Fact #164532
When:
Short story:
The Nazz play the first of four nights at the Whisky-A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, California, USA. The group includes future solo star Todd Rundgren.
Full article:
Todd Rundgren : I was well into high school before I came up with anything that resembled an original musical thought. It probably wasn't until my senior year that I started to mess around with chord progressions that would eventually become my songwriting style. So no, I wasn't really serious as a songwriter until I was more or less forced into it. It wasn't until I actually put The Nazz together that I came to the realization that "Now you actually have to start writing music" because I had a band that I was fronting and the band has to have original material.
I was an avid listener to all kinds of music, so my influences, even though The Beatles were the biggest thing happening, I still had all of this other music in me. I think one of the reasons why I really appreciated The Beatles was their eclecticism and their willingness to continually incorporate new musical influences. In that sense, it was possible to write a song that would be derivative of The Beatles in a certain era, but you couldn't write a song that captured everything they did. When I first started writing songs, I had no inclination to imitate The Beatles. As a matter of fact, by that time, they were starting to get a little silly. Like Magical Mystery Tour, which was what they might call odds and sods nowadays. [laughs] It wasn't done as an album, it was fragments of things all pastiched together. At least to me, it was a disappointment in some sense. I thought The Beatles lost a lot of momentum after Sgt. Pepper.
Todd Rundgren : We were so young. I was supposed to be a prodigy, but it sounds unsophisticated by today's standards. (Source : The Times, 5 September, 2003)
Tweet this Fact
I was an avid listener to all kinds of music, so my influences, even though The Beatles were the biggest thing happening, I still had all of this other music in me. I think one of the reasons why I really appreciated The Beatles was their eclecticism and their willingness to continually incorporate new musical influences. In that sense, it was possible to write a song that would be derivative of The Beatles in a certain era, but you couldn't write a song that captured everything they did. When I first started writing songs, I had no inclination to imitate The Beatles. As a matter of fact, by that time, they were starting to get a little silly. Like Magical Mystery Tour, which was what they might call odds and sods nowadays. [laughs] It wasn't done as an album, it was fragments of things all pastiched together. At least to me, it was a disappointment in some sense. I thought The Beatles lost a lot of momentum after Sgt. Pepper.
Todd Rundgren : We were so young. I was supposed to be a prodigy, but it sounds unsophisticated by today's standards. (Source : The Times, 5 September, 2003)