Pop Music icon Todd Rundgren will give a lecture, titled, Longhair: Todd Rundgren on the Beatles Effect at 7pm on October 28th in Ballantine 013. Rundgren will also be giving a recital on October 31 at 8pm in Auer hall, titled Cluster: The Birth of the T Chord. Amazingly the recital is completely free. Between songs Rundgren will discuss the creation of the songs as well as many other aspects of his long career. A solo Todd Rundgren performance is something that Rundgren's fans have wanted for years. It should be quite a show.
Rundgren's visit to IU was something I looked forward to all summer. It wasn't until Rundgren and Professor Gass walked past me on Tuesday on their way to class, that it finally hit me how incredible it is to have a musician of his caliber act as a guest professor.
Todd Rundgren is responsible for producing some of the best loved and highest selling albums of all time. He has worked on debut album of the New York Dolls, Skylarking by XTC, Stage Fright by The Band and Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf. Bat Out of Hell is currently the fifth best selling album of time. It has averaged 200,000 copies sold per year since its release in 1977. Rundgren has worked with nearly every major artist. Essentially he is the musical equivalent of Kevin Bacon.
While his work as a producer and engineer is no slouch, he's also had quite a brilliant and eclectic career of his own. Rundgren started out in a Philadelphia band called The Nazz. The group, named after the Yardbirds' song "The Nazz Are Blue," is best known for "Open My Eyes" a surging blast of power pop that combined the energy of The Who, with the melodic sense of The Beatles and played rough and ready like The Yardbirds. Rundgren had a minor hit with "We've Gotta Get You A Woman" from Runt. He really hit it big with Something/Anything? which is arguably his magnum opus. It contains some of his best known songs, "Hello It's Me" " I Saw The Light" and "Couldn't I Just Tell You."
Rundgren could have made a lucrative career out of mining that musical territory but he chose to follow his muse and create more challenging music. It's a travesty that so many people only know him for his hits or "Bang The Drum All Day." Whenever I tell people that Todd Rundgren will be teaching at IU and I'm greeted with blank stares, I have to resort to singing that song for them to understand. I can only imagine how Rundgren feels about that song being his best-known work these days.
Seriously folks, come out and see this musical legend. If you don't go to one of these events, you'll regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
Both events are free and open to the public.
LONGHAIR: Todd Rundgren on the Beatles Effect
public lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 28 in Ballantine Hall 013.
CLUSTER: The Birth of the T Chord
solo recital
8 p.m. Oct. 31 in Auer Hall, IU Jacobs School of Music.
-Andrew Crowley
