Todd Rundgren released the album 'Liars' in 2004 to great critical acclaim.
He toured the album in 2004, with his first trip to the UK in 10 years and
then, in 2005, he teamed up with Joe Jackson and classical quartet Ethel for
a further UK tour.
Rundgren releases his latest album 'Arena' via
Cooking Vinyl, in September 2008, with a UK/Europe tour in
November.
He describes the album as a return
to an "old-school guitar-rock record".
"About the same time as
Joe Jackson and I were touring the idea came up for the
reformed Cars. We invested six to eight months trying to
make that happen.
About three weeks into the tour, Elliot the lead guitar
player, broke his collar bone and everything came to a halt.
I was staring at the summer with nothing to do. I thought,
what the hell, I should put together something and go out
and play somewhere.
My guitarist
Jesse Gress had been playing with the Tony Levin band and he
said, "Tony's not doing anything so let's all go out and do
something"...and we slapped together a 10 day tour across
Canada and it was just a guitar quartet. Audiences ate it
up, so we continued to tour like that.
I suddenly
realised that this was a role that I'd neglected for a long
time. I think the fans had missed this kind of presentation
and their response was so consistently positive that I said
I couldn't do a record that doesn't sound like what I'm already
doing."
