02/06/01
After reading the book myself, I felt a lot of connections with Mark David Chapman's thoughts about TR. Kind of scary! One thing I find true among all TR fans is the ability to get truly excited about the music, the words, the creativity and just stand in awe. There are many references to Todd in this book, with this particular chapter devoted to one of Mark David Chapman's obsessions. An interesting read, no doubt. Click the bookcover at the top of this page to purchase a copy through AMAZON.COM
02/13/01
In many ways, I feel as MDC did, that few others 'get' this thing that's so important to me. When I tell others about TR's music, and the philosophies that I've been exposed to through TR's lyrics, the glazed expressions that stare back at me depress me so. However, TR's music never depresses me. It's always an up for me, and I feel that my life and my self are better because of it. I don't believe that Todd is Godd, it's just that I wish that he were. . .
02/14/01
It's sad to read that MDC was a Todd fan and did this to Lennon. Todd's music is, at times spiritual and wonderful; nothing in Todd's music is related to hurting others, only loving....
02/16/01
I read about this stuff when it happened and have a few points although not circumstancial which may stir up some reactions:
1) When Deface the Music was released wasn't Lennon dead by then?
2) Chapman according to the British Press was wearing a Hermit of Mink Hollow T-shirt when he shot Lennon.
3) Check out a cross reference on the Todd Rundgren connnection website as there is a letter from Lennon to our Todd explaining to him how much he thought of him...
At the end, Chapman wasn't in control. I am not here to judge, only to pass on what I read and heard at the time which can be cross-referenced with "Melody Maker" in the U.K.
02/17/01
A lot of people who are into Todd probably foster the same feelings as MDC; Todd's music can move you in so many different ways ; it's unfortunate it moved an obviously disturbed MDC to the point of murder.
03/01/01
I wonder how many other people who are followers and fans of Todd feel as strongly about his music as Chapman did (does)? Obviously the main difference between the fans and the "fan"atics, is the mental stability of the former, and the sad disillusionment of the latter!
03/01/01
They better never let that evil maniac out of prison!
03/10/01
I find Chapman's fascination with Todd just incredibly sorrowful. And I'm speaking as both a long time Todd fan and a Beatles fan. I think it is a horrific twist of fate that Todd Rundgren should be associated with the likes of Chapman. Chapman's descriptions of his devotion toTodd are haunting because I'm guessing they're not unlike those of true Todd fans who have followed his career and love his music. But obviously that's where Chapman's similarity to any true fan of Todd Rundgren ends. Chapman is a sick individual and a murderer. And I can only hope that people who read this book who haven't previously heard of Todd Rundgren will understand that he is an authentic and unique artist. An artist of great but perhaps underappreciated accomplishment. And that Chapman's devotion to Todd and John Lennon is that of a sick and twisted mind.
03/10/01
In answer to the post from 2/16/01: Deface the Music was released previous to Lennon's murder. Also, none of the songs were written by Todd. The album was a collaboration with his band Utopia. Todd is not given credit individually for writing any song the album.
03/10/01
To 2/16/01 again: Lennon's letter to Todd was obviously derogatory and with good reason perhaps. Todd was well known to spout off in the rock press back then. But in reality he was
greatly inspired by the Beatles, and I think he would tell you that to this day. His first successful band The Nazz tried to emulate the Sgt. Pepper era Beatles. I'll guess that if Todd were asked about his feelings about the Beatles and John Lennon today, he'd most likely respond that he loves Lennon and the Beatles. In the early 90's he was on tour with Ringo's All-Star Band. By all accounts it was a great honor and thrill for him.
03/14/01
In reference to the 02/16/01 post, The above book did not reference MDC wearing a Hermit of Mink Hollow shirt on the day Lennon was shot...
04/08/01
I have often heard that Chapman visited the Bearsville offices in upstate NY the week before the Lennon shooting, looking for Rundgren. Todd was out of town at the time. Does the book mention this?
04/10/01
In reference to the 04/08/01 post, No the book does not mention MDC going to Bearsville or looking for Todd...
05/29/01
Isn't it interesting now that Todd is going out on the road for the "A Walk Down Abbey Road: A Tribute to the Beatles" tour. He is certainly acknowledging once and for all that he is first and foremost a musical product of the Beatles influence. So although he was critical of Lennon PERSONALLY, he had mostly praise for Lennon as a musician. Still, a twisted bit of irony.
06/03/01
As a mental health specialist, I understand the makings of obsession, delusion, and compulsion to act. MDC was very ill at the time of this Murder. He also was very irresponsible. This Illness
grows over time, and opportunities to intervene with oneself were missed.It is unfortunate that Todd Rundgren has had to be even tangentially connected to this Horrible act. All of us who Love Todd know that his work has been a gift to our planet. We will not allow this to discolor our affection in any way.
08/01/01
This is TOO WEIRD!!!! I am freaked out now.
08/07/01
You mention in your book that"Rock and Roll Pussy" was a song on the album,"Deface the Music". This is wrong. "Rock and Roll Pussy" is on the album,"A Wizard, A True Star", which came out in 1973. Please get your facts correct before releasing your book.
08/13/01
Dear 8/7 poster,The author merely said "with Deface the Music and with a tune titled "Rock and Roll Pussy." You connected the two. Please read carefully and collect your thoughts before dispensing them to the world.
08/16/01
This summer, Todd and an extraordinary group of fellow artists toured the US with the Trip Down Abbey Road salute to the Beatles. While I read the piece about MDC, I had a strong flashback of Todd singing and playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Revolution."During those moments, Todd's love and admiration for John Lennon was transcendant. Somehow, I think that the Abbey Road tribute was Todd's own response to this awful twist of fate.
08/22/01
As a longtime Beatles fan who did not get into TR until the late 80's (lack of awareness, but TR is now #2 on the all time fave list behind the fabs), I found it creepy to learn of MDC's feelings for TR. Has TR ever commented on MDC or does anybody know if TR ever responded to Lennon's letter or if he ever spoke to John before his death? BTW, anybody who saw TR on the Abbey Road tour or the power trio tour has no doubt seen him playing the reissued John Lennon Rickenbacker guitar complete with JL doodle of himself.
10/16/01
And of course on Todd's CD where he pays tribute to those musicians who most influenced him (Faithful), Todd does cover versions of two Beatle toons (Rain, Strawberry Fields Forever).
12/08/01
"Sometimes I don't know what to feel"contains uplifting phrases such as:Something makes me stay on my feet Don't you dare admit to defeat If I tell myself it's alright I can comfort myself through the night and watch another day dawn Everything will be cool!. Why can't Assholes like Chapman obsess over the likes of Nsync or Limp Bisquit?
12/09/01
Chapman lost touch with reality and Todd's creations became intertwined in his distorted perception of the world. He couldn't separate fancy from flat ground. He road musical notes to his horrible act. He was off the ledge, and his falling body collided with the spirit of a
genius. Locked in a square is his perfect lair.
08/19/02
What is so strange or ironic about Rundgren openly criticizing John Lennon to a "trade rag"? In retrospect, it's obvious that Rundgren had a lot of admiration for Lennon and the Beatles. Isn't it also apparent that Rundgren was a tremendously talented artist in his own right? Who better to
criticize an "icon" than someone who respected Lennon for what he was rather than what hehad
become? Who better to announce that the emporer had no clothes, so to speak? Rundgren's criticisms were aimed more at Lennon's lifestyle, not his musical direction. The fact that Chapman seized on Todd Rungren's music was more due to the niche appeal he represents to some of his fans, myself included. Yes Chapman killed John Lennon, but didn't a song called "Helter Skelter" inspire several other murders? Lets not get too creeped out about Chapman's fanatic behavior toward Rundgren. With a few more twists in the roads of his mind, Chapman could have just as easily targeted Todd Rundgren.
10/30/02
Makes a good case for never releasing this guy from incarceration. Would Rundgren be next on the list? Has anyone ever sent this to the NYS Parole Board? Isn't ironic that Todd now resides in Hawaii where this Chapman nut lived once too?
11/27/02
YIKES! I hope they never let that creep out!
12/12/02
Even though this waco was a true TRfan I don't blame the artist or the music I never even knew this story
12/18/02
Why glorify someone like MDC? And why should it be any surprise if a spiritual beacon such as John Lennon or Todd Rundgren should attract a drowning man? Was he waving or drowning?
Examining the minutiae of MDC's life may possibly even inadvertantly make more of the same kind of tragedies. After all, if you can't be the person you idolize, you can always off your hero
publicly and someone will write a book about you! Sorry! We all need to know how Holden - I mean Mark - picked his nose that day, don't we? We as a society want to see a 15 minute segment on 60 Minutes with Harry Reasoner narrating or something. You-know-who deserves only quiet ignominy and perhaps pity for the crime he has committed, not fame. Only one man's
opinion, although I must admit, I had no idea Chapman was a Rundgren fan, which is interesting but...I find it hard to understand how Todd Rundgren's music could ever be thought of as depressing anyway, so why should I care to know about one lone nut who found it to be so or what his motivation was for the horrific crime he committed? Ashes already...haul it away.
12/21/02
Didn't think you'd print my comments. I guess I have a different axe to grind than you eh?
(NOTE FROM WEBMISTRESS: I assume this message came from the 12/18/02 respondant who didn't get his/her comments posted immediately. I do add ALL comments received, but add them at my leisure.
12/24/02
The odd thing was , that after having read these passages after the book came out, I felt more
empathy towards Chapman and that in his love of the Rundgren music, he was a kindred
spirit. I learned years ago not to show people the passages from the book ie:"this is someone who feels like I do about this music" as people will give pretty odd looks if you draw parallels between yourself and a convicted killer. All in all, a very sad case.
01/24/03
Man thats some spooky shit,it's weird to listen to this about somebody who loved Todd's music almost to the same degree as myself,but obviously had twisted the real hidden meanings to meet the misguided fantasies of his own sucluded little world...
CHAPTER 14: GOD AND TODD
...To fill the void in his life created by the cooling of his fervid Christianity, Chapman turned to the rock 'n' roll of John Lennon's onetime musical nemesis, Todd Rundgren.
"The lyrics and the music provided everything I needed to express my identity," Chapman recalled. "I didn't need anything else. I was in my own private world with Todd Rundgren. You know, I'm a feeling, sensitive, poetic type person and I need my emotions expressed in poetry and in harmony and not in babble. Rundgren provided the stage for my psyche to do that, even if it was just to an unknown audience, he provided that for me."
"There's no getting around the fact that first the Beatles and then Todd Rundgren had a tremendous impact on me."
Chapman's wife, Gloria, also recalled her husband's fascination with Rundgren:
"The musical artist that had the greatest influence on Mark wasn't John Lennon. It was Todd Rundgren," she said. "Mark often told me that he believed Rundgren was a true musical genius. Most people haven't heard of Rundgren and Mark enjoyed having the distinction of not only knowing about Rundgren, but being a fan almost from the beginning of his career. He has had at least two complete Rundgren collections at separate times, but he sold or gave away all of them.
"After we were married, he bought a few Rundgren albums but didn't keep them for long. He got very depressed listening to the music. He said it depressed him to hear music that good. He hears things in music that indicate to me that he has an extraordinary ear for music. He picks up on small things, obscure things. Mark amazed me in that way. Several times he said that he would never listen to another Rundgren album again because of the way it would depress him, but sooner or later he'd buy one and keep it for awhile.
"On his first trip to New York, he bought a cassette player and several Rundgren tapes. One of the tapes is called Deface the Music, which consists of songs that sound like Beatles songs. Rundgren was clever enough to write and play songs that differ in lyrics from the Beatles, but have the same favor. Mark listened to this tape most of all."
Rundgren also provided Chapman with a convenient, subconscious outlet for the rage that continued to burn within him over Lennon's blasphemy of fundamentalist Christian values.
In the early seventies, Lennon and Rundgren became engaged in a war of words via comments to the press and scathing letters about each other that were published in Melody Maker magazine. Lennon referred to Rundgren as "Todd Runtgreen" and Rundgren accused the ex-Beatle of "shouting about revolution and acting like a fool." Rundgren appeared to have the last word with his 1980 album of mock-Beatle ballads, Deface the Music, and with a tune titled "Rock and Roll Pussy".
In "Rock and Roll Pussy" Rundgren derided Lennon's failure to join the "revolution" to which he and Ono had paid lip service, alluding to the ex-Beatle's penchant for languishing stoned in bed before a flickering TV screen. Deface the Music, released several months prior to Lennon's death, is a satirization of Beatles classics such as "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which becomes "I Just Want to Touch You." Many of the distinctive musical riffs and sound effects from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper sound track punctuate Rundren's parody. The album culminates with "Everybody Else Is Wrong," an ingenious twisting of the music and words from Lennon's "Across the Universe" and "I am the Walrus."
After the Lennon killing, while psychologists at Bellevue Hospital asked Chapman what he most often would daydream about, he said, "Todd Rundgren's music. I guess Holden Caulfield."
Chapman says that he doesn't recall being aware of the battle between Rundgren and Lennon until several years after he became a Rundgren zealot. After seeing Rundgren perform with his group, Utopia, at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, the lapsed Christian recalls that he immersed himself in the music with the same intensity that he had approached Christianity.
McManus also recalls that, during Chapman's Rundgren phase, he could talk of little else but the musician.
"Mark totally worshipped Todd Rundgren." McManus said. "He knew every word to every song. He even knew the parts, when the overdub and there's two voice lines going on at once, he could tell you every word of the lines you couldn't hear. It was incredible.
"After he had moved to Hawaii, he sent me an album of Todd's, one of the earlier albums that was out of print. That was the last thing I ever heard from Mark."
After nearly twelve years on an isolated cell block at Attica prison, Mark David Chapman still spoke with an impassioned familiarity and depth of Rundgren's music.
"I left The Ballad of Todd Rundgren in the hotel room in New York City" on the day of the Lennon killing, he recalled. "I left it as a statement, I guess.
"Right between the chambers of your heart is how Rundgren's music is to me. I cannot overestimate the depth of what his music meant to me. I never really got into the fan-club thing. I never thought about meeting Rundgren, being Rundgren, or getting Rundgren's autograph" I went to his concerts. I bought his albums. I did it the real way, the pure way. I was into the music and I can't tell you the depth of what his music meant to me.
"To say that it defined my life sounds so shallow. It was the sound track to my life. More than that, it became my life. Those notes and those harmonies. I can't describe what it meant, it was so poignant.
"I was always trying to get people to listen to him. I remember a time when my friend Bill and Jessica, probably before Jessica was my girlfriend, came to my apartment. I had a nice Sony stereo Dana had sold me and I put on Todd. I said, 'Listen to the feeling! Listen to the emotion he's expressing!' But they couldn't really get into it. It seemed like no one I knew could ever get into the music of Rundgren and appreciate it the way I did. It mirrored everything. It became my emotions. It didn't just mirror them, it became my emotions. It became my words.
"His music gave me not just an emotional release or an enjoyment in high times --- it gave me a definition for my life. I looked at it not even to define what was around me. I looked at it --- that it was my --- that it was the rage I could never express.
" 'Sometimes I Don't Know What to Feel': This song truly expresses the emotions of a person who is empty inside, who really doesn't know what to feel because maybe he's overwhelmed by too much feeling...
"Remember, just before I shot John Lennon I wanted to tune out the world and go into a fetal position.
"The emotions in his music were the emotions I could never express. It was a great outlet to me to be able to have this kind of music. I'm saying it was so important to me that it was unnatural. It was a spiritual thing. It was that meaningful.
"Those were the words I could never say. Those were the feelings that I had to bury inside myself, that I could never let out for fear that they would be just so horrendous. Those feelings that, when they finally did come out, it was out of the barrel of a gun."
