So IвЂ™ve been doing more and more of that all the time, to the point that anywhere from eight to ten months of the year, IвЂ™m out playing somewhere. That your hit records, your charting singles, may stop coming, but if you want to continue to be a musician, then you have to continue to play live. I mean, there are still record labels, but that whole collapse that happened at the end of the вЂ90s and into the 2Ks made everyone conscious that the value of playing live doesnвЂ™t go away. This is reality in the post-record label world. IвЂ™ve made it no secret that building audience is a critical thing for me. And so I wonвЂ™t be dealing with that issue.ДЇifty years into your career, youвЂ™re touring much more frequently than you ever did. And itвЂ™s as much of a surprise to me as it is to them, you know, when they show up expecting certain a thing to happen and then it doesnвЂ™t happen, and they become somehow indignant about and say, вЂњIвЂ™ll never buy another ticket for his show again.вЂќ IвЂ™m making the assumption that eventually all those people will have come to that realization - or, they will have gotten too old to even care. Yeah, thereвЂ™s still some small slice of the audience who for some reason thinks the last record I made was вЂњSomething/Anything?вЂќ and that all IвЂ™ve done is work that record for the past 40 years or so, 40 or 50 years. RUNDGREN:В Well, weвЂ™re hoping to weed them out in the long run. Hardcore fans love the variety, but more fair-weather followers are not always prepared for what theyвЂ™ll get when they buy a ticket.

YouвЂ™ve had all-hits tours, no-hits/new-album tours, вЂњunpredictable eveningвЂќ tours, a Utopia tour and, now, this book-based tour. VARIETY: Every time youвЂ™ve toured in recent years, thereвЂ™s been a different format from one to the next. Rundgren spoke with VarietyВ in early December about вЂњThe Individualist,вЂќ the upcoming tour and the Hall of Fame nomination. (Dates for the tour, including shows May 9-10 at L.A.вЂ™s Wiltern, can be found here.)

Then the Kaiju rolls over and smiles at you and says it loves you and you tell yourself you can tame it.вЂќ)Д¬oming a few months after the book release will be what Rundgren is billing as a combined book/music tour, where he will play a two-night double-header for fans in each city and hit bookstores on the afternoons in-between. (вЂњOne morning you wake up and realize youвЂ™ve been sleeping with a Kaiju, a Godzilla-like creature that destroys things out of blundering ignorance with no particular goal in mind. (вЂњSomehow this naive klatsch of Canadians managed to reinvent themselves as LevonвЂ™s neighbors, misdefining the American South as a place where slavery was an anecdote.вЂќ) And former paramour Bebe Buell. Your life then revolves around peaВnut clusters.вЂќ) His first major engineering experience, with the Band. Maybe the problem is when you decide that all you want is peanut clusters and throw the rest of the box away. It had everything: war, sex, drugs, prog rock and disco, stacks of Marshalls and MaxвЂ™s Kansas City.вЂќ) Substance abuse.

(вЂњAny objective historian would have to admit that the вЂ70s kicked every other 20th century decadeвЂ™s ass.

Crotchwise, my pistil is suddenly pollinating at a previously unimagined rate.вЂќ) The decade that followed. (вЂњThe faux British style I had assiduously cultivated was paying off in spades in the hinterВlands. to have an effect on me and I think Patti saw itвЂ¦ I kind of treated my best friend like shit and didnвЂ™t have the balls or brains to see what my new lifestyle had done to me.вЂќ)ДЄlso: Rundgren as a loner kid with sudden access to 1960s promiscuity. (вЂњWas I jealous of Paul for snagging a girl who had just weeks before spent an inordinate amount of time with me? Actually I was envious of Linda who now got to hang with the Beatles.вЂќ) His on-and-off BFF-ship with Patti Smith. (вЂњAll of my previous experience as a troubled loner would not help me with the diplomatic and psychological nightmare of post-adolescent personality management.вЂњ) A flirtation with Linda Eastman. (вЂњWhen he asked for surrenderees to Christ, I took him up on it, thinking IвЂ™d become a member of some society of Theremin players in the process.вЂќ) His first hit band in the вЂ60s, the Nazz. Among the topics broached: How he attended an evangelical church as a child just because there was a Theremin player on the pastoral staff.

Bebe buell steven tyler