As he tours the UK, the musician answers your questions on making Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf, squabbles with XTC and the Band, and wiring his studio while high
I Saw the Light is extraordinarily brilliant. How did you write it? Eamonmcc
I was still learning about songwriting and by the time I got to Something/Anything? [1972, featuring I Saw the Light] I was slipping into formula – verse, chorus, bridge and so on, always about the girl or boy who broke your heart. I moved my hands about the keyboard and 20 minutes later that song was done. It’s partly why I went completely off the grid for my next album, A Wizard, a True Star [1973] – because I realised I couldn’t keep cranking out songs in 20 minutes about that one relationship in high school. The prettiest girl in school had suddenly taken a shine to me – I think because I had long hair, which was also the reason her dad made her break up with me, which messed me up pretty bad.
Wikipedia says A Wizard, a True Star was “heavily informed by Rundgren’s hallucinogenic experiences”. Were you actually taking LSD? mjhmjh
I didn’t smoke or drink anything until my first album [Runt, in 1970]. In my first band they’d smoke pot and the rehearsal would turn into a 30-minute giggling session. Then, when I was 21 I was living in [rhythm section] the Sales brothers’ house and their mom said “I can’t believe you’ve never had a drink” and got me drunk. Then my best friend who was studying to be a psychiatrist suggested I try psychoactives. I trusted him implicitly, so I did. I was taking drugs occasionally throughout the building of the studio. Not when we were doing the music – I had to run the sessions – but I remember lying on my back as high as a kite trying to do the wiring. Through psychoactives I discovered there was more going on in my head than that high school relationship.
