4. Todd RundgrenSomething/Anything?
Skipping into the start of the 80s, I had a boyfriend who was an accomplished musician with great taste in music who was a big Todd Rundgren fan. I’d never heard of him but he got me listening to Todd Rundgren and I pretty much love everything he does either as Utopia or as a singer-songwriter. We put one of his songs – ‘Lucky Guy’ – on my album Close as a tribute and to point people towards him, because everyone I talk to doesn’t know what I’m talking about. He’s one of the best songwriters on the planet and people tell me they don’t know who he is! For me he’s up there with Joni Mitchell. He directly inspired me to become a songwriter at the time when I moved to London at the start of my career. I set up a little studio and the first song I tried to record and understand about song structure was ‘Can We Still Be Friends’ I felt more able to write songs as a direct influence of hearing his work because they felt more accessible to me. They were chords that I could find on a piano. A lot of his songs are written on a piano and I’m a piano player so I could find his chords easily – Joni Mitchell’s songs are written primarily on guitar. So I felt inspired to start writing my own songs at that stage in my career and he was the artist who I was listening to the most at the time. I’ve seen him play live and I’ve got most of his albums. I love his work with harmonies. He had that unique production sensibility in the same way that Brian Wilson had with Pet Sounds – unusual sounds and inspiring work with vocals. He wrote an album called A Capella which was just samples of his voice creating everything from drums onwards. He’s been a massive influence for sheer inspiration really.
