TODD SINGS BURT? WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, RUNDGREN?
This guy’s in love with you: Todd Rundgren (left) shows his appreciation for (right) Burt Bacharach’s music.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo, Rex Rundgren, Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
S IXTY YEARS after Todd Rundgren first fell for Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By, he’ll be singing that classic song and more, as the featured vocalist of What The World Needs Now: The Burt Bacharach Songbook Live In Concert, on tour through the US in March and April.
For the 76-year-old Wizard, True Star, it’s a way to acknowledge what he calls the “profound effect” of Bacharach’s songwriting on his own music. You can hear it across his discography, from I Saw The Light to Can We Still Be Friends to Parallel Lines. “It’s in those major and minor seventh chords,” Rundgren tells MOJO. “The unusual structures, the odd time signatures. The way Burt would add an extra bar, change modalities throughout a song, sometimes even adding a Middle Eastern-sounding motif, before returning to those comforting major sevenths. I learned a lot from all of that.”