Photo illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Matt Winkelmeyer/amfAR, Tim Mosenfelder)
Take the load off, man. Todd Rundgren His first major project as an engineer was the band's third album, 1970s. Stage fright after the dissolution of his own band Nazz. Rundgren was a valuable sounding board for the quintet and helped shape the album's ten tracks, including the standouts “The Shape I'm In” and “Stage Fright.” His solo career began soon after, but it was his time in the booth with those Canadian-American lunatics that mostly endeared him all these decades later, even if he didn't like the music. In the new Guardian interview, Rundgren confirmed rumors that Levon Helm was inclined to follow him around the studio. “Perhaps there was some kind of episode,” he explained. “I was a smart child how to call Garth Hudson “old man”, thinking he is too old to be awake, not realizing he has narcolepsy. I wasn't into that kind of music and didn't realize the fact that the band was one of the biggest bands in the world. They suddenly had all the money, drugs, booze and sycophants available to them, and it affected some of the guys.” At the time, Helm was suffering from a severe drug addiction. “Levon was addicted to opiates,” Rundgren said, “so while he may have been chasing me around the studio, he spent just as much time under a bunch of curtains, dead to the world.”
Invitation to The Last Waltz wasn't extended to Rundgren – although it's interesting to think about how he would have commanded the stage if he'd been given the spot instead of, say, Neil Diamond's faltering singing – but he subsequently had a good relationship with 80 percent of the band before their deaths. (Hudson was the last member die back in January.) “In later years, they all became my friends, except Robbie Robertson,” Rundgren added, “who was kind of a snob.”
