“Ugly”: The singer Todd Rundgren called his musical nemesis
No one is really in the music business to make friends. The entire industry can be cutthroat, and most artists know when to watch their backs when talking to any suits or colleagues for fear that they might take them for all they’re worth behind the scenes. Although Todd Rundgren didn’t have too much to worry about during his solo career, he admitted that a few people managed to give him headaches whenever he took to the road.
Granted, Rundgren was always a child of the studio in many respects. Listening back to some of his masterpieces in the 1970s, many of them were focused on carrying on the same tradition The Beatles did by having lavish arrangements. He used the studio as an instrument in many respects, but as artists like him and Jeff Lynne would find out, you can’t exactly take the studio with you every time a tour starts.
But if there was one person who could convince anyone to get out on the road, it was going to be a former Beatle. As much as Ringo Starr loved the idea of becoming a retired legend of rock and roll, he knew that he was far better suited playing his music for the people, and since he didn’t have as much music to his name, Rundgren was one of the first people he picked to work with his All-Starr Band.
Whenever someone sees the famous drummer live these days, though, there is something far more special than a simple solo show. It’s always going to be fun to see a real-life Beatle, but Rundgren would also get an opportunity to play some of his trademark songs when they traded off the microphone. After all, Starr didn’t always want to be the centre of attention, and playing the drums to ‘Bang the Drum All Day’ suited him fine in between singalongs of ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’.
Since this was the life of a touring rock and roll band, though, that didn’t mean that the rest of the group didn’t get up to a little bit of misbehaviour. Ringo Starr had been on the wagon for years at this point, but it was still the Wild West for many of his contemporaries, and while Rundgren could manage to get through every gig intact, he remembered having a few nasty words for Burton Cummings during their run.
The Guess Who frontman could certainly deliver the tunes people wanted to hear and even sing harmony fairly well, but Rundgren felt that he was spiralling out of control behind the scenes, saying, “My nemesis was Burton Cummings [The Guess Who]. He was a bad drinker. When he got drunk, he would start getting ugly with people, and then the next day he would apologise to everyone and then in 12 hours, he was back in the same state again. He was a good example of what not to do.”
Although the last thing that someone should do on the road is play the role of disciplinarian, it’s not like Rundgren was off the mark in any capacity. Most people want to make sure that they can make it to the next gig, and that gets a bit more complicated when someone gets wasted and decides to get nasty with their bandmates.
If anything, the thought of that kind of episode happening in the background may as well be false advertising had it happened on tour with Starr these days. Rundgren may have survived long enough to be one of the longest-running members of the All-Starr Band, but did they really need a bad drinker among their ranks when their entire message was peace and love?
