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Todd Rundgren music biography continued...

Pennsylvania on June 22, 1948, Rundgren learned how to play guitar as a child, teaching himself after his initial round of lessons ceased, and forming his own band by the time he was in his teens. Several years later, while he was playing in a band called Runt, Rundgren became acquainted with Bob Dylan manager Albert Grossman who had founded a fledgling studio and label, Bearsville Records. The first Rundgren album to appear on Bearsville was Runt's final record, The Ballad of Todd Rundgren. By 1972, the "Runt" persona/band identity was dropped, and 1972's Something/Anything? was credited simply to Todd Rundgren. Rundgren wrote, played, sang and produced everything on three of the four sides of this double album, which featured the top 40 US hits "I Saw The Light" and "Hello It's Me." After a break from pop/rock, to work with a band called Utopia, Rundgren returned to the genre with 1976's Faithful and 1978's Hermit of Mink Hollow, which included the hit ballad "Can We Still Be Friends," accompanied by an innovative self-produced music video. Subsequent solo releases included the album-long concept work Healing (1981) and the New Waveish The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect (1982), which featured the minor novelty hit "Bang the Drum All Day," which rallied Rundgren's established cult following and got him noticed by mainstream music fans.



After his successes as a performer in the 1970s and early 80s, Rundgren mainly turned away from the spotlight to experiment with behind-the-scenes, cutting edge music technology, including interactive recordings, advanced multi-media and Internet song delivery. A unique validation of Rundgren's many contributions to the arts came in May 1995 when he received the prestigious Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Popular Culture Society at UC Berkeley. Bestowed annually, the awards "honor artists who re-define a genre, show excellence through diversity in their art, communicate the essence of a time period, or work towards positive social change." In the last decade Rundgren has continued to contribute to the music recording industry in myriad ways.