something different or better, I don’t go through the process of trying to memorize or transcribe the part. It goes as quickly to the recording process as possible.

Todd: I have very literary influences. When I get around to writing the lyrics for something, I have a very liberal vocabulary to draw on. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have an encyclopedic mind, or a large vocabulary to write anything. I have always preferred, from a listener’s standpoint, things that have a sort of poetry to them and a personal message. I like music that is revelatory of the artist that made it, as opposed to something that was just made to entertain. In that sense, I emulate my influences. Gilbert and Sullivan were always a big thing for me; their lyrics were very complex and reference riddled sort of poetry. I am comfortable working in that sort of format. I don’t think of myself as an intelligent writer, per say, I just can’t forget what I know, so it winds up in the music somehow.

Todd: I have never felt that was a problem. Again, it doesn’t matter what style of music you’re talking about, there are better or worse examples of it and more or less literary examples of it. I am not a country music fan, but I am sure that there are country music songs that display intelligence, every once in a while [laughter]. Sometimes it is hard to find, but there are some smart country musicians out there, like Steve Earle and some of the hardcore, almost hillbilly musicians. They play some smart, interesting music.

A few years ago, I did a tribute to Harry Smith, who was a musical archivist. He traveled around with a field recorder and captured a lot of indigenous American music performed by people who, otherwise, would have never been recorded. The interesting thing about doing these tribute concerts is discovering the range of American music, outside of what you hear on the radio. The subject matter of the songs was the equivalent of newspapers today. They would tell the story of a mine collapsing some place or the train wreck that happened. People often learned about historical events through these topical songs.

Todd: It is a little bizarre, isn’t it.

Todd: I think what made the on stage chemistry work was that we have a lot of similar musical roots. The reason Elliot [Easton] contacted me was because we had done work together before. Elliot played guitar on a production I did for an artist named Jules Shear. I knew Elliot from that context, but Utopia and The Cars appeared together at shows in the late 70's and early 80's.

It was great for me to do The Cars tour because I don’t have the endless string of hits that a band like that does. You are playing a show, and you’re eight songs into the show and everyone is still singing along to every word. It is a very different experience than when I do my show, where people have some familiarity with some of it. I often am playing new music or something obscure compared to the string of hits that The Cars have. Being able to throw in a couple of my songs was a relief for the band. Kasim Sulton and Prairie Prince are both in my band, so we can easily slip into my material and play The Cars material.

Todd: There is a minor future. We will, occasionally, do the corporate gig. Companies take their employees on retreat and want to have a band that is familiar to a wide cross section of people. You don’t have to be a fan of The Cars to be familiar with The Cars music, as they were on the radio constantly. A lot of bands are doing that sort of work, and in some ways there is a greater return. There is good money in it.

The expenses of touring can be considerable. Part of the reason we stopped was because we really weren’t making that much money at it. I, especially, wasn’t keeping up with my expenses playing with The New Cars. When I do solo shows, I have to pay everybody, but I can also pay myself whatever I need to be paid. In a favored nations thing, with three, four or five other guys, it is hard for any one of them to make what they need.

Todd: Some things are not worth considering, in the long run, in terms of if it helped or hurt. There are things about you that simply can’t be changed. It is like asking me if it has helped or hurt me to have straight hair. I suppose I could have spent a lot of time curling my hair but there is no real point to it, because, eventually it is just me; the guy with the straight hair. I have a certain range of flexibility, in terms of seeding authority to other people, but if, for instance, I am the one who does have the responsibility, then I take it seriously, possibly to the point of making other people miserable over it. I write from a certain standpoint, which has made it difficult to be a collaborator with other people. I don’t just sit down and look for words that rhyme. I need to find out what the song is about and what that means to me. I am not asking them what they want to; I am asking me what I want to hear. I have missed out on some opportunities because of that reputation, but, c’est la vie, there has been enough work.

Todd: Even though the possibility has been mentioned, I don’t want to saddle someone else with that responsibility. I know what it is, and I know what it is like to bear it. For instance, if you work with an act that you idolize, then you see them warts and all. You have real life, sometimes unpleasant experiences with them, as a result of your responsibility. You realize that you don’t want to rush, hastily, into any of these projects. I would rather forgo the opportunity to work with someone, so that you can continue to admire them from afar.

Todd: That is really difficult for me to say. It is a different process when you have no intermediaries. If I am capable of making all of the sound that makes it onto the final product, then it doesn’t have to go through all these different levels of translation. Thus, it doesn’t have to go through all of the negotiating diplomatic channels because it doesn’t exist. There is nobody for me to be either polite or rude with; it is just me. It is not the same as working with a group of people, who have their own inner dynamic going on between each of the members. Sometimes, you are forced to mediate, which is the least pleasant aspect of record production.

Todd: The crown jewel? I hardly ever think in those terms. The only time I ever think about it is when somebody, such as yourself, asks me about it. Then, I have to go back and review all of them. They all accomplished certain things for me. There have been ones that have been completely forgotten that I am extremely proud of. For whatever reasons, be it the market or the record labels incompetence, there are records that people have never heard that I feel I gave the band the best that they could possibly come up with. The criteria is to do the best record that you can. You have to survive all of the politics, psychology and other nonmusical things that come into the process. If you can do that, then you feel vindicated, at least.

Todd: If someone had a camera for the entire process of making that album, then it would have made a terrifically interesting documentary. However, it was nowhere near as difficult as to what came afterwards, especially for Meat Loaf. Nobody knew who Meat Loaf was when we did Bat Out of Hell, so expectations were completely flat at that point. We knew if we could sell any records at all then we were well ahead of the game. Nobody expected it to have the success at the magnitude it did. After that happened is when the trouble began. We had to live up to the expectations that the record created.

It took years for Meat Loaf to come out with, what was considered to be, his followup record. The record that we made as Bat Out of Hell II, actually came out as Steinman’s only solo record. Meat Loaf had spent so much time on the road abusing his voice, that when it came time to sing on the second record, he couldn’t sing. Steinman had written everything for the next record for Meat Loaf’s old voice, which had two or three additional notes available. Meat got in the studio and couldn’t hit any of the notes. Steinman writes from the highest notes that he could possibly sing, downward. Everyone thought that the making of Bat Out of Hell was an interesting adventure. We didn’t have any gigantic expectations about how the final product would do. We just had hopes and dreams.

Todd: The most amazing thing about that record is that we did most of it live, in the studio. Most all of the album consists of live performances, guitar solos included. It seemed like that was the way that it should have been done. Some of the material would speed up and slow down. We did a lot of time shifting and that makes it difficult to get people to play together, unless they are playing together.

Todd: I have been in the so-called music business for pretty much as long as it mattered. Very early on, I realized that I was on a very different path, and that the industry and I were using each other, in a way. I was using them for material support by doing productions and hoping they would succeed. I, also, did my own recordings, which I felt were my own personal catharsis. People were allowed to share in that by purchasing the record. It has been that way for as long as I can remember.

Concerning the record industry collapsing, I am in two minds. One is as a producer, who did very well in that regard. I do miss the ‘good old days’ when there was more production demand than I had time to do. I was making a fine living at it. There isn’t that kind of atmosphere anymore. There are not as many records being made where they are needing producers, and I regret that. It is selfish in a way. It is just me wanting to get paid.

I realize that the industry is in this shape, more or less, inevitably. It just couldn’t figure out a graceful way to get to this point. Once the Sony Walkman was invented, everything started moving into the direction that it is now. Consumers became in control of the nature of music and how it is experienced. I grew up in an era where everyone sweated over the running order. It was really important to decide what song went where. Now, people don’t even listen to records, top to bottom, anymore. Once people decided that they wanted that kind of flexibility, in the way that they experienced music, then it was out of the control of the labels and was headed to where we are at now.