Events

[ROCK] The quintessential underdog rock star, dating back to the title of his 1970 solo debut, Runt, Todd Rundgren is considered pop royalty by many… and yet he remains largely unknown to the masses. One of the main reasons for this is that he’s been allowed to record his own music unencumbered by the whims of a fickle industry, having financed his recording career with his much more lucrative role as a producer.

Sitting behind the console for artists as disparate as Patti Smith and Hall & Oates, (not to mention for Meat Loaf’s ridiculously successful Bat Out of Hell), Rundgren has bankrolled his own records by overseeing the work of others. While it might frustrate his diehard fan base (and they’re a very devoted bunch) that he’s remained bubbling below the radar, a lack of financial stake in the outcome of his projects (besides his own) has been what’s allowed him to indulge his creative whims. From the moment he walked away from his early work with the Nazz, making way for the piano-based soul-pop of his first solo albums, on to the sprawling progressive suites of his band Utopia and later forays into both new wave and world music textures, Rundgren, now 66, has always done exactly what he wants. 

When he plays Town Ballroom next Tuesday, April 28, he’ll be supporting his disc of new material—and 25th release in total—Global. The album is a programmed plethora of driving, synth-pop anthems that might make fans of his more progressive work bristle…but not for long, since he has an experimental opus on the way (albeit also electronic) entitled Runddans. A collaborative effort with Emil Nikolaisen and Norwegian tech-wizard Hans-Peter Lindstrom, the latter project will be out in early May.