Todd Rundgren says why he’s doing a tribute to one of the Beatles’ ‘worst’ albums – AZCentral

Todd Rundgren(Photo: Provided by the artist)

Todd Rundgren may be on the phone to draw attention to an all-star tribute to the Beatles' "White Album" on which he'll share a stage withMicky Dolenz of the Monkees, Joey Molland of Badfinger, Christopher Cross,and Jason Scheff of Chicago.

But that doesn't mean he has to like it.

And by "it," I mean "The White Album."

"I make no bones about it," Rundgrensays.

"I think it's a contender for the Beatles' worst album. And it's not necessarily a judgment about the music on it. I'm talking about a Beatle album, not a bunch of half attempts at solo albums, which is what 'The White Album' is. So as a Beatle album, it's terrible. Very rarely do all four of them play at the same time on the record. Having said that,it was a great start for a George Harrison solo record."

Rundgren laughs, as he does often in the course of casuallydismissing one of rock's most celebrated albums with a disarmingly playful irreverence that couldn't be morecharming.

"It was the first time George had contributed so much material to a single record," he says. "But again, it was likeyou could tell that they weren't writing together anymorethat often, they weren't playing together ... The result was not necessarily the best material out of them, even as solo writers."

Todd Rundgren performs on March 14, 2015, in Pala, California.(Photo: Daniel Knighton/FilmMagic)

Then, he takes the gloves off.

"I mean, a lot of John's material is just dolorous," he says. "And much of Paul's materialis pointless. Like, why would he write a song like Honey Pie unless he found out that Winchester Cathedral had topped the charts and he said, Oh, I can do that?"

Rundgren laughs again, then wraps up his critique with "Having said that, that doesn't necessarily compromise the audience's enjoyment at hearing it reproduced."

So how did Rundgren find himself saluting an album he views as a contender for the Beatles' worst?

He's worked with the production company before on other Fab Fourtributes.

"I have been out with Christopher Cross before, doing some sort of Beatles tribute," he says, "and also with the producer of this particular show in other sort of lineups. So my name usually comes up when they're planning one of these things."

This tour was meant to happen in 2018. Hence the title It Was Fifty Years Ago Today A Tribute to the Beatles' White Album.

"They were trying to put it together for last year, which was actually the 50th anniversary of 'The White Album,'" he says.

"But when you're dealing with trying to line up a number of different musical personalities, getting everyone cleared from their other obligations so that they can go out at a particular time is difficult. That's why the tour has been broken up into two chunks. From a logistical standpoint, it's always a question of who's gonna be free to do something like this. And I just happened to be free."

The Beatles "Abbey Road."(Photo: Apple Corps LTD)

He's previously done a tour saluting "Abbey Road," an album often celebrated as the Beatles rallying for one last masterpiece.

And if you're wondering whether Rundgren falls in that camp?

"'Abbey Road' was a terrific comeback, yes, from that record," he says, "because it sounds like a Beatles record. Its still got a lot of that whimsy in there, but it isn't John moaning and weeping through the whole thing. And it isn't Paul going off on bizarre tangents. And George Harrison continues to contribute some really interesting stuff to the mix."

He was surprised, in fact, that they could still produce an "Abbey Road" at that point.

"Everybody was," he says. "I mean, whether or not you liked the material on 'The White Album,' anyone who was a hardcore Beatle fan recognized it as the breakup, as the beginning of the end of the Beatles. And for that reason alone, that album has just a weird vibe around it. I said, 'Wait a minute. Is this is this gonna be their last record?'"

Rundgren and his tourmateswon't be doing the entire album, only most of it.

"Obviously," he says, "there are some songs that were intended as vanity projects or throwaways just to fill up the record. We're not doing Revolution 9.'"

He laughs, then says, "I think we quote it somewhere in the show, but we're not actually attempting that. We're not doing Wild Honey Pie. Unfortunately, we are doing Honey Pie. There are things on the record that I don't think would even survive an attempt to translate into the live context."

Todd Rundgren performs with Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band at Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix, Ariz. November 15, 2016.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

Asked how they went about divvying up the tracks, he says, "Before we had rehearsals, it was kind of like whatever didn't seem obvious, we would either claim or allow to be assigned to us. I only had maybe one or two songs that I really wanted to do. I wanted to do While My Guitar Gently Weeps because I've done it before. On a George Harrison tribute album. And with the LA Symphony Orchestra. Ive just done it to death and so it seemed to be my thing. The rest of the songs I'm doing are sort of like attrition in a way. They were left over when everyone else grabbed what they wanted."

Nobody wanted to do "Helter Skelter," for instance, he says. "Because essentially it's just a screaming contest."

Rundgren laughs before concluding, "So I wound up doing 'Helter Skelter' just because it has to be done, but nobody else really wanted to do it."

The concert is divided into two parts, allowing Rundgren and his bandmates to perform a handful of their own songs in addition to the Beatles cover.

"We get that out of the way in the first set," Rundgren says. "So that the second set is pretty much all Beatles all the time."

In addition to having done a Beatles tour with Cross, he and Molland go way back. Rundgren produced the third Badfinger album, "Straight Up," after Harrison was forced to bail to focus on the Concert for Bangladesh.

But he'd never met Dolenz or Scheff.

"Fortunately, everyone is getting along well," he says. "These kind of odd combinations of players, especially ones who haven't worked together before, can sometimes be fraught with conflict. Having been in several versions of Ringos All Stars, I know how that can be when it doesn't work. But fortunately, everyone seems supportive of each other, which is a good thing because we're on a very crowded tour bus."

Micky Dolenz of The Monkees performs at Alice Cooper's Rock & Roll Fundraising Bash at the Las Sendas Golf Club in Mesa on April 27, 2019.(Photo: Nathan J. Fish/The Republic)

For those who may be wondering if Rundgren was a Monkees fan back in the day, he says, "I graduated from high school in 1966 when they were just, I think, about to hit the airwaves. I .. you know, I did not find it that amusing. I mean, they took all of the goofiness of A Hard Day's Night and just looped it over and over again you know, all the sped-up motion antics and stuff like that. So a lot of it was just imitative of the Beatles. And by that point, I was in a blues band."

Rundgren laughs, then says, "When I was 18, I left high school and joined a blues band. So even though I was still Beatle fan, I was moving on musically to other things."

It should be noted that despite the ease with which he's able to dismiss a "Honey Pie" or "Helter Skelter," Rundgren is a Beatles fan who got on board with the initial wave of Beatlemania in high school.

"I recall my first encounter with the Beatles," he says. "I was in the library in high school, just killing time, and I opened Time magazine and there was a little article on the 20th page or something about this new phenomenonin England. The only signature thing Igleaned from it was the fact that they grew their hair long. This immediately appealed to me because I hated having my hair cut."

Ringo Starr and Todd Rundgren celebrate Ringo's birthday at the Capitol Records Building on July 7, 2014 in Los Angeles.(Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images for John Varvatos)

Some weeks later, Rundgren says, he heard a new sound on the radio.

"And ironically enough,I knew it was that long-haired band from England. For some reason, I just knew it. It sounded like them. You know, American pop music up to then was based on the Elvis model, where you had some handsome front guy and a backup band and you never knew who the guys in the band were."

This was clearly something different.

"They all they sang together," Rundgren says. "They had what sounded like double-tracked voices on all the songs because Paul and John were singing the melodies together. That was an unusual sound. It was redolent of the Everly Brothers, but it was just way more rocking and amped up. So when I first heard it,I knew it was them. I said, 'This has to be them.' And sure enough, the DJ said, 'Thats this new band the Beatles, with "Please Please Me.""

The idea of starting a band lit a fire in Rundgren.

"The whole idea that you could as a young teenager go out and find three friends and start a band and grow your hair, obviously, and have girls chase you, that was a brand new formula. And it changed everything. From then on, nobody cared about lead singers."

The Beatles.(Photo: Apple Corp.)

Even now, those early days of Beatlemania remain his favorite era of the Beatles.

"I am very partial to the early Beatles," Rundgren says. "But a lot of that is because of their rapid evolution until Sgt Pepper. In fact, probably my favorite Beatle album or the Beatle album that gave me the most pleasure right off the bat was 'Revolver.' I thought I was kind of following where they were going. And then everybody said, 'Well, you can't really listen to "Sgt. Pepper" unless you're on acid.' And I wasn't taking any drugs at all at the time. So I thought, 'Well, I guess I'm just not getting this record.'"

Rundgren laughs, then says, "No matter what I think of it, there's something in there I don't understand. Sgt. Pepper was harder for me to get into it even though it was like someone dropped an atom bomb in the middle of town, you know? It was all anybody was listening to at that point."

In later years, he says, "I found it easier to sort of imitate what they were doing. But I was not one of those people who was so in the thrall of the Beatles that it was to the exclusion of any other influences. I was equally influenced by the Beach Boys, especially when they started to get away from the pop ditties and into things like Good Vibrations. Andaround my graduation at 18, as the Beatles were evolving into 'The White Album,' I became more interested in things like jazz. So the demise of the Beatles kind of went along with me bidding my youthful response to music goodbye."

A former member of Nazz and Utopia, Rundgren's best-known songs include "Hello It's Me," "We Gotta Get You a Woman," "I Saw the Light," "Can We Still Be Friends," "Set Me Free" and "Bang the Drum All Day." He's also known for his production work, including classic albums by the likes of XTC, the New York Dolls and Badfinger.(Photo: Provided by the artist's Facebook page)

As his musicianship developed, Rundgren says, "Things were much more understandable to me when I would listen to them.They would not have that same sort of mystiquebecause now I was a musician and I was involved in the process.I was more aware of everything that went into it. So the Beatles just naturally became less mystical to me in a way."

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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When:8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6.

Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix.

Admission: $40-$299.

Details: 602-267-1600,celebritytheatre.com.

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Todd Rundgren says why he's doing a tribute to one of the Beatles' 'worst' albums - AZCentral