The dates are being billed as An Evening With Todd Rundgren, and are as follows:
Sat. 1: Manchester HMV Ritz

Mon. 3: London Jazz Cafe

Tue. 4: London Jazz Cafe

Wed. 5: London Jazz Cafe

Find out more at http://www.tr-i.com/

This will be the 1974 line-up, which recorded the band’s celebrated debut album, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia. Joining Rundgren on guitar/vocals are Moogy Klingman  and Ralph Schukett (keyboards), John Siegler (bass) and Kevin Elfman (drums).

This one-off show is being done to help Klingman, who’s battling against cancer. All proceeds will go towards his health costs.

Words: Malcolm Dome

There’s a novel in here somewhere. Maybe even a movie. The cautionary tales of rock ’n’ roll. Not so much a case of ‘Be careful what you wish for’. More like ‘Just what are you wishing for, anyway?’.

This is the story of Money. One filled with lucky breaks that went slightly wrong, inexplicable – almost suicidal – business decisions. And, ultimately, the virtual cremation of an album that could have become a significant part of everyone’s life in the late1970s, but has ended up us a vault classic, gathering dust, while other, lesser records did their own alchemy shuffle, turning gold, platinum, and beyond.

So, who are Money? Why is it most people won’t even have heard of them? Let’s go back to Birmingham in the late 1970s. By this time, two school chums had returned home from London a little chastened. Drummer Tony Bodene and guitarist John Overton had a band. Called Attila The Hun. They were signed to the Jet label, but things didn’t exactly go to plan.

“We were only kids,” recalls Bodene. “And got badly burnt by the experience. We really did come back to Birmingham with our tails between the legs!”

Now, the irrepressible drummer had an ambition: to put together something of a supergroup, featuring the best young musicians in a city that’s always been a shrine to hard rock. To this end, he persuaded May West bassist Larry Phillips to join the party. Thus was Gypsy Rose born, with Phillips also handling vocals. However, the twio were to be short lived. The Rose withered, although the dream didn’t die. Just a few months later, the three were back round the metaphorical table. Only this time they had a vocalist.

“I got a guy called David Mullen to come in,” says Phillips. “T be honest, I didn’t want to carry on singing. And I’d always found it tough writing lyrics. David, though, was brilliant at it. Give him an idea and he’d have lyrics written in no time. And they flowed beautifully.”

And, this wasn’t Gypsy Rose II. Oh, no. Bodene had another brainwave.

“I came up with the name ‘Money’. In fact, at the first band meeting, not only did I have the name. But I’d taken a bank note, cut the ‘k’ out of the phrase ‘Bank Of England’ and replaced it with a ‘d’…BAND OF ENGLAND.”

So, Money were ready to take on the world – but would the world respond? And what was the cunning plan that would separate them from their peers and a growing clutch of young hopefuls darkening the skies overhead, as the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal prepared for flight? Simple. It’s called fate…

“We’d all done the whole process of playing the toilets up and down the country,” explains Bodene. “You know, the workingmen’s club circuit. Now, we wanted to do something different, to concentrate on the songs and get a label deal first.

“At the time, I was working in a music shop called Drum Land. People like John Bonham and Bill Ward – who were big inspirations for me – used to come all the time. One day, when I wasn’t around, Bill said to the guy who ran the place: ‘Can you shoot Tony’s fucking legs off. He’s too good!’. But it was through Bill that we got the chance to come to London. He told me that Morgan Studios in Willesden (North West London), where Sabbath were recording what was to be their last album with Ozzy (Never Say Die), were holding auditions, with a view to signing up young talent. I decided to phone the man who ran the studio then, Monty Babson (a former, albeit unsuccessful, recording artists in his own right). He also owned Mr. Sam Music, which was connected with Gull Records, and they were to come into the picture a little later on.

“I called from a phone box, and had to keep pumping in ten pence pieces. Eventually I had to get him to call me back, because  I was running out of change. This was long before mobile phones, remember. It turned out that we were too late for these auditions (as an aside, Japan got their deal with Ariola through this process), but Monty thought that I had more front than Harrod’s, so he invited the band down to London.”

“Typically, Tony never told the rest of us what he was up to!” smiles Phillips. “It was only after the whole thing had been set up that he let us know. So we piled into our transit van and headed south.”

Babson was impressed enough with the young, good-looking band to offer them the chance to record during ‘down time’ in the studio, which meant…

“We’d go in at weekends in 1978 when there was a studio spare,” continues Phillips. “We ended up recording a lot through the night, and sleeping in there during the day. There was more than one occasion when the cleaners would find us asleep on the floor, and kick us out, because Gary Moore or Colosseum were due in. Because of this, we had very little time for overdubs, or doing take after take of a particular track. We’d set up and play virtually as live, which I feel gave the recordings a lot of energy.”

These sessions were to turn into First Investment, the band’s sole album. Recorded over a span of six weekends across a two-month period, it was produced by Chris Tsangarides, and if the name now carries a considerable weight – thanks to a career that’s seen him work with giants like Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore and Spider  – when he got involved with Money he was still very much the new kid on the block.

“It was my first ever production,” says Tsangarides. “And I remember that we really did have to fit everything into when studios were spare. There was no budget – and we are talking about studios back then that cost £250 per hour to hire!”

Money also had to constantly deflect Babson from focusing on a song called Martini Romance.

“We wrote this pop song for fun,” laughs Bodene. “It was a throwaway tune that was different to anything else we had. But we made the mistake of playing it to Monty, and he wanted more of the same. Now, we had no intention of doing anything else like it, but he kept pushing, as it was a potential single. But that wasn’t what we were about!”

That was only one of the problems Money had to contend with. Another was the presence of Black Sabbath!

“Ozzy used to come into our studio all the time,” shudders the drummer at the recollections. “On one occasion, he wandered in, put his ear to the speakers, heard a track, and said, ‘There’s no fucking bottom end. I can’t hear the bass!’…”

“Actually that was a serious point,” interjects Phillips. “I was worried about that as well. There seemed to be no bottom end at all. I think Chris was experimenting with sounds, and if I have one criticism in general of the album’s production it would have be that. Even Ozzy agreed with my doubts. Don’t get me wrong, Chris was a great guy, but I do wonder if we’d have done better through working with a more experienced producer. But, this was being done with no funds.”

“Another time, Ozzy came in swigging from a bottle of red wine. I think Bill was with him then, and before we knew it, Ozzy was running around naked and all sorts of madness was going on. I was trying to get a drum sound at the time – doing my best John Bonham impression – but with everything that was going on around me, I had to give up at about 4.30 in the morning. A few years later, I met Ozzy at John Henry’s Rehearsal Studios in London. He was dressed in a Santa outfit, and we passed on the stairs. But he recognized me, and we did spent a little while recalling those mad times at Morgan.”

The result of such a heady brew of insanity, inexperience and talent was an album, where every song was genuinely a band effort.

“I know a lot of musicians claim that they write as a group, but in our case it was really true,” insists Phillips. “Back then, all four of us were involved at every point.”

The search for a label deal proved to be frustrating, as any interest soon turned to ashes.

“On one occasion, I remember Chris telling us that he’d taken the tapes into Island Records, and they didn’t like the ‘drum spread’,” sighs Bodene. “Er, what about the songs? And we weren’t punk enough for them either. That was another problem we had. When we first got started, punk was all the rage, and we didn’t fit in. Then, a couple of years later, we got lumped in with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal – and we were never metal. If anything, we were a little progressive. John, for instance, was influenced by the Wishbone Ash album Argus, and also by Todd Rundgren. That was where we were coming from. So, we never seemed to fit in.”

Perhaps there was an air of inevitability that Money would end up signing to Gull, given the strong relationship between Morgan Studios and that company.

“I believe our biggest mistake was in not having any management at all,” admits Bodene. “If we’d had proper representation, then a lot of things may have been different. But we were a little paranoid about being ripped off by the music business – especially John. So we managed ourselves. In hindsight, that may have been the way things were angled by Monty Babson and David Howells, his business partner in Gull. They’d just lost Judas Priest to CBS (now Columbia) because that band had major management. It’s possible they wanted to avoid something similar happening with us. But, it was a big mistake from our viewpoint. All we wanted to do was make music – and our heads were full of business issues.”

It was also Gull who persuaded Money to record the song (Aren’t We All) Searching, as former CBS executive Howells believed the album lacked a single.

“David just said to us that there was nothing on the record that he could put out as a single,” reveals Bodene. “So, we hired the Quaker Hall in Birmingham, wrote (Aren’t We All) Searching and also the B side, Where Have All The Dancers Gone.”

“We were very excited when told that the single got played by Paul Burnett on Radio One on a Friday evening,” adds Phillips. “But that was it for UK airplay. I don’t think we got any more after that!”

First Investment actually got released in Japan in 1978, before it arrived anywhere else. And you know the cliché ‘Big In Japan’? Well…

“We genuinely were big in Japan!” insists Bodene. “The album sold well out there, as it ended up doing in Germany, and also oddly in New York.”

Indirectly, that Japanese success sowed the seeds for the band’s demise. It’s a complex part of the story that saw them get closer than they’d ever come to sniffing the long-awaited breakthrough, only to have it cruelly, and crucially whipped away from under their noses.

At the time, one of the most respected and powerful booking agencies in Britain was the Bron Agency. So when Gerry Bron, the head of that company (he also ran Bronze Records, home to Motorhead and Uriah Heep) asked Money to come down to London for a meeting, they didn’t hesitate. They were driven down from Birmingham in a white Jaguar, owned by Phillips’ older brother Jimmy (who was second guitarist in Earth, just prior to their name change to Black Sabbath), and arrived to a lavish reception.

“They laid on a room full of food and drink,” gasps Bodene. “And then Gerry Bron himself came in. He said that we were the best kept secret in the music business, and that he’d just been in Japan, and kept hearing our album…”

“He told us that he was putting together a  30+ date European tour for a major Canadian band,” continues to Phillips. “I was thinking to myself, ‘I know of only one band who fitted that description, and that was Rush. Surely it can’t be them!’. So, I asked Gerry who the band were…It was Rush. Basically, the tour was ours if we want it. I think they themselves asked for us, although I can’t be certain if that was the case. All the band’s management wanted was a £7,500 buy-on (a ‘buy-on’ was, and is, normal practise in the music business, whereby support bands paid the headliners a fee for the tour). We thought it was a done deal. And what an opportunity. The chance to tour with one of the biggest bands in the world just as our album was about to released in the UK and Europe. And, musically, we knew we’d fit with the Rush audience…”

The tour was due to kick off in Newcastle on April 23, 1979 and would feature 20 UK shows, before another batch in Europe, ending on June 2.

So, imagine the shockwaves sent coursing through the Money spine when Gull refused to pay the fee (usually, it is record labels who are responsible for funding such ‘buy-ons’, as it gives a potentially massive promotional boost to a band’s record).

“They wouldn’t do it,” says Phillps. “And, to this day, we don’t know why. It seemed like a such an obvious thing to do.”

In the end, Canadians Max Webster landed that tour support slot.

A second, more formal, meeting with Bron didn’t resolve the impasse, but it convinced Phillips and Bodene that there was no future in sticking with Gull. However, they met stiff resistance to this viewpoint from other Money pair.

“John rejected the whole idea of quitting Gull, and David went along with him,” says Bodene, still slightly stunned at Overton’s recalcitrance to this day. “I have no clue why John was so determined to stay with the label. Larry and I have our own theories, but the fact is it led to a stalemate in Money.”

The cracks within the band grew even wider when Overton suddenly stopped writing songs.

“We were demoing ideas for our second album, which was gonna be called Frozen Assets. Well, we thought that at least we had our music, even if things with Gull weren’t good,” recalls Bodene. “But then one day John just said that he didn’t want to carry on writing songs for that label. So, here we were: unable to leave Gull, because John wouldn’t go along it. But also now unable to write and demo songs for a new album, because John didn’t want to give these to the label! Now, you explain what was going on in his head!

“I still feel that, if we’d had major management back then, like Iron Maiden or Def Leppard, then this would never have happened. We did have offers. Mike Dolan of Arnakata, who looked after Judas Priest, was definitely interested (Money supported Priest at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1978). But nothing came of it.”

And then Money made the naïve mistake of spilling their hearts during an interview with Birmingham journalist Mike Davies. It all appeared in print.

“Every word was true,” insists Bodene. “But Gull were furious, because it put them in such a bad light. They demanded that we get a retraction printed, in which we claimed to have been misquoted. Larry and I refused, but John was ready to do it. I remember saying to him, ‘Do you really want to hang Mike Davies out to dry for telling things as they are?’.”

A retraction did eventually appear, as Money found their integrity compromised by music business expedience and reality.

Given the impossibility of the scenario now enshrouding Money, something would have to snap. Eventually, it was Bodene. In late 1980, he told the rest of the band at a show in Birmingham (Bogart’s) that he was leaving.

“I was getting session offers, and quite honestly we were drifting. I couldn’t see a way forward for Money. But even at that late stage, I could have been talked out of leaving!”

“With hindsight, I should have gone with Tony,” regrets Phillips. “I think if we’d both have left, then it might have forced the issue with John and David, and perhaps wed have persuaded them that we had to get away from Gull. But I somehow felt that I had to stay and steady the ship.”

The remaining trio went through three drummers as they attempted to salvage a career that was fast careering off the rails. Ray Fullard, Spencer Scrannagh and Eddie Fincher all gave it their best shot, but the magic had gone.

“Things took an ominous turn when John and David would go away, write songs and then present them to the band,” admits Phillips. “We weren’t writing as a team anymore.”

By the end of 1981 Money were metaphorically bankrupt. It was over. The promise and hopes of merely two years previously now dissipated into an indifferent ether. Bodene and Phillps did try to resurrect  their musical relationship in a band called Monkey Run (“It was Money 2, really,” says the bassist), but it didn’t quite work.

However, Money’s reputation among musicians, which was absurdly the inverse to their commercial attainments, nearly landed Bodene a prestige gig in the mid-1980s.

“I was asked to audition for Robert Plant’s band. I didn’t get the job, but Robert did say that he’d asked me to come down after hearing a session we did for Tommy Vance’s Friday Rock Show on Radio 1. That session (produced by Tony Wilson at the Beeb’s Maida Vale Studios) did us a power of good. We got a lot of letters through it.”

“All of this might be coming over as depressing,” concludes Phillips. “Sure, there were tough times, but we also had a good laugh as well, and a lot of fun. Am I proud of what we achieved? Yes, but the frustration is that, looking back, it could have been so much more.”

First Investment is now over 30 yearold. But, despite its production deficiencies, inevitable given those circumstances described here, there’s a style, class and serenity to the music that’s priceless and rare. Strangely, it sits more comfortable in the 21^st Century than residing in the late 1970s.And it’s available now on the Rock Candy label.

“We were never heavy metal as such,” maintains Bodene. “Someone in Sounds magazine, once called us ‘precious metal’. I like that.”

Here are some Money tunes:

This is (Aren’t We All) Searching. 

And Another Case Of Suicide. 

Finally this is Leo The Jester.

You can find out more about the band right here.

Words: Dave Ling

As the man who wrote all the music and words for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album – with worldwide sales of 43 million and counting – Jim Steinman should need no introduction. And yet, in contrast to the array of artists that he helped to make famous, the 62-year-old New Yorker is something of a recluse. Consequently, many of the stories about the flamboyant Steinman are quite likely to have been exaggerated.

One that is often recounted – namely that Steinman loves to order the entire menu of the restaurants that he visits, taking a tiny bite from each course – was later confirmed to me by someone who actually saw it happen. Furthermore, said individual revealed that Steinman, just like a member of the Royal Family, sometimes conveniently ‘forgets’ to bring his wallet, leaving it to another diner to pick up the tab!

Steinman is also known to be nocturnal. “People often wonder if I’m a vampire, because I usually sleep during the day,” he once told an interviewer. “My nickname is P.O.D. which stands for Prince Of Darkness.”

As one of life’s genuine rule-breakers, we have come to expect such flagrant unpredictability of the man who Todd Rundgren, the producer of Bat Out Of Hell, calls: “The only genuine genius I’ve ever worked with.”

And quite rightly so. From the stark-staring mad monologue of Love And Death And An American Guitar (‘I took my guitar and I smashed it against the wall/I smashed it against the floor/I smashed it against the body of a varsity cheerleader’) to the wordiness of Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are, a Steinman composition tends to be recognisable within the first few bars.

Kid gloves: A young Jim Steinman.

Jim’s career began in the theatrical world, his musical direction having solidified as 12-year-old following a 21-hour session that paired Wagner’s The Ring Of The Nibelungen with a blast of Jerry Lee Lewis. “I just went, ‘Wow! These things go together!’” he recalled to Sandy Robertson of Sounds magazine in 1981, adding: “I used to listen all the time to rock’n'roll and classical (music); it never occurred to me that there was much difference.”

Having met Meat Loaf whilst touring the National Lampoon Road Show in 1977, Steinman began to lay plans for the album that became Bat Out Of Hell. Luckily, he had a thick skin.

“I think it was turned down by 18 record companies and 10 to 12 producers,” Jim later recalled. “Bob Ezrin was my first choice (as producer) but I couldn’t even get his phone number.”

The eventual success of Bat Out Of Hell served as the ultimate textbook validation of Jim and Meat’s belief in the project. Sadly, however, the pair would later fall out. It took them until 1993 to release a sequel. However, Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell reached No.1 in 28 countries, selling more than 15 million copies.

By the time of 2006 and Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, Meat and Jim were feuding so badly that Steinman – who had registered a trademark for the name Bat Out Of Hell – tried to prevent the album’s release after it was produced by Desmond Child. All seven of the Steinman compositions that it featured had been written for other projects. The matter of the album’s title was eventually settled out of court.

Steinman with Bonnie Tyler.

The man who the L.A. Times once called ‘the Richard Wagner of rock’, Steinman has now served up hits for artists as diverse as Bonnie Tyler, Barbra Streisand, Air Supply, The Everly Brothers, Sisters Of Mercy, Celine Dion, The Opera Babes, Barry Manilow and even Boyzone. Clearly, he still has the golden touch.

But things haven’t always gone entirely to plan. In 1984, Steinman was hired to produce the follow-up to Def Leppard’s Pyromania album. The arrangement was abruptly terminated, neither side speaking fondly of the other.

“When I arrived, Leppard had no guitar amps and they didn’t know where to get them,” Steinman would recall of the sessions, later picked up again by Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange and released as Hysteria. “They’d look at you like these little puppies, ‘Oooh, what are we going to do? We thought you’d have them…’”

Perhaps in keeping with the aforementioned ‘everything on the menu’ story, Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott dryly responded: “All that Jim Steinman knew about the studio was that he didn’t like the colour of the carpet.” The results of the recordings, assuming they even got that far, remain under lock and key.

What’s frustrating is that aside from all of his many collaborations, Steinman has released just one bona fide solo album, 1981’s Bad For Good – a set of tunes originally lined up as a second Meat Loaf record… until Meat lost his voice, reportedly recapturing it after a doctor prescribed the miracle cure of injections made from his own urine. Issued eight years after Bad For Good, the conceptual Original Sin album was the product of an alliance with the all-girl band Pandora’s Box. It was described at the time by Classic Rock’s own Malcolm Dome as follows: ‘Sheer genius. Baroque eroticism. The Shangri-Las invoked by the spirit of Ken Russell and Lord Byron.’

Back when Meat had more Loaf than Warburtons.

As an intended companion piece of Bat…, Bad For Good in particular remains an especially underrated album, full of fabulously overblown songs such as Lost Boys And Golden Girls, Stark Raving Love and Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire that would have perfectly suited the Loaf’s inimitable delivery. Indeed, somewhat controversially, Steinman later claimed that he had to tutor Meat how to sing the songs on Bat Out Of Hell.

Since 2004, various reports indicate that Steinman suffered a stroke, a heart attack or even multiple strokes, but nobody knows for sure. For what it’s worth his lawyer has gone on record as stating that Jim’s health is ‘excellent’.

Steinman’s roots gradually drew him away from rock’n'roll and back to theatrical and cinematic endeavours. His film music includes Footloose, Streets Of Fire, The Shadow and Mask Of Zorro, and he also wrote the score for Tanz Der Vampire, a 1997 musical staged by Roman Polanski, and in 2003 was involved in an MTV production of Wuthering Heights.

Songs from Steinman’s ‘music performance group’ The Dream Engine still can be heard at a MySpace site– click here – which remains online although the project has been inactive since 2006.

Jim has also spoken of a theatrical show based on the songs from Bat Out Of Hell, which he called “like Cirque Du Soleil on acid”.

Check out Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through

Bad For Good

The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be

Wasted Youth

In the meantime, a wealth of information can be found at the following website: www.jimsteinman.com

Steinman also has a blog – though it has not been updated since September 7, 2008.

Truly, he is a man of mystery. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Williamson’s work has adorned album sleeves by Marillion, Fish, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Europe, to name but a few.

…And Marillion themselves feature on the front cover of the wallet of the new issue too.

There’s an overall arty feel to the latest issue, with Marillion, Muse, Jethro Tull and Curved Air among the bands discussing the ways in which ‘prog art’ has changed over the years.

Of course, such an issue couldn’t be discussed without input from Roger Dean and Storm Thorgerson.

And we unveil the winner of our art competition, the winner of which finds their work adorning the cover of this issue’s free CD.

We also unveil the winners of the 2009 Readers’ Poll, there’s the Critics’ Choice Albums Of the Year – and there are exclusive interviews with Todd Rundgren, Transatlantic, The Pineapple Thief, Big Big Train, Magenta, Karnivool, Ex Libras and Yak, as well as the final ever interview with the late Eric Woolfson of the Alan Parsons Project.

The new issue also carries all the details you’ll need to know about subscribing to Classic Rock Presents Prog.

Issue six of Classic Rock Presents Prog is on sale from Wednesday, January 25.

You can join Editor Jerry Ewing and writer Philip Wilding on TotalRock (www.totalrock.com) tomorrow between 12 noon and 3pm GMT, discussing the magazine and playing three hours of quality progressive rock.

Marillion feature on the front cover of the wallet of the new issue of Prog.

Inside the wallet: feast your eyes on Mark Wilkinson’s exclusive cover.

“When I decided to do the whole of this record live, I thought about the best way to make it really theatrical,” Rundgren told Classic Rock.

“At first I was gonna bring in acrobats, clowns and animals – to make it something of a circus. But that just wasn’t practical. But I knew that this couldn’t just be about the music. I needed a striking visual element. So what I’ve done is create a dressing room on stage.

“During the gig, I make about 12 changes, in a dressing room mocked up behind a curtain. This gives everything a certain magic feel, because I am effectively changing right in front of the fans! And there’s the tension of wondering whether I can get it done in time to make my musical cue.

“So, I’ll be relaxed and singing something like Never Never Land, then have to dash and change while the band carry on. I hope the audience find it interesting.”

Although Rundgren has so far performed the iconic 1973 album at four shows in America last December, the original idea was to do it solely in London.

“The suggestion was first made when I toured the UK in November 2008. The promoter told me that the record had become really popular with electronic artists and DJs. There was a real buzz about it. He felt that if I performed the whole album at a gig in London, and got some of these talents involved, then I could reach a younger audience.

“Then people in America got to hear about the idea and, not wanting to be left out, sorted out some dates at the end of last year. So the London one, instead of starting it all off, has come a lot later.”

Rundgren is remaining virtually faithful to the style and running order of the album, although there is one major shift.

“The song International Feel is now at the end of the set. Because it sits a lot better there. When the album came out, I had to split the music into two ‘acts’, really. Which were the two sides of the vinyl. So I had to make some arbitrary decisions. Now, I can visualise it as one continuous piece, which was the idea in the first place. So far, the reaction to this from fans has been fine – it hasn’t shocked them too much!”

Rundgren has admitted that he wanted to do the whole of this album when it first came out. What stopped him?

“Technology wasn’t up to it. I’d have had to get so many musicians involved to make it work, and that just wasn’t practical. Now, I can use samples if necessary. It all makes more economic sense.”

Right now, the plan is to do A Wizard, A True Star in London at the Hammersmith Apollo on February 6 (for tickets go here) and then in Amsterdam, at the Paradiso two nights later. But that’s not the end… only the end of the beginning.

“I will also take it out to other cities, where my popularity is still such that I know I can sell tickets. That’ll happen in the spring. So, this will carry on for a while.”

And there’s a DVD in the works, which Rundgren is currently putting together.

“We filmed all of the US dates, and right now I’m going through all of the footage on my laptop. The idea will be not only to put out a live DVD, but also a box set with all of those shows in their entirety. That’ll be one thing, I assume, only dedicated fans would want.

“What we did was video simulcast all of the gigs, and then specifically shoot one concert. So, we’ve multi-camera angles for it all. It means I’ve got so much to go through, but it’s worthwhile, and these days it’s so much easier to edit.”

Rundgren doubts that he will ever take a similar approach with any of his other albums, believing that none really lend themselves to such exposure.

“One thing with A Wizard, A True Star is that it’s nearly an hour long. It represents that period when I looked beyond the pop song, and started to invest in sounds and experimenting with what you could do with music. I’d had enough of writing songs about the same subject over and over again – the girl with whom I’d split up eight years earlier. So, it was time to move on.

“Why was it such a long record in an era when most were about 40 minutes in length? Because I lost track of how it was turning out, to be honest – which I regularly did! Fortunately, we managed to get away with it, even though there was some loss of frequencies at the bottom end on the vinyl format back then.

“The problem is that none of my other records are long enough to turn into self-contained shows. Hermit Of Mink Hollow (1978) has been mentioned. But how would that work? Just me on stage… as it was on the record.”

One final thing: Rundgren doesn’t want this to be viewed as a nostalgia trip and nothing more…

“No artist likes to be seen that way. I believe that I’m bringing something new and fresh to what I did in 1973. Come along and see for yourself.”

Todd Rundgren performs the British premiere of A Wizard, A True Star at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo in London on Saturday, February 6. Box office: 08700 603 777. Book online: http://www.seetickets.com/

Todd Rundgren will play the Hammersmith Apollo on February 6th, 2010. Tickets are on sale now and you can get your hands on them here.

Tickets for the 100 Club show, which will accommodate an audience of 400, go on sale Tuesday 7th April at 9am.  Tickets, priced at £20.00, will be available on a first come, first serve basis and can be ordered from www.seetickets.com and 08700 603 777.

The 100 Club has promoted live music on the same premises since 1942. Originally a restaurant called Mack’s, the venue has gone on to become one of the most historical concert venues in Europe.  The venue’s heritage is legendary and has seen performances from acts as diverse as the Sex Pistols, Muddy Waters, the Rolling Stones and the White Stripes.

In 1976 the 100 Club was host to the first ever Punk festival. Seen for the first time in London, on the 100 Club stage were the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Siouxsie & the Banshees the Buzzcocks the Vibrators and Subway Sect.

Kiss rhythm guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley has confirmed to the Clog that the band are seriously considering recording a new album. Rumours of a brand new Kiss release first surfaced last week on photographer Ross Halfin’s blog. Now Geoff Barton has taken it upon himself to grab the Classic Rock poker and agitate the embers of speculation (poetic, huh?!).
Barton recently talked to Stanley and asked him:
What does the future hold for Kiss?
It looks like we’ll be touring Europe as well as the States next year. You’ll be getting more of what you saw at the Download festival this past summer – the Kiss Alive! vibe amped up to the max. There might even be a new Kiss album at some point. I have been ambivalent to the idea in the past but I’m much more open to it now.
Why is that?
Well, I thought that I’d be content for Kiss to remain a heritage act, just playing our greatest hits – Detroit Rock City and all that. But the new Kiss line-up with Tommy Thayer (guitar) and Eric Singer (drums) is proving to be so good, so strong in spirit, it would interesting to see how we perform in the studio. I must stress that no recording time has been booked at this point. But it if we were to go into the studio, the intention would be to make a Kiss album in the style of our 1970s recordings. A classic Kiss album, unmistakably.
(Read more in the January issue of Classic Rock, on sale December 10.)

Blackmore’s Rainbow are planning to re-form… well, almost. Deep Purple website The Highway Star reports that Jürgen Blackmore, son of ex-Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, is forming a new band called Over The Rainbow. Besides Jürgen, the combo will feature ex-Rainbow members Joe Lynn Turner — vocals, Bobby Rondinelli — drums, Tony Carey — keyboards and Greg Smith — bass. Over The Rainbow have apparently lined up some dates in Russia for February 2009. Read more here.

Ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler pleaded no contest on Friday (November 14) to a heroin possession charge in the hopes of avoiding jail time by entering a treatment program, officials said. Adler, 43, who was fired from GN’R over drug problems in 1990, also hopes to reunite with his old bandmates, said his attorney, Barry Gerald Sands. “When he gets sober they’ll accept him into the band and then they’ll do a comeback album and a world tour, that’s the dream of Steven Adler,” Sands told Reuters news service. Sadly, the Clog suggests the former GN’R tub-thumper shouldn’t hold his breath. Adler appeared this year on the reality television show Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew during an earlier attempt to get off drugs.

The New York Dolls and Todd Rundgren are to get back together in the studio for the first time in 36 years. Rundgren will produce the Dolls’ new album at his studio on the island of Kauai. Production is scheduled to start in January 2009. Rundgren produced the Dolls’ self-titled debut album, which was released way back in 1973. “We’re really excited to be working with Todd again,” says Dolls frontman David Johansen. “We’re hoping to recapture the same magic on the forthcoming album.” The Dolls will follow the release of the new album with a world tour in 2009. Rundgren is currently touring Europe, promoting his new album Arena.

Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora has outlined the band’s future plans in an interview with Billboard.com: “We’ve been filming a documentary and are in the process of mixing a live DVD of our Lost Highway concert tour,” Sambora revealed. “Also, I think we’re looking at doing a greatest hits album next year. Jon and I are writing some new songs for it and to just load up for the next Bon Jovi record.” Sambora said he expects the DVD and best-of effort to be packaged together for release in autumn 2009. Read more here.

Paul McCartney has confirmed the existence of a 14-minute long, unreleased track from The Beatles. McCartney told BBC Radio 4 the track – called Carnival Of Light – was not released because the other Beatles thought it was too adventurous. The improvised track was recorded in 1967 for an electronic music festival. McCartney said he was fond of the track, which was inspired by experimental composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen: “I like it because it’s The Beatles free, going off piste.” Ringo Starr and John Lennon’s and George Harrison’s estates would have to agree before a release goes ahead.

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Ozzy, Slash and friends: the best table in the house.

Ron Wood presented the Outstanding Contribution award to Jeff Beck.

Todd Rundgren presented the Tommy Vance Inspiration award – which went to late Pink Floyd legend Syd Barrett – to Syd’s sister, Rosemary.

It’s that man again.

Wayne Kramer of The MC5 won the Metal Guru award. He’s pictured here (left) with Mani from Primal Scream.