As told to the Awizard list by Mark "Moogy" Klingman...
Part 1
01/27/99
Todd was always hinting at bands to come in songs and album titles. Remember "Wait another year and Utopia is here!" on the song, "International Feel" from "A Wizard, A True Star"? Hence in his early, insecure days after the Nazz, Todd was hinting at a band with his first solo album "Runt". Which way to go, group or solo? The "Runt" album and "Runt/The Ballad of Todd Rundgren" was one way to keep people guessing. Would a band "Runt" emerge to tour, or was it going to be Todd, the solo artist? Not even he knew, at the time. As I was his occasional piano player and friend during that period I would sometimes be hired by him to play on some of the first sessions he ever produced! I played on tracks by Ian and Sylvia, James Cotten and Libby Titus (all only singles) which were Todd's first production assignments for Albert Grossman, his manager and manager of these acts.
Everyone was pleasantly surprised at the Grossman office (they managed me too, at that time) by Todd's single "We got to get you a woman" making it to #20 on the billboard charts. That's when Todd told me we were going to be getting his band "Runt" together. This was the winter of '70 going into '71 and "Runt" the first TR post Nazz band was being formed. I was the keyboard player and Todd had Tony and Hunt Sales flown into NYC from California that winter or spring. Hunt was only 14 years old at the time! We got very little financial or moral support from Albert Grossman and his company. Even though Todd was on his label and had hit single (#20). We rehearsed in a loft on Houston Street, and Todd was always hyping us about how big "Runt" was going to be. He had grandiose ideas for a stage act even then. We painted our amps into weird colors and designs and he had my Hammond organ painted over as the Holy Bible! Go figure. He did all the painting himself with us helping him. Like Todd, Hunt and Tony dressed like British fops. Only I dressed like a Greenwich Village beatnik, which is what I was at the time. Todd bought me an appropriate outfit for live gigs. I think we got paid $50 a week while we waited for Grossman or someone to book us. Todd had never sung lead live before, or fronted a band and he was pretty nervous at rehearsals. I'd look at him singing in his British Mod clothes and wonder if he could cut it live. Tony and Hunt were very excitable and played at MAX volume which Todd on his guitar, also did. I could never hear myself at rehearsal. We could never hear the singing. The loft was big, echoey and empty and it was one big mush of noise. No one could really hear anything. No sound people or roadies. Just Todd, me, Tony and his extremely excited 14 year old brother Hunt. I thought the band kinda sucked. I think they thought so, too, but Todd pushed us forward on promises of big promos and gigs. "Get you a Woman" was top 20. Grossman and his associates managed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Band, and Gorden Lightfoot, among others. They didn't see how Todd fit in with these roots groups, classic blues, folk, rockabilly... Todd at that time was kind of an embarrassment to them as an artist. They did nothing for Todd and nothing to encourage the act. They did not book us anywhere. They hemmed and hawed and Todd waited.
RUNT PLAYS A GIG!!!!!! ***** It's first and last stand. *****
Sometime in the spring of '71, Todd wangled us a gig at The Village Gate in Greenwich Village. It was a famous room and a big room. Mostly downtown hype types played the room. Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, what followed us was the National Lampoon Show, which ran for about a year with John Belushi and Chevy Chase. A pseudo - British rocker with a slight teenybopper hit was the wrong act for the large room. But someone booked us there. I don't think they wanted Todd to gig at all. We headlined. But no support. No ads. No publicity. I think we played for a few nites, two nites, maybe three. We played to an empty house. No one came to see us. Except some discouraging manager types from Grossmans' office. We played loud. You couldn't hear the vocals. It was all thrash rock, no ballads. The room was big and empty. Just like the loft. Sound bouncing off the walls forcing the few people who came to see us out. The manager types told Todd the band sucked and promptly cut off all funds. So ended "Runt". His managers and label squandered his hit single and he didn't gig, I believe 'till The Ballad of TR came out. I think they wanted to keep him producing but not becoming a star himself. The really sad thing about the whole depressing RUNT band experience was that none of us could tell that Todd was any good as a performer at that time. Maybe at the time, he wasn't. Only gradually, as I played with him thru various incarnations of groups until things melded with "Utopia", did it dawn on me or the managers or the other band members, that this guy was going to become one of the great rock concert performers and singers of all time!! By the time Utopia was touring he was one of the truly great front men in rock. We were all proud of him. I read where he said "Runt" was his nickname from school. But he was so tall at 19, that I couldn't imagine it. Maybe he's blocked out the whole Runt band experience. I know that I had, until reading your emails on the Wizard list.Moogy
2/1/99
Well they may have called him "runt" in High School, but when I met him in 69, he was already 6 ft. tall, maybe he shot up in H.S. all in one year or something. But he told me he was pretty much a solitary figure in HS, spending most of his time in his room gaining his pop music skills. No, I think what they probably called him in HS was probably, (forgive me for this)...nerd.
Moogy
2/1/99
The band runt in '70/'71 was Todd's baby. He knew Tony and Hunt and flew them in from the coast. The next band-- the one that did the WMMR radio broadcast was made up of N D Smart, a friend of Todd's from the Hello People and Ian and Sylvia on drums. Also in the band, at that time, I brought in two friends of mine that I had played with in two bands, Stu Woods and Tommy Cosgrove. I had played with them in the Vagrants, a legendary Long Island band that also featured Lesley West, and their group, Brethren, which recorded two albums for some obscure label. Both albums featured my songs. All four of us were flown out to LA ('71/'72?) (when the ballad of Todd Rundgren came out). I was flown out first and stayed at Todd's house. For a while we all stayed at a hotel on sunset strip called "the sunset marquee". I remember we weren't called Runt. It believe the band was called Todd Rundgren, but maybe he also featured ours names. Like Rundgren, Klingman, Cosgrove, Smart etc...I can't clearly recall.
I'll try to search my memory on this short-lived congregation. But I believe it was like the first short-lived band. The management/label did not live up to their end of the bargain and refused to financially support or gig- support the band, which was supposed to promote "The Ballad of TR". Our biggest accomplishment was the WMMR broadcast, which also featured all of us singing our own songs. As well as Todd doing his thing. Like Utopia, which was to come next, Todd was already experimenting with the idea of a group where everyone contributed musically.
The music of this group was diametrically opposed to the first band "RUNT". These guys (Smart, Cosgrove, and Woods) were all real musicians with years playing blues, rock, country and jazz. These guys were also studio musicians.
Hunt (14 at the time) and Tony Sales were kids who liked to bash their instruments. Todd would show them note for note what to play. They had no professional experience at all before Todd. To me, the only advantage of Hunt and Tony's being in the band, was the fact the Tony's girlfriend at the time always hung out with us. I had a bit of a crush on her as she had been a student with me at one of my High Schools (Quintano's school for young professionals). Steve Tyler was also there with us. Her name was Nancy Allen. She later married Brian DePalma and the rest is Robocop history. Some even call what she does in movies "acting".
Todd was slightly intimidated by the heavy credentials of the new band members. But, in the end, they were by far, much more sensitive to the music and would play it at levels where everything could be heard. They just couldn't wear the funny British mod clothes that Todd so loved which Hunt and Tony wore, without even being asked!
But the sad fact is that it ended like "RUNT", all unfulfilled promises and no gigs, and rehearsing and sitting around for months before being disbanded.
Things were to change rather dramatically when Todd asked to use my band, "Moogy and the Rhythm Kings" to become the original Utopia. Everything that had been wrong before was now right times 100! It helped that he had the #1 single in the country at the time, "Hello, it's Me!".
Moogy
2/5/99
All power to the Ikon!!
The Ikon was co-written by the four of us, Todd, myself, Siegler and Schuckett. The goofy hoe down bit was my contribution. That's me on the electric and acoustic piano. I had originally recorded it as a solo artist. Its title was "The Conquering of the West". The recording featured myself, Schuckett, Seigler, and Kevin Ellman on drums. This is significant in that this was the first time I had used Kevin in the studio. My previous drummer had been John Siomos. But when "Moogy and the Rhythm Kings" morphed into Todd's Utopia, Siomos (a member of "Moogy & ") didn't come with us. He left to join a trio, called "Frampton's Camel featuring Peter Frampton". He did it under the name of Johnny Sloman, Slomo, Slohand??.... one of those. He was Frampton's drummer when they recorded "Frampton Comes Alive", which became the biggest selling album of all time! At least until the 70's ended, that is. Siomos played on "A Wizard, a True Star" with us. And on "Hello, it's Me" And was supposed to be in Utopia with us.
When we were looking for Utopia's drum slot, I played TR "the conquering of the west", to show him Ellman's drumming. That was it! TR said, "Hire that man!" You're right about it (West) being a tribute to Aaron Copland, one of my idols. His few movie scores in particular, changed the face of Hollywood film scores (Our Town 1940, Of mice and Men 1939). I met Mr. Copland shortly before his death, and even got his autograph! But actually, certain lines of "West"..(later part of "the Ikon") were inspired as a tribute to Elmer Berstein's score to the movie, "God's Little Acre" which in itself was an imitation of Copland's ballet "Appalachian Spring".
Moogy