Rubber-souled Revolver: Todd Rundgren and company celebrate Beatles tunes and their own hits

Jun. 16—It's tough to top Todd Rundgren when it comes to Beatles connections.

The singer-songwriter has enjoyed a long association with the Fab Four, most notably as a member of Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band.

Rundgren comes to Tupelo Music Hall in Derry tonight with It Was Fifty Years Ago Today, a Beatles tribute band that also features Christopher Cross, Denny Laine (The Moody Blues, Wings), Jason Scheff (Chicago) and Joey Molland (Badfinger).

Each member will be performing their own hits as well as choice cuts from "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver," the back-to-back albums that featured some of the Beatles' most compelling work including "In My Life," Drive My Car" and "Girl" from the former and "Eleanor Rigby, "Taxman" and "Got to Get You into My Life" from the latter.

Rundgren first performed with Ringo in 1993 and most recently in 2016, when the All-Starr tour visited the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion in Gilford.

"There's a lot of similarities actually because we don't just simply play the Beatles material. We play our songs as well. A Ringo show takes the same kind of format," Rundgren said. "But Ringo shows normally focus mostly on Ringo material. As charming as it is, it's not the whole of the Beatles."

Rundgren credits Starr for creating the all-star band concept that Fifty Years Ago borrowed.

Picking the best

Previous tours have focused on the Beatles' most popular albums: "Abbey Road," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and, most recently, "The Beatles" (better known as "The White Album").

"After that I said, 'Instead of picking an album to do, let's do the Beatles' best music instead of some of their most mediocre music, you know, just because it's on this record,'" Rundgren said.

That meant going backward in the band's history.

"It wasn't as much about the albums, about 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver,' as the period in the Beatles' writing history," Rundgren said. "They were at a certain point where up to that it was 'She loves you, yeah yeah, yeah," and the music started to get a little more adventurous."

With "Revolver," the Beatles started experimenting in the studio, such as using backward recording techniques for the psychedelic "Tomorrow Never Knows."

"We think it's going to be more fun for us because we're dealing with the Beatles at their most creative," said Rundgren, who also returns to Tupelo on July 17 for a show that will focus on his solo work.

With his band Utopia, Rundgren created a playful tribute to the Fab Four in 1980 with "Deface the Music," an album-length pastiche of the Beatles' early and mid periods, kicked off by the "I Just Want to Touch You," a take on the teen heartthrob years.

"Sometimes we'd mash up two songs into one song. That was a lot of fun," Rundgren said. "It kind of highlighted the fact that the Beatles made these templates for everybody else. They invented and discarded genres."

Paul McCartney created one with "Eleanor Rigby."

"Before that there was nothing called classical rock, where you would have a string quartet accompanying what might be a pop song in terms of its form but doesn't have a typical pop-song melody," Rundgren said.

Tapped by George

Rundgen's connection to the Beatles began a half-century ago when George Harrison ran out of time to salvage recording sessions for Badfinger, a band signed to the Beatles' Apple label.

Harrison, who was busy planning a benefit concert for Bangladesh, recruited Rundgren to finish the job.

"That's when they called me, mostly because I had at that point gotten something of a reputation as a troubleshooter and also as — I don't want to call it slave driver — but someone who did not waste time in the studio, who would make sure something got done," Rundgren said.

The resulting 1971 release, "Straight Up," was Badfinger's most successful album, thanks to the hits "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue," both slices of Beatles-flavored pop.

Joey Molland, the only surviving member of Badfinger's original lineup, had not worked with Rundgren since the early '70s before they ended up becoming bandmates for the last Fifty Years Ago tour.

Molland will be subbing for the late Badfinger leader Pete Ham as he reprises some of the band's hits and the band members take turns in the spotlight.

Rundgren's cache of hits include "Hello it's Me," " I Saw the Light," "Bang on the Drum" and "A Dream Goes on Forever." Like the Beatles, he also helped usher in a new genre with "Couldn't I Just Tell You," a "power pop" classic.

Behind the boards

As a producer, Rundgren has helmed albums by Grand Funk Railroad, Patti Smith Group, the Psychedelic Furs, the Band, XTC, and most famously, Meat Loaf, the recently departed singer whose "Bat of Out of Hell" debut is one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.

Rundgren fronted production money for the album when Meat Loaf and songwriter Jim Steinman couldn't secure record company interest. He remembers shopping the finished album for six months before he could find a label willing to take a chance on it.

Except for the vocals, most of the performances on future hits like "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" were recorded live.

"We tried to make it as efficient a project as possible, given the grandiose designs behind it," Rundgren said. "We put the band together, and we rehearsed for about 10 days so we could do it all live in the studio because a lot of the material involved tempo changes and things like that. It wasn't a thing where you could piece it together with a bunch of overdubs."

Rundgren's latest release is "Godiva Girl," a funky collaboration with the Roots from his forthcoming album, "Space Force." Like 2017's "White Night" the album features Rundgren working with multiple guests, including Sparks, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen, Crowded House leader Neil Finn and Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo.

But there's a twist. Rundgren asked his collaborators to clean out their closets.

"'Space Force' is principally other people's old songs and demos that they never finished. And I said, 'Give them to me and I can figure out how we can turn them into real records.'"

mcote@unionleader.com

Mike Cote is senior editor for news and business. Contact him at mcote@unionleader.com or 206-7724.