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" My very first records, I was very interested in how you get the particular quality you want out of it, and I began to learn about the engineering and aspects of production and things very early on. I got hands-on with the process and taught myself how to engineer, as opposed to just being a producer who asked the engineer to make it sound nice. "

Todd Rundgren

You

Myself

Nice

Todd Rundgren

High

" The problem turned out to be that I never was that kind of an artist. "

" Every once in a while, we have some sort of movement in music that everyone suddenly wants to work in, like grunge or rap or disco or some other musical phase, and then suddenly, that'll be the thing to do. "

" 'Something/Anything?' was kind of a different record, since I'm playing everything myself. A lot of the songs on there have a particular kind of instrumentation that is much like a guitar quartet, and in some ways, it's an exceptional song on that record because so much of the writing on 'Something/Anything?' is piano-oriented. "

" I got it into my head that I had somewhat neglected the guitar, and then I did a record called 'Arena,' and it was not a particularly bad record - it wasn't a bad record at all, but it was built around a certain concept, which is a guitar quartet, with a little bit of augmentation here and there. "

" It's hard for me to say that what I'm doing isn't even really music, because deep inside of me, what I want to do is much greater than music. "

Todd Rundgren

Want

Music

" People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas. "

" By the time my first solo record came out, I was making a handsome living as a record producer. I had worked with the Band, Janis Joplin and all of these other artists in the Albert Grossman organization. So as my so-called solo career evolved, I never felt pressure that I had to come back and top when I might've done before. "

" I want to be known as a professional weirdo. There aren't many Salvador Dalis or Buckminster Fullers left. If I become popular enough, I can establish the next step for records. "

" People get comfort from music. They get joy from it and understanding from it, and most of all, the average person can't do without it in some sense. "

" I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when radio was less formatted. It was really special. You could hear a jazz song then a pop song then a show tune then some jazz. Basically, whatever the DJ felt like playing, he would play. He was educating you and exposing you to things you would never hear otherwise. "

" People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one. "

" My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs. "

" On occasion, I hear a rearrangement of a song that really makes me reevaluate it in a way. "

Todd Rundgren

Hear

Really

" My father was not really into popular music; I had to learn about that for myself. "

" I've got billions of sparrows to worry about as well as everything else'. So there's the whole idea that whatever it is that you believe, it can never be valid unless you have some consensus reality demonstration. "

" Sometimes you could tell what it was about - it was interesting - and sometimes it was quite obvious that someone had lost it and it was on an endless loop. "

" The God that can only love something like this man. And from then on it was all downhill. "

Todd Rundgren

God

Love

" So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits. "

" It's the only way that YOUR life is gonna have any value to you. If you're just living the same life that everybody else is living what's the point? "

" I figure it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if I make a successful arena rock record, I'll wind up playing arenas! I wouldn't mind being back in that kind of venue because of the kinds of things you can do with production. You can make your shows more interesting, which would be fun to do. "

" Singles needed to come back. And what I tried to do in my online experiment was to change the rules for myself and make available at a more regular pace the fruits of my labour, for people who decided they wanted to support my recordings. "

" I used to have sort of mixed feelings about a producer whose only skills seemed to be going into the studio, schmoozing the artists and making them feel good. I can see now that in some cases, that's what you have to do because that's the only way you're going to get them to produce. "

" The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene. "

" I don't use any real vintage hardware any longer. That's always been the object as far as gaining control of the studio environment, going back to when I built my first studio, Secret Sound, in New York City. The whole point was to not have to pay studio bills anymore and not be looking at the clock. "

" When I got out of high school, I joined a local blues band in Philadelphia - Woody's Truck Stop. "

" You do have a modicum of peace of mind here, but it's as unsettled as any other place. "

" There are some things that we know are just not as pleasant as the lies that we tell ourselves, and in that sense in order to endure existence everyone endures a certain amount of dishonesty in their everyday lives. "

" Before there were any sort of 'recordings' there was performance. If we are devolved back to the Stone Age tomorrow, there will be performance. "

" I never look for music by genre. I look for an artist who puts a dependable trademark on things. Like Elvis Costello - he's a great songwriter who presents his songs in a number of contexts. I feel the same about my own music. "