Mutually Exclusive Terms? How About: Pop Heavyweights?

You can’t talk about seventies pop without Todd Rundgren and Daryl Hall being mentioned. Rundgren made it to #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 with I Saw the Light in 1972. He played all the instruments and sang all the parts on the original recording. That was still something of a novelty back then, and a lot of musicians mimicked his approach after that, and some hired him to produce their records because of it. The first song he ever wrote, Hello It’s Me, made it to #6 on the pop charts as a re-recording in 1973. It was still in the “necking under the bleachers” playlist when I went to high school a while after that. It’s still in regular airplay on geezerrock stations, although it’s not very rock, when you get right down to it. Many following generations only know him from his Bang the Drum All Day song, which gets played in arenas while guys are lacing their skates or waiting around while umpires argue about first downs and such.

Rundgren had a hell of a run as a record producer. He owned the seventies and early eighties with acts like Badfinger, Grand Funk, Meat Loaf, and XTC.

Daryl Hall (and Oates) had a bunch of hits in the seventies, but everyone mostly remembers the eighties output. In a way, he’s a weird, way more talented, way more successful, way older version of me. He was a musician, an early adopter of the internet, had Lyme Disease, and renovated a house in Maine, and then sold it. We’re almost tainted blood brothers who never met.

Both these guys weren’t rock screamers. Rock music lets you get by when you’re younger by shouting. Most people blow their voices out doing it, and end up sounding like Bob Dylan does now, or a frog croaking in a pond. Guys that learned how to actually sing before they got famous can last well into their dotage, and still hit the notes. Even if they don’t appear to be able to afford shoes.