(Credits: Far Out / Todd Rundgren)
Thu 18 December 2025 2:00, UK
To any young music fan immersing themselves in rock and pop’s illustrious lore, Todd Rundgren is a name likely encountered repeatedly long before actually digging out any of his records.
Like Steve Albini or Giorgio Moroder, Rundgren’s credit sits among many of pop’s essential gateway albums. While intrepid fans may eventually immerse themselves in his litany of innovative solo records and prog jams with his Utopia project, Rundgren’s rock pedigree was likely first flashed as the producer of the New York Dolls’ explosive debut, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell Wagnerian pomp, or the psychedelic pop of XTC’s Skylarking.
Rundgren was able to work with a myriad of different acts, but he also knew how to push a band toward pop success without compromising their core ethos. With his shimmering A Wizard, A True Star opus in the can, his friend and photographer Lynn Goldsmith presented an opportunity to work with a promising hard rock outfit from Michigan, with six albums to their name, but bogged down by a lack of momentum and some internal bad habits between band and management.
“The Grand Funk Railroad album was one of the easiest things I ever did,” Rundgren confessed to Classic Rock, casting his mind back to 1973’s We’re An American Band. “It simply required my normal sensibility, particularly because the band was operating with such low expectations. They’d had some great success but they were not well-regarded critically.”
It turned out that Grand Funk Railroad had commanded a steady live following, if their penchant for on-stage extended jams all too often bored half the audience. Long-time manager Terry Knight also insisted on handling production duties, resulting in records enjoying respectable chart presence, if failing to enthuse Rundgren at all. “By the time I worked with them, their expectations for the record were so low I couldn’t fail,” he quipped.
Heading to Florida’s Criteria Studios, Rundgren corralled a very wet behind the ears Grand Funk Railroad and produced a fuller, beefier, and harder rocking flourish for We’re An American Band that would finally see the critics give them their dues and sail to number two on the Billboard 200. Working so well together, both Rundgren and the band would team up again for Shinin’ On the following year.
Grand Funk Railroad would troop on for another decade, their final album being What’s Funk? before a sputtering of semi-hiatuses and jumbled line-ups taking the stage well into the 2020s, but their collaboration with Rundgren would stand the tallest amid their oeuvre for both fans and critics alike.
Rundgren remained characteristically diffident about his legacy, choosing instead to throw some shade toward one permed hair metaller of the day who learnt all the wrong lessons from Grand Funk Railroad’s hard rock template.
“We’re An American Band surprised a lot of people, and the title track has been covered by countless bands since, most famously Bon Jovi,” Rundgren concluded. “I haven’t heard their version yet, but that’s because I really don’t pay that much attention to Bon Jovi.”
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