TODD RUNDGREN
Todd Rundgren, who performs at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair on Dec. 8, uses humor rather than anger on his anti-Trump protest song “Tin Foil Hat,” which he included on his May album, White Knight.
A laid-back, slyly funny collaboration with Donald Fagen of Steely Dan (who co-wrote it and sings the lead vocal), the song mocks the man who “puts the Pluto in plutocrat” and “hasn’t got the time for losers/Unless they do as he commands/He’s writing checks to his accusers/With those tiny little hands.”
He’s “gonna drain the swamp tonight/And fill it up with alternative facts,” sings Fagen. “It’s gonna be great, tremendous, amazing and all that.”
“A lot of people seem to like that song, probably for the same reason that Donald and I did it, which was, it was better than doing nothing,” Rundgren said in an interview with DJ Easy Wind on homegrownradionj.com (to hear the complete interview, listen below).
“We were at dinner in Kauai (in Hawaii), which is where I live. Donald was out for a vacation, and I was wrapping (White Knight) up, and I had an orphan track that I sent to him and said, ‘If you get any ideas, maybe we could do something. I’m about to finish this record.’ And a day or two later, he started sending me a bunch of titles. Some of which were ridiculous, and I couldn’t figure out what they meant. One of them was ‘Tin Foil Hat.’ And we kind of knew what we had to do, at that point.
“And it made us feel better. We were doing more than simply complaining. We were turning our complaints into something.”
Rundgren performs at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. Visit wellmonttheater.com.
Here is the homegrownradionj.com interview:
