{"id":276059,"date":"2025-11-21T20:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T20:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/276059\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T20:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T20:48:09","slug":"the-artist-who-impacted-burt-bacharach-from-todd-rundgren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/276059\/","title":{"rendered":"The artist who impacted Burt Bacharach, from Todd Rundgren"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Todd<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Todd Rundgren \/ ABC Television)<\/p>\n

Fri 21 November 2025 19:16, UK <\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps not an obvious fact among his body of work, but Burt Bacharach\u2019s uplifting and universal songbook proved a mammoth influence on Todd Rundgren<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To the uninitiated, Rundgren can often immediately evoke his distinguished career in the studio and keeping abreast with technology. Rarely panged with nostalgia, Rundgren has forged a career in sonic innovation, from A Wizard, a True Star\u2019s psychedelic blitz, his production credits for New York Dolls and Bat Out of Hell, founding the prog-rock Utopia project, as well as dreaming up multi-media albums that embraced interactive software across the 1980s and \u201890s.<\/p>\n

Yet, at heart, he was always a songwriter. Having absorbed the hits born from Bacharach\u2019s pen as a youth for the likes of Chuck Jackson and The Shirelles<\/a>, it was Dionne Warwick\u2019s \u2018Walk On By\u2019 that stuck a hook in the teen Rundgren, immediately buying the Make Way for Dionne Warwick album, written and produced by Bacharach and collaborative partner Hal David, and spinning the LP as regularly as he did his beloved Beatles and Yardbirds. Rundgren\u2019s musical ambitions changed there and then.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, I didn\u2019t consider myself a songwriter,\u201d Rundgren told Goldmine. \u201cI just wanted to be a guitar player at that point. When eventually I did start writing songs, that influence had already been embedded in me. When I was in high school, we didn\u2019t have a piano at home, so I used to stay after school and play the piano in the auditorium. That\u2019s where I first got these chordal sensibilities, that\u2019s closer to Bacharach than it is to a typical pop with a lot of major-minor sevens and weird suspensions and odd time signatures\u201d.<\/p>\n

Such songcraft quirks would inspire numbers like \u2018Hello It\u2019s Me\u2019, the first song Rundgren ever wrote and initially recorded by former band Nazz, \u2019I Saw the Light\u2019, and \u2018Can We Still Be Friends?\u2019 all shimmering with that rock-solid Bacharach knack for emotionally stirring pop. Rundgren\u2019s fandom would amount to the What The World Needs Now: The Burt Bacharach Songbook Live In Concert, a US tour featuring Rundgren and longtime Bacharach arranger Rob Shirakbari heading a nine-piece ensemble playing the old songsmith\u2019s canon hits.<\/p>\n

When considering the live repertoire, however, one number proved an uphill struggle due to the emotional peak imbued by a guest co-writer. Working together on 1988\u2019s Painted from Memory, Elvis Costello<\/a> would help pen the \u2018God Give Me Strength\u2019 standard that both he and Bacharach routinely performed individually on subsequent shows. While an admirer, Rundgren knew that Costello\u2019s compositional touch would demand a rethink for Rundgren\u2019s live tackle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this little tantrum in the middle of the song,\u201d Rundgren expanded. \u201cIt\u2019s a great song. We more or less cut out the climax because it\u2019s so un-Bacharach. Elvis\u2019 lyrics are often a combination of self-pity and anger. This song is no different. It\u2019s wordy. It\u2019s typical Elvis. But there\u2019s a moment in the middle that I can\u2019t emotionally deliver when he says, \u2018I want him to hurt.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Rundgren added, \u201cHe wants someone else to suffer along with him. That seems so un-Bacharach to me. After all, this tour is called \u2018What the World Needs Now is Love,\u2019 [laughs] and what the world doesn\u2019t need now is more hurt people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deeming the line contrary to the theme of the tour, Rundgren and the team decided to simply omit it from the number. It\u2019s understandable. <\/p>\n

In an effort to make \u2018God Give Me Strength\u2019 his own, creative reshapes have to happen, but perhaps removing such a barbed line dulls what made Bacharach\u2019s songbook so interesting, hiding the aching and relatable humanity bristling underneath the most infectiously sunny pop gem or beguilingly easy-listening lull.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Todd Rundgren \/ ABC Television) Fri 21 November 2025 19:16, UK It\u2019s perhaps not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[113061,113062,96,128,84404,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-276059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-burt-bacharach","9":"tag-elvis-costello","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-todd-rundgren","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}