Todd Rundgren had a few folks over to his place Saturday night. Played music for a couple hours. The rock semi-legend and four of his long-time sidemen turned the Capitol Theater into their living room — a crowded one, with an audience of more than 700 — by performing a surprise-filled career retrospective and peppering in a slew of cover songs that ranged from inspired to downright strange.
In all, it was a loose, fun, musically satisfying set that sent the sold-out audience of baby boomers home happy — including the one writing this review.
Rundgren, a fringe rock star in the 1970s whose eccentric, defiantly individualistic style likely submarined his chance to achieve legendhood, is fundamentally incapable of playing a full-on, crowd-pleasing survey of his most beloved songs. That’s what most rockers do at age 70, but his subversive streak simply runs too deep.
The show was called An Unpredictable Evening with Todd Rundgren, and it certainly lived up to its billing. Todd — he will henceforth be referred to by what his fans call him — opened with a short burst of Cheap Trick’s “Hello There,” followed by one of his many snotty rock tunes, “Black and White,” as a way to get limbered up. Sitting on a stool, he was in a loquacious mood, chatting between songs, making fun of the seat-of-the-pants nature of the show and, at one point, confessing that his nose hairs had gotten too long.
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He set the ground rules early. Todd and his band had put together a large compendium of songs but had no preconception of which ones they might play or in what order. The surest way not to hear a tune, he cautioned, was to shout out the title. “We do not take requests,” he admonished, good-naturedly but dead-seriously.
The first cover, a delightful one, was “Incense and Peppermints,” a proto-psychedelic tune by the Strawberry Alarm Clock that reached No. 1 for a week in 1967. The quintet dug into a churning groove and keyboardist Greg Hawkes paid homage by faithfully rendering the spooky organ part. The range of cover songs was both remarkable and ridiculous: a cheeky, swinging turn at Tony Bennett’s “Are You Havin’ Any Fun?” which Todd crooned quite ably; a rousing version of “The Walls Came Down,” a minor hit in 1983 by the new wave band The Call; a so-so pass at The Cars’ “Good Times Roll,” which lacked the original’s robotic bounce; a campy, twangy take on Little Feat’s “Don’t Bogart That Joint.”
This outright miscue? “Brand New Key,” a silly 1971 novelty hit by Melanie. Todd feigned her squeaky vocals and then launched a sarcastic riff about the song’s incongruous “meaning.” On stage, Todd is out to amuse himself as well as the audience, but this segment was ultimately a waste of valuable concert time.
The two hours were put to best use with selections from his own catalog. They did his first major hit, “I Saw the Light,” bossa nova style. The ballad “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference” was wonderful, evoking the resigned heartbreak of the 1972 recording. Another slow song, the lilting “Cliche,” emerged as an ardent tour de force, with Todd executing the tricky vocal to a T.
He’s always been an imprecise singer, prone to overreach, struggling to attain high notes, and sliding in and out of tune. Saturday’s show was no exception. But there was something endearing about it. Todd’s willingness to take vocal risks, and routinely fail, added a visceral realness to the set that a more studied artist couldn’t hope to achieve. (By comparison, his contemporary, Daryl Hall — a more accomplished pure singer — tends to play it safe by avoiding the upper-upper register notes that provide the cathartic release to many of his songs — e.g. “She’s Gone”).
Todd’s final 30 minutes were special. The ensemble played three high-energy rock numbers by his part-time band Utopia: “Lysistrata,” “Secret Society” and the rousing anthem “One World.” Because the crowd had behaved and not hollered out titles, he encored with “Hello, It’s Me” (albeit with a swing beat), then closed with a raucous rendition of the 1968 power-pop gem “Open My Eyes” by Nazz, Todd’s first band.
The concert was not perfect. A Todd show never is, probably by design. You take the artist on his terms. But on this night at least, he rewarded the crowd’s affection and enthusiasm by giving a whole lot back.
This article appears in Aug 16-23, 2018.