The hardest thing, especially if you’ve written some 300 songs, is coming up with a new idea. “I have musical ideas all the time, and those are easy to articulate, arrange and map out.
The way that Rundgren speaks about songwriting today displays a certain acceptance of his own method. He re-emerged in 1970 with a Laura Nyro-inspired solo album, Runt, and over the next five decades production work, 25 solo albums and other projects such as Utopia allowed him to explore varieties of sound, style and songwriting. But new musical influences, and a mounting fascination with production, led him in another direction. He played in local blues acts before enjoying some success with the rock band Nazz. “But eventually I found in music the thing that gave order to what was in my head.”įuelled by DMT, psilocybin, mescaline … Lundgren’s 1973 LP, A Wizard, a True Star. “At the time, there was no such thing as ADHD,” he says, “but that’s what I had.” Unable to pay attention for more than three minutes, he hid at the back of the classroom. Growing up in Pennsylvania, Rundgren struggled at school. But it doesn’t necessarily change my personal trajectory.” “If you’re around long enough, you have to constantly reconstitute your audience. “I think it’s great if it ultimately translates into people discovering music they’ve never heard,” he laughs. He sounds bemused by this rush of interest. Not so long ago, Chris Martin even asked if he could sample his track Healing, Pt 1. In recent times his music has been reconsidered and celebrated afresh by a new generation, his songs appearing on soundtracks for Licorice Pizza, Ozark, the Sex and the City reboot and The Worst Person in the World. Its release coincides with something of an ascendant moment in Rundgren’s career. Space Force, Rundgren’s latest album, is another example of creative contrariness: a cross-genre, cross-generational collaborative record that sees the 74-year-old tackling abandoned tracks from the careers of such artists as the Roots and the Lemon Twigs, as well as new collaborations with the likes of Sparks. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Rundgren (far left), with his Nazz bandmates, c 1967.
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