Todd Rundgren may keep a low profile, but his legacy lingers

Rundgren might be best known for a song that slipped away, which is fitting since Rundgren’s 40-year career as a musician and producer has had a pinball-like quality to it.

Even he admits of Bang on a Drum All Day, “Everybody knows the song, but they have no idea who recorded it.” He says his label didn’t think much of the song, which was never promoted as a single.

When local classic-rock station 93.7 FM The Arrow played its catalog of songs from Z to A last weekend, Rundgren’s Bang on the Drum All Day arrived shortly after Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell.

He produced that one, too.

Still, Rundgren is a name more recognized than known. He doesn’t sound bothered by it.

As he says about Drum, “Once you get a song to that level, it has penetrated the cultural consciousness in a way that something like a Top 10 single hasn’t. It’s likeHappy Birthday. Everybody knows Happy Birthday.”

Sabotage is a strong word for what he’s done to his career, but Rundgren, 60, doesn’t reject the term. He’s long had a tendency to clear a path only to abandon it for the thicket.

“I have a short attention span,” he says. “And I’m creatively restless, I guess, in a way. It’s not me trying to consciously confuse the audience. It’s just that I listen to my own records and eventually get bored with them, and then I have to do something that doesn’t resemble the last record I made. It’s inevitable.”

He laughs. “And yeah, in some ways it’s prevented me from having that scale of success. But it’s brought me a loyal audience, and here I am 40 years later able to make a living in music, and that’s important to me.”

Read more …

(Source: Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle)