This was Ryan Olcott at the time (via MTV ) on working with Rundgren:
According to pop legend, Rundgren has been known to play many of the instruments on the records he produces, as well as provide backing vocals. With 12 Rods, that wasn’t the case. “It was quite the opposite with us,” said Olcott. “He didn’t play a single instrument or sing a single note. He just engineered and enjoyed. “We had a really good time in the studio,” he continued. “He was really easy going. You just have to work at his level and we have good work ethics when it comes to working in the studio.”
Of course after a few years and the album bombed that had changed to:
Olcott told City Pages, “We all thought Todd was under-performing. He was the last person to show up at each session and the first one to leave. He didn’t care. He was just there to press record, read magazines and drink Foster’s. It was disheartening.” To make matters worse, the band’s relationship with drummer Christopher McGuire completely collapsed and it was decided that he would head back to Minnesota after only three weeks. Ev, Ryan and Bill soldiered on, finishing up recording in Hawaii and returning home defeated. The band was now broke, and the early mixes of Separation Anxieties were not at all what they had hoped for. “We thought he’d do some production and it’d blow my mind because he’s Todd Rundgren,” said Olcott. “He’d sprinkle the magic and we’d live happily ever after. But when it was done, we were the poster boys of major label failure.” [ The Current]
As for the man himself, he's said on many occasions that it was one of his favourite productions:
Here he is talking to Bullz Eye
"I have a lot of favorite productions. Some of the best records I’ve made have been so poorly handled by the labels that commissioned them that a lot of people have never heard them. And in some cases, the records never even got released! One of the biggest crimes in all of music, to me, was an album I did for an artist named Julie Christiansen that the label decided just not to put out. They made a purely commercial decision that had certainly nothing to do with the quality of the record, which I thought was, at least from my standpoint, the strength of the singer, the variety of the material she had, the quality of the musicianship was as good as anything I’d ever worked on…but the record never saw the light of day. And more recently, I did an album for a band called 12 Rods…"
BE: …which I also have, and I love.
TR: I thought that that was an incredible record…which the record (label) did absolutely nothing with. And that’s another band that’s broken up! So their ultimate potential will never be revealed. So there are favorites that I have, and I usually dote on them because they haven’t been fully appreciated.-
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