If crimes against taste merited the death penalty, then Todd Rundgren should have been dragged before a firing squad after producing the carnival monstrosity that was Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell album.
Rundgren's late 1970s stint as studio pall-bearer to the pantomime rocker extraordinaire overshadows a career strewn with eclectic, intermittently bonkers, pop nuggets. His 1971 double album, Something/ Anything?, is a swooning, spacerock classic, its schizophrenic follow-up, A Wizard, A True Star, a masterpiece of bubblegum psychedelia.
A virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, Philadelphiaborn Rundgren began his Daliesque romp through popular music's surreal backwoods with local fop-rockers the Nazz and a minor 1968 hit, Hello It's Me. When the Nazz broke up, he formed Runt, scoring a 1971 top 20 hit, We Gotta Get You a Woman.
Rundgren's early solo output adroitly married a singular knack for toothsome melody with a hallucinogenic-fuelled repudiation of pop's conventions. Yet commercial success eluded him. A move into prog rock with the sprawling collective, Utopia, marked a lurch towards self-parody. The group's penchant for extended jazz workouts and bombastic stage sets (pyramids were a favourite backdrop) plumbed Spinal Tapesque depths of unintentional hilarity.
In tandem with Utopia's descent into stadium dinosaur caricature, Rundgren carved out a patchy production career. Early collaborations with the New York Dolls and the Tubes led to an extended stretch as straightman to Meat Loaf's bloated jester. By the early 1980s, Rundgren's credibility had dissipated entirely. Session work with the Pursuit of Happiness and the Psychedelic Furs followed but his profile steadily dimmed.
Critical and popular derision never fazed him. A free-fall towards cult obscurity would have terrified most musicians. Rundgren regarded his waning appeal as an opportunity to indulge frustrated experimentalist yearnings. Whether pioneering pop video, issuing baffling concept records or pre-empting the rise of Napster and the trading of music files over the Internet (he releases albums exclusively on the Web), Rundgren remains a restless innovator. Here's hoping he quits returning Meat Loaf's calls.