Hi, everybody, it's
Todd Rundgren here from the lovely
Isle of Hawaii, and this
is the first time.
Well, the very first time I recorded
a song likely was at
my friend Randy's house and
his parents doted on him and gave
them everything that he could
possibly want in life.
And one of the things
he had was a tape recorder of his
own. We spend most of the time just
like playing with it, making our own
little radio shows and
and things like that.
It was two speed so
you could do funny things like
put it on the slow speed and
talk really slow and
then put it back to high speed
and you would sound like one of the
chipmunks.
So we used to do a lot of that sort
of stuff and that was
pretty much my first experiences
of recording anything.
The very first guitar that I ever
had was probably Korean
made acoustic that
I think retailed for about twenty
five dollars.
If you bought three months
worth of lessons at the local
music store, the most horrible
part was having to take the three
months worth of lessons because.
I was very good at picking out songs
that I would pick out contemporary
tunes like Walk Don't Run,
I think that was the song
by the ventures that got me
especially interested in the guitar.
And I would go to the lessons.
And the teacher was very old and
very encouraging.
But the material that he had me
learning was just
like one hundred years old.
It was a song like Fairy Bells
and I'd never heard of and
then other weird stuff.
But he insisted that I read it from
the page.
And I was much
more efficient at picking the melody
out if I knew what the melody was,
that kind of upset him a bit
that I wasn't taking my
reading seriously.
And to this day, I can't read music,
but maybe that first experience
just put me off of it.
But I still can
only do it by ear.
The first time I ever put
my hands on a synthesizer,
it was, I believe, in ARP, it
was in a studio somewhere, and I
can't remember the exact project I
was working on.
And unfortunately, the project
wasn't apropos to synthesizer.
So while I was able
to noodle around with it,
it was of no use at that point.
But I remember the first
synthesizer I owned.
I was at Mannie's Music in New York
City, and inside
a case was a
synthesizer by a company called
Enmasse out of England Electronic
Music Systems, and it was
the only synthesizer they had in the
store. And I took it home.
And a couple of weeks later, a month
later, I got a call from Mannie's
and they say, there's this guy
in here from Pink Floyd.
His name's Dave Gilmore,
and he's interested
in the synthesizer. But you've got
the only one that we had.
So can we
connect you to guys?
And and so Dave
came down to my apartment and we
fiddled around with my synthesizer
for a couple hours.
And that's how I met Dave Gilmore.
Not long after I got my
acoustic guitar, I started
picking out songs.
And at the time there was a show on
television called Ozzie and Harriet,
and they had two sons, Rick and
Dave. And Rick was a
singer. And you had a couple of
songs that actually were hits on the
radio. And one of them was called
Lonesome Town.
There's a place
where love to go.
And I learned Lonesome Town because
I saw myself as a lonesome boy
and I was still in elementary
school. And they were prepping us
for junior high school by
having regular little dances
in the elementary school gymnasium.
And so one time I brought
my guitar and asked them if I could
perform first time that I had
ever performed in front of anyone.
And they said, OK,
why not?
And so I sat on a chair
and I sat on the little stage
and I played Lonesome Town.
To pretty much unimpressed
audience and the
thing that I remember most about
my about my Virgin
performance was that someone
threw a balled up napkin at me
and it went right into the guitar
hole.
And that's the thing that I remember
about it. I don't even remember how
I did it.
Just remember, you know, that kind
of three pointer that someone did
right into my guitar.
I used to be a pretty sentimental
guy. I'm not as sentimental
anymore, but growing up,
I was very sentimental.
And I do remember an incident
where I took my little brother
to see a movie.
It was a movie called Jeggo and
it was starring Jackie Gleason.
And there's a lot of pathos in the
character.
And Jackie Gleason himself
wrote the music for it.
And it's very Jackie Gleason writes
a lot of sentimental stuff.
You know, if you recall the theme
from the Jackie Gleason
show by da da da
da da da.
The very kind of sad
and sentimental, even though it's a
comedy show.
So anyway, there's a lot of
sentimental themes in it.
And my brothers see through the
whole movie and
me, um, they're like
tearing up through the entire thing
while I'm punching him in the
arm because he won't stop
fidgeting and trying to leave
and stuff like that.
And I'm into the movie, you know,
and especially into the sad,
weepy music that goes with the
movie.
So it was this weird
kind of scene where the
movie is making me really
sentimental.
And at the same time, I'm really
pissed at my little brother
because he won't let me sit there
and blow over in peace.
I had never met any of the guys
in Grand Funk Railroad before we
had agreed that I would produce
We're an American band.
So I went out to Flint, Michigan
to mark Foreigner's House
to meet the band.
I was kind of surprised.
I knew nothing about them except
from their reputation.
They didn't take themselves that
seriously. I mean, they took the
music seriously, but
they had all been working together
in various combinations of bands.
And so there was no sort of intra
band conflicts.
So that kind of stuff you might find
sometimes in a new band, they were
pretty well season.
So we got along, had a lot of fun.
You know, Mark Foreigner had a
wealth of dirty limericks that he
knows, as I recall, that
kept things like it was
kind of a remarkable process,
something that I had never been
involved in before and haven't been
involved in since because of
the fact that they had everything.
So, like time to lined
up was going to happen exactly this
way at this time to the point
that we went into Criterion
Studios the first day
set up, got our sounds and recorded
essentially the track for We're An
American Band, the first single
which everyone knew would be the
first single that nobody outside
of the band and me had ever heard.
So we recorded the track
first day.
Next day we finished up the track.
We put the vocals and other
overdubs on it, mixed it
and went right into the mastering
studio. That was in criteria.
They had an actual mastering lab
and mastered the single.
We didn't even have a B side yet
because we hadn't recorded anything
else. And it went right
to the pressing plant to make
radio copies copies.
So the single came out and before
the week was over, DJs
were already adding it had
already been added.
And a week later, we're still
in the studio working on the record
and the singles in the top 20.
And by the time we finished the
album, the singles in the top
five, and then
we all go home and then the single
goes to No one.
So nothing like that has ever
happened to me since then.
I used to be a teetotaler when I was
growing up.
I was a annoying
prude during the NÁS because
I didn't want anybody else taking
any drugs or drinking,
so I didn't really do anything.
Then I had my best friend Randy,
who went to med school and
I went to visit him and he was
into experimenting with
drugs and he had some pot
and he said, you should do this.
And since he was my best friend,
I said, OK, because we do everything
together. So he rolled up a couple
of joints and we started smoking.
And at first, you know nothing.
I didn't feel anything.
What does this do?
I can't figure it out,
but then I remember it like creeping
up on me. We're watching the
television and starting
to giggle.
And then I remember
that the first experience
of being high that I ever had, the
first time I was out of my
reality and into another reality,
I started seeing a picture on the
television. And instead of it being
like this continuous picture,
suddenly it was a series of
snapshots flipping this way
like this, I realized
suddenly everything became
instances, a little moments instead
of a continuous flow of
stuff.
And I kind of enjoyed myself
and thought, you know, maybe I'll do
this again. And I wound up doing it
again.
And then later on, I wound up
experimenting with other drugs,
usually at the behest of
my friend Randy.
So the second thing he turned me on
to was was a real psychedelic,
was a BMT.
I think it was called.
And it
was very brief, but very intense
trip. And I didn't enjoy that at
all.
But it was funny.
The next day I started thinking
I might do some variation of
that again,
just because I became fascinated
with the idea of being in
a different state of consciousness
at that point.
And while taking
drugs for a lot of people, as you
know, is an escapist exercise
or just trying to get away from
themselves. I always learn something
about myself and
thankfully a lot of it
sticks with me after I'm not high
anymore. So I can make
some use of.