Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

If bearing a reputation as a weirdo is all it takes to be a genius, I'm a shoo-in. Come to think of it, half the people I know are geniuses - the other half, peculiarly enough, idiots.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

If I have an opportunity to do something safe or something challenging, I'll often choose the latter. Sometimes, the objective is to submerge my viewpoint with the artist.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

There are some things that we know are just not as pleasant as the lies that we tell ourselves, and in that sense in order to endure existence everyone endures a certain amount of dishonesty in their everyday lives.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

The problem turned out to be that I never was that kind of an artist.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

When I got out of high school, I joined a local blues band in Philadelphia - Woody's Truck Stop.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

I can't stand Beyonce. The way she sells it so hard, constantly. Everything is shoved right in your face. Like, you don't have the sense to make a judgment of your own.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

Once I go on stage, the atmosphere is totally theatrical. The greater the illusion, the greater the intensity of the excitement it creates.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

When you come to a place like Kauai, you don't go for a high tech world.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

Most people outside of America won't get it. It's the Easter bunny. It's another lie and I don't understand why we had to invent this character.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

I decided early on that I wanted to be Michael Bloomfield, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton - not George Harrison.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

I don't have a long history of hit singles of my own. I had a few, and I had a little hot streak in the '70s, but I've had a lot of success producing other people.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

It seems like there are two worlds out there - one that has revolved around 'Breaking Bad,' and then the one that I've been in, which just kind of observes it from afar.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

There's only one band that could ever even pretend to assume the mantle of what the Beatles did, who have been so pre-eminent and world-dominating that they could effect a paradigm shift in the culture, who have been willing to leverage their success into musical change, and that is U2 - regardless of what the result of that is.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

'Something/Anything?' was kind of a different record, since I'm playing everything myself. A lot of the songs on there have a particular kind of instrumentation that is much like a guitar quartet, and in some ways, it's an exceptional song on that record because so much of the writing on 'Something/Anything?' is piano-oriented.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

When I got out of high school, I was in a blues band. It was the kind of music I was interested in, and listening to, mostly because it was becoming a vehicle for a generation of guitarists - like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Mike Bloomfield. And that's what I wanted to be, principally: a guitar player.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

I don't use any real vintage hardware any longer. That's always been the object as far as gaining control of the studio environment, going back to when I built my first studio, Secret Sound, in New York City. The whole point was to not have to pay studio bills anymore and not be looking at the clock.

Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren

The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene.