What better way to revive the S&V Interview than to recap it by talking to the wizard and reality star himself, Todd Rundgren? Recently, I got on Zoom with Todd – who was once allowed in his house/studio in Hawaii – to discuss his rich recording legacy, as well as his “Damned If I Do” summer tour, which kicked off last night (June 11, 2026) in St. Charles, Illinois, and continued on July 2, 619.
(For all tour dates and ticketing information, go here. Rundgren’s top-shelf band “Damned If I Do” features longtime bandmates Kasim Sulton and drummer Prairie Prince in addition to keyboardist Gil Assayas, guitarist Bruce McDaniel, and horn master Bobby Strickland.)
I asked Rundgren how he was able to choose from his deep catalog, six decades and counting on a tour like this one. (On the first night, the “Damned” band played 27 songs, all told.) “At this point, it’s hard to figure out what the audience expects — and it’s not a fixed target,” he admitted. “Maybe it was going with the head of state. Sometimes people feel happy, sometimes people don’t do it you feel good, you know? Anyway, it was time to come up with another show.”
And with that, here we are.
Todd and I had so much to talk about, in fact, that Part 2 of our extensive conversation will appear on our site, Analog Planetearly next week. For the here and now, however, Part 1 continues IS&VRundgren, 77, and I discuss the “Damned If I Do” summer tour, mixing at Atmos, and the joys and pitfalls of mixing vinyl. Since I was a little boy / I don’t want candy / I don’t need a toy. . .
Mike Mettler: I know you’re “on tour” right now, but is it fair to say that you already have an idea for your next studio album, or are you still in the process of exploring it?
Todd Rundgren: Well, I know about the record I’m going to make next. I started working on it. For me, it’s a strange process, because most of it happens in my negligence. I think so, I also look for things that I think will work in the context of the project.
For example, when I write a song, I record all the music first, and the lyrics and melody are the last things that go into it. At the time, I was so into it – whatever it was – that it only took me 20 minutes to write all the words and maybe another 20 minutes to sing it, and then it was done.
Usually that part is most people torture [themselves] more – I’m trying to come up with lyrics and melodies and things like that. But I have found, over time, that my subconscious does a better job of being the original (laughs) than me trying to approach it somehow in a reasonable way. As soon as I can find enough solitude to allow that still small voice to begin to speak louder, that’s when I begin to be inspired.
Mettler: Yes, I hear you. That’s the effect of the old tortured artist. Well, if only you could name an album in that sense. . .
Rundgren: (laughs) Yes, of course! [We are referring to, of course, Rundgren’s December 1982 LP on Bearsville, The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect. Side 2 of that album features one of his most popular songs, “Bang the Drum All Day,” which has long since become an audience-participation favorite during Rundgren’s live shows. Good news: It’s also part of his current “Damned If I Do” set.]
Mettler: Speaking of vinyl again, do you listen to test pressure and make QC decisions? Like you hear things and say, “Hey, the dB level is too loud,” or something like that? Do you get this technology for it?
Rundgren: Well, back in the day when I was producing three, four records a year, I was spending a a lot time in the mastering studio. Eventually, you develop some kind of relationship or understanding with the guy – the engineer who does the work. Usually, you’re only there because it’s the first time you’ve heard it from the best speakers, and you’re looking for things you’ve never heard before.
But in terms of process, the engineers I work with, like Greg Calbi – they’re the best masters in the world, and they’ll be looking for things that I might not know at all. Their experience is that they’ve made thousands and thousands of records, while I’ve probably read a couple twelve records.
A Wizard With a Real Guitar: Rundgren, on a B&W double neck ax job. Photo courtesy of Bearsville/Warner Bros. publicity circa 1973, and MM photo archives.
Mettler: I get it. But still, you know what you want to hear. Can you remember any of those professional moments that turned out exactly as you imagined – something you heard in your head that came out indeed how did you want to hear it on vinyl?
Rundgren: Well, see, that was always the problem with vinyl. Vinyl is, from the moment you put something in – it’s already degraded, and will never capture the full range that’s on tape to begin with. And the full range is beyond your ability to hear (laughs), so you don’t bother trying to fit it in there.
Another problem is that, without a vinyl disc, you have a the yard of the area every time it turns – you know, what the sound is. As you get closer to the center, you’ve got about half of that – meaning you’ve got about half the potential fidelity by the time you get to the center of the record! (laughing again)
Mettler: Okay, then you have to start thinking about things like, “Okay, now I have to compromise the bass here,” or “I have to take some tracks out of this one.” There are many compromises to consider.
Rundgren: (nods) All kinds of compromises you have to make that, in the end, won’t solve the problems that vinyl inherently has, because it’s still half the amount of real estate at the end of the record as it was at the beginning.
Also, the way records are cut is not the way most people play them. The cutting head is moving towards the center of the record. Most people use a tonearm that, as it moves to the center, moves at an angle. It turns at an angle so that the stylus sits in the groove at an angle, so as the record continues to move forward, the stereo falls towards the center of it!
There are all kinds of things wrong with vinyl. I used to celebrate when the CDs came out – although some people, because it produced frequencies they had never heard before, took it as brittleand things like that.
Mettler: See, I’m in both camps. I like vinyl and analog for some things, and I like digital and 360-degree mixes for some things. And if the surround mixes are done right, I feel like you can be in for a natural listening experience, not an artificial one. You create a few surround sounds and Atmos mixes them for you.
Rundgren: I haven’t done many mixes for Atmos — but the song I remixed for The Call, “The Walls Are Down,” is available on Atmos. [Note: Todd’s Atmos mix of “The Walls Came Down” can be accessed via Apple Music. His own version of “Walls” is also in the current “Damned If I Do” tour setlist.]
Mettler: Yes, and it’s a big mix too. And a few good years back, he did a 5.1 merge They don’t liewhich was on DVD-Audio [via Silverline, in 2004]. We talked about that mix back in the day at CES in Las Vegas, I think.
Rundgren: Yes, of course. It was a fun project to do, and it shows potential. But the problem was that, at that time, no one had a system around them except in their car. The only place you got a 5.1 surround system was in the car, because they couldn’t set them up in their house. And it’s a tricky thing anyway, because most people find it difficult to get two speakers section! (both laugh)
Mettler: I’ve always been the kind of guy who thinks about how to set up a surround system at home, and I love switching between stereo, 5.1, and Atmos because I love all those formats. But if we’re talking about Atmos, you can even go back to the original tapes of o, we’ll just pick Something/Anything? record [Rundgren’s acclaimed February 1972 2LP set on Bearsville]with such a range of interesting tones and textures that an Atmos mix of something like that album might be worth revisiting if you have the original tapes to hand. Is that possible?
Rundgren: I don’t know if that whole album exists, or what condition the tapes will be in. Some call it “the sticky disease” [a.k.a. Sticky-Shed Syndrome, or SSS]and there was a certain formula that, during the “boom” of records being made, most of the records were in this type of tape. It was found that if you keep the tape for a long time, the oxide – you know, the magnetic part – will start to fall off the tape.
Mettler: Something like that almost happened [Queen’s mega 1975 hit single] “Bohemian Rhapsody,” right? They almost lost completely, as they were passing too much on the same tape.
Rundgren: Yes; they should have kept it. And you have to go through this weird process of baking the tapes in a convection oven, or something like that. Once you’ve done that, you have to move them quickly because they’ll go bad again – faster than before.
Mettler: When you started recording back in the Nazz days, you had to figure out how to do a mono and stereo mix.
Rundgren: (nodding) Now I’m trying to remember the first machine I had, because I found out how to do something by accident. In those days – like the late ’60s, or something like that – the full technological revolution hadn’t caught on and it was always cheaper to do a mono session, so all of our demo sessions that we would do for the labels would be in mono.
I took one of the tapes from the demo sessions and said, “Well, maybe I can turn this into stereo.” So, I recorded it once on one track, and then I tried to sync it and record it on another track as well. I did the mono thing twice, because I thought that would sound like stereo.
But the effect was actually that flanging effect that you heard in songs like [Small Faces’ Top 20 1967 single] “Itchycoo Park” – that “jet plane” sound thing. And when I heard that, I said, “Wow! We did the engineer who recorded “Open My Eyes” [most likely Michael Friedman] we figured out how to do it, so it was the first time we did that. The last chord, and the repeating chords, all had a sound to them. That was one of the first times I ever made things with a tape machine. [“Open My Eyes” is the opening track on the self-titled Nazz LP, which was released in October 1968 on SGC.]
Mettler: Playing with records before you knew what to do with them was always fun as a kid. I remember trying to figure out where to put my big, dial-sized recorder in front of my speakers – both of which, at the time, I had placed on top of cinder blocks in my bedroom! — so that I can record what comes out of them in such a way that the songs sound like they do on the radio. I’m not sure I ever understood it at the time, though. (laughter)
Rundgren: I was lucky enough to have a good friend who I spent a lot of time with, and he had a tape recorder. Before I did the demos at the recording studios, we played with them. The funniest thing to do was to record your voice at low speed – and then speed it up to double speed, just so you could hear your voice sounding like Alvin and The Chipmunks, you know? (more laughter)
Author bio: Mike Mettler is the editor of Sound & Vision in addition to being a writer for Sound Chaser and a contributing music editor for one of our sister sites, Stereophile, in addition to being an editor for sister site Analog Planet, a regular Vinyl Icons columnist (and occasional Opinion columnist) for Hi-Fi News, and a writer of dozens of box set notes. Also, he’s partial to vintage 1967 Mustang fastbacks, but that’s another story for a different time.
Want to talk to Todd more? Go here Mettler and Rundgren talk about the singer’s new album at the time The whole worldand other vinyl-related news, in an article posted on December 23, 2015.]
