The Park Record has an interview with Todd about the new album and production in general.
"It's the reason why I never developed a particular style as a producer. My reputation is that I could take a new artist who wasn't sure of what they wanted or an established artist who had hit a dead end and be able to get something different out of them."
There is a really good interview on Songfacts about the new album and some old stuff too, including this on my fav The Psychedelic Furs track:
Songfacts: Todd, "Love My Way." Whose idea was the marimbas?
Todd: They had a demo of the song, and I don't remember what the instrument was that they were using. It might've been just a guitar. But I happened to have the marimbas in the studio. I happened to have owned a set of marimbas. So I thought, Well, let's see what it sounds like with the marimbas. And it turned out that the little musical theme just sounded perfect with the marimbas, and became a signature element of the song. So it just was a question of availability. It's not like I had to go rent some marimbas. I happened to have them
Todd doing I Saw the Light, and Song of the Viking, at OpenAir during residency at CU Denver. Also an interview here
Todd also came up in an article about the neuroscience of songs triggering memories in The San Diego Union-Tribune (3 April)
Q: Todd Rundgren
released his hit song “Hello It’s Me” in 1973. Every time I hear it, I recall a
vivid memory from my teenage years that involves moments spent with my friend
Linda Russell at a cabin on coast of Maine.
How do long-term memories like this form?
Do scientists know how many neurons are involved and how they interact in
different parts of the brain?
A: We don’t know how many neurons are
required, but the collaboration of different areas within the brain is
necessary. The memory you describe involves components of rhythm and music, the
name of the song and specific words within it, and experiences that associate
that memory with different ways in which the cabin in Maine was encoded, such
as vision (the furniture and interior of the cabin, perhaps a log fire, the
sound of the ocean), bound even more strongly by a pleasant emotion of having a
good time in the company of someone you like.
So, areas of the brain involved in vision,
sound, language and emotion are helping to bind aspects of that memory into
something stronger and easier to retrieve later.
Q: Why does a particular song trigger a
specific memory?
A: Complex memories often involve
association or binding of different aspects of information, some which have
more fine-grained or specific detail than others. Such a memory can be
retrieved (or reassembled) in part or as a whole by the areas of the brain that
laid the memory down. Although it is possible that a different Todd Rundgren song could trigger this memory,
“Hello It’s Me” is more likely to do so because of its more direct
associations.
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