Thursday, June 26, 2008
By John Benson
The new album has its roots in the New Cars era.
Still banging his drum.
That’s what Todd Rundgren, who turned 60 last week and is back with his latest studio album is doing this summer with a new tour that brings him to Cleveland for a sold-out show Sunday at the House of Blues.
The famous singer-pianist-guitarist-songwriter-producer is back with his 19th studio effort, “Arena,” which actually was partially conceived when Rundgren joined former Cars members Greg Hawkes and Elliot Easton in creating The New Cars. While that outfit called it quits when Easton broke his collarbone, Rundgren became fixated on simple guitar rock sounds.
“I found myself just going out and doing this sort of guerilla guitar quartet thing around the country and around Canada,” said Rundgren, during a phone call to his Kauai, Hawaii. home. “So when it came time to make a record, I thought maybe I’ll just continue in that vein and write something that is appropriate to the guitar, since the fans seems to be enjoying it so much.
“So when I decided to write a new album, I knew beforehand it was going to be this kind of old-school guitar-rock record.”
Among the notable tracks on “Arena,” which is due out next month, are the upbeat “Courage,” the AC/DC-meets-Queen-sounding “Strike” and the bombastic “Mountaintop.” It’s the latter song that finds Rundgren attempting to relive history.
“I have this song called ‘Bang the Drum,’ and it’s become a sports anthem,” Rundgren said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I just try to write a sports anthem to start with and maybe it’ll be successful?’ Granted it’s not exactly about sports, it has that call-and-answer and chanting thing you hear at a sporting event.”
While fans attending his upcoming sold-out show can expect a few of his radio hits (“We Gotta Get You A Woman,” “Hello It’s Me,” and “Can We Still Be Friends”), Rundgren said they better arrive ready to hear “Arena” in its entirety. As for the new album’s title, that’s based around the notion of creating arena rock, which perhaps surprisingly is a relatively new style for this veteran artist.
“It’s something that I sort of lived through, but when arena rock was being defined and played, I was in Utopia,” Rundgren said. “While we would occasionally get to an arena, we’d consider ourselves more progressive rock. So there’s a difference. Progressive rock involves sometimes very long songs and convoluted arrangements, and the thing about so-called arena rock is it has a certain conciseness and accessibility.
“So in that sense, it’s not really a return to something I’ve done before because I’m not known for being concise and accessible, but on this particular instance, the music sort of demands it. So we’ll see whether it succeeds.”
Similar to most classic rock acts, Rundgren now finds himself attempting to make lightning strike twice with “Arena.” However, the Pennsylvania native refuses to let ego cloud his judgment or guide his thinking. He understands the game and remains pragmatically optimistic.
“It’s always a challenge to create a new audience, particularly if you’re from a different era because the nature of music is even if it’s derivative and something has been done before, music fans want to hear people their own age doing it,” Rundgren said. “So there is that challenge to be able to compete with people who are much younger and have more energy, and in that sense we try to keep the band up to the challenge.
“We don’t go out and just simply play to expectations. We have our own criteria for what we consider success on any particular night and it seems to work for us. So if we do something that we like, and we feel is properly performed, the audience usually comes along.”