Todd Rundgren.
Joe Jackson.
These are not names that seasoned rock fans immediately put together, yet the tandem is out on a joint tour this spring.
Rundgren, 56, was raised in suburban Philadelphia, weaned on Beatles and soul music; he was, for a brief period in the early '70s, something of a rock star.
Jackson, 50, is a Brit who rode the tail end of the late '70s New-Wave movement to a handful of hits, including "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" and "Steppin' Out."
On closer inspection, though, the two artists share, if not much in terms of stylistic similarities, a certain attitude. Both have done projects that left fans and pundits alike scratching their heads; both have dabbled outside the realm of popular music; both have, it seems, subverted career momentum at the least opportune times.
With Rundgren, it came after his biggest seller, the 1972 masterpiece Something/Anything?, which spawned the hits "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light."
"I was already in the process of deconstruction before I became successful; when Wizard came out, people were saying 'Illogical, Illogical,'" Rundgren said in a phone interview, referring to the 1973 follow-up, the dense and occasionally impenetrable A Wizard, A True Star. "I had just done this collection of formulaic songs that was hugely successful, and I was supposed to do that again. But I was already deconstructing the style that I had arrived at, figuring out ways to break it. A lot of it came out as disjointed and fragmentary."
Wizard went hitless.
For his part, the classically-trained Jackson chased his initial pang of commercial success with the 1981 platter Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive, a full-on tribute to the '40s jump-blues of Louis Jordan that came about 15 years before the neo-swing movement.
Over the years, each artist has indulged himself in work that had little or no commercial prospects. Rundgren's No World Order (1993) was a tech-heavy experiment, probably the first effort by a pop artist to make interactive music. Jackson has penned and recorded full-on classical compositions.
So, did the current tour result from a mutual admiration society? "I don't know that it was that, uh, passionate," Rundgren says with a laugh. "I think we were aware of each other and had mutual respect, if not admiration, for each other's work."
Rundgren and Jackson were lured together by New York's Nexus Public Theater. After Jackson sang in the chorus for a revival of a Rundgren musical, the theater brass asked if they would perform together at a concert in Central Park. "Aside from just being merely an intellectual exercise, the audience got off so much on the combination that we thought we should explore further possibilities," Rundgren explains.
The shows on tour will proceed like this: A 20-minute set by the iconoclastic, electric string quartet Ethel, followed by 45-60-minute solo performances by Jackson and Rundgren (the order was not specified). Afterward, all three will join together for a segment highlighting Rundgren's and Jackson's greatest hits.
With hits hard to come by these days, Rundgren says he must make most of his living via concerts. And because he has chosen the life of an artist, a "working musician," over that of a pop star, he admits that it can be "feast or famine." Last year's release of Liars, his first album of new music in 10 years and its subsequent band tour, generated a "feast of publicity and a famine of money," he says with a chuckle. "When you don't have a label, all the [touring] investments you make are borne by yourself. The big advantage of this particular tour is it has very low expenses. It promises a pretty healthy return to a working musician."
Rundgren says he doesn't really know Jackson personally, but that should be rectified by spending at least five weeks together on a tour bus. "I think he's a highly professional person, not simply a so-called pop star," Rundgren says. "We recognized that in each other – that we are musicians foremost and a celebrity second-most. In that sense, there's a lot of commonality, even if people don't put our names together out of the blue."
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.