Todd Rundgren’s life-long desire to build his own robot
While he may not be a household name like some of his contemporaries, Todd Rundgren has never shied away from being his own true, authentic self, which is to say, entirely unique and in his own lane creatively.
Some of his albums from the 1970s, including the likes of Runt, Something/Anything? and A Wizard, A True Star are bona fide masterpieces that simply don’t get the attention they deserve despite being on a creative par with some of the other glam rock and art pop records from the same era. If treated with a little more reverence, there’s a case to be made that Rundgren could’ve been regarded as the Brian Wilson of his generation, but instead, he remains more of a cult favourite.
But it’s not just songwriting and being a good musician that he ought to be cherished for; he was also an incredible producer, and approached the creative process in the studio like a scientist. Always trying to enact a level of precision in all of his recording techniques and forever searching for the right sounds to fill a space, Rundgren was not just a master of crafting songs but also the sounds that they were made up of.
Given this, it’s hardly surprising to find out that he’s long harboured ambitions of being regarded as a scientist in a different field, dreaming from a young age about building his own robot. Yes, that’s right – the same man who wrote exceptional pop songs like ‘I Saw The Light’ wasn’t content with simply being an artist, and had always fancied himself constructing a little tin companion.
“As I was growing up, I learned a lot of things that later would be valuable for me just because I fantasised about having a robot friend, and that caused me to learn about digital logic and binary number systems and other things that would help me when they started teaching the new math in high school,” he revealed in an interview with Rock Cellar.
Adding, “What everyone else might have some trouble with, in a day, I easily grasped. So it was helpful, at least, having a fantasy like that.”
However, he would go on to acknowledge that while this lofty ambition appealed to him when he was younger, he had to tune himself into the reality that he was perhaps destined for a career in another creative venture. While he may have ultimately made the right decision, he claimed that he’s had to tell himself never to be dissuaded by the thoughts and comments of others, and has used the fact that he never built a robot as the thing that pushes him to follow his intuition creatively.
“In a sense, if people are always discouraging you, then you will alter your behaviour in order to get them to stop discouraging you, but that never occurs to me,” he said, sharing his philosophy.
Concluding, “My guiding principle has been that I have to do what nobody else would do or could do. There’s no point in me doing what everybody else does. I have to find a niche of some kind to even justify the effort that I’m going through.”
