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" The problem turned out to be that I never was that kind of an artist. "
Todd Rundgren
Out
Never
Kind
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" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Say
People
Never
" Celebrities are the fodder of much of the media business, so they're always interested in making you seem provocative when you're not, or trying to bring you some sort of embarrassment by revealing something you'd rather not have revealed. That's the downside of celebrity. "
Todd Rundgren
Always
Business
Media
" All it takes to become president is money and a certain kind of power. Being president is the first thing I can shoot for, not the highest. It may come to a point where people take rock and roll musicians more seriously than they take politicians. It may eventually turn out that musicians have more credibility. "
Todd Rundgren
Power
People
Money
" If bearing a reputation as a weirdo is all it takes to be a genius, I'm a shoo-in. Come to think of it, half the people I know are geniuses - the other half, peculiarly enough, idiots. "
Todd Rundgren
People
Genius
Know
" I write in a very strange way. Things are very fragmentary for a very long time, and then they come together very quickly near the end of the process. "
Todd Rundgren
Long
Together
Process
" There's only one band that could ever even pretend to assume the mantle of what the Beatles did, who have been so pre-eminent and world-dominating that they could effect a paradigm shift in the culture, who have been willing to leverage their success into musical change, and that is U2 - regardless of what the result of that is. "
Todd Rundgren
Culture
Success
Band
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Organization
Time
Pressure
" The Nazz survived for 18 months - that was my first taste of fame on some level and of the overall experience of being in a band. There are good and bad aspects, and I got to taste some of both, and, well, it's not as much fun as what you see in 'A Hard Day's Night,' let me just say that. "
Todd Rundgren
Experience
Good
Fun
" I don't have a long history of hit singles of my own. I had a few, and I had a little hot streak in the '70s, but I've had a lot of success producing other people. "
Todd Rundgren
Own
History
Success
" 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
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Control
New York
Looking
" One Long Year was just a song here and there, and it was meant to reflect the mood that I was in but unfortunately it also reflected too little of any particular thing rather than hanging together as a whole album. "
Todd Rundgren
Long
Mood
Together
" So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits. "
Todd Rundgren
Radio
You
Way
" I'm not a one-hit wonder as some suggest. I've had a couple of hits, but still, all of my hits were in the '70s. There was pretty much nothing in the '80s, '90s, or in the first full decade into the next millennium. "
Todd Rundgren
Decade
First
Pretty
" It seems like a totally gratuitous myth to tell people a giant rabbit comes round at night leaving candy in a haphazard way around the house... and the cover shows the bunny caught in the act. "
Todd Rundgren
Night
Leaving
People
" I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going. "
Todd Rundgren
Done
You
Not Knowing
" So I don't think I'm gonna pull my head into my shell just because a bunch of people start acting like idiots. "
Todd Rundgren
Like
Start
Acting
" I didn't expect to become an artist. I was not comfortable going out on the road. "
Todd Rundgren
Going
Artist
Become
" When the Beatles first came out, you had to go to a certain amount of trouble to have long hair. You just couldn't have it immediately. Anything you can just go out and get - like platform shoes - is not going to inspire people as much as something they have to go through a little bit of hell to have. "
Todd Rundgren
Hair
People
Long
" On occasion, I hear a rearrangement of a song that really makes me reevaluate it in a way. "
Todd Rundgren
Me
Hear
Really
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Everyone
Movement
Music
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Fun
Wind
Rock
" 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? "
Todd Rundgren
Same
Life
Living
" I really consider myself fortunate to have been of age during the musical revolution that came in the form of the Beatles. People don't realize that previous to the Beatles, there really was no such thing as an album artist. People made singles. Then they would put a bunch of those singles together and call it an album. And that was it. "
Todd Rundgren
Myself
Together
Age
" '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. "
Todd Rundgren
Writing
Song
Myself
" And so it's inescapable and people who proclaim scrupulous honesty can only proclaim that if they don't examine closely the things they believe. "
Todd Rundgren
Believe
Honesty
People
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Everyday
Existence
Know
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Great
Feel
Artist
" 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. "
Todd Rundgren
Grow
Song
You
" I've become kind of a haven for people who like pop music, but that's not the only thing they like. They also like music in general and want to be able to expand their own horizons. They haven't completely given up on music and are willing to have somebody mediate new things that are happening in music to them. "
Todd Rundgren
People
Kind
Want