Hi folks this is Simon and Brian if so de jerker here back to take a shot at what's known in the business as the difficult second podcast

Well rest easy friends because this episode of so de jerker on songwriting features an interview with none other than songwriter, singer, guitarist, producer, an all-round polymath, Todd Wrengren.

Bri, what can one say about Todd?

Well, Todd had a run of albums from 1970 to I think 1974, which included one of my personal

favorites, which is something anything, which is a double album and established Todd as not only an incredibly versatile songwriter and

prodigiously talented multi-instrumentalist but also as something of a studio

Wunderkind if you'll allow me a little German. I know a little German. Oh look he's

standing over there.

Todd famously wrote, played, sang, engineered and produced everything on three of the four sides of that

LP and he did it all at the tender age of 23.

That makes me ill.

Which is at once hugely inspiring and incredibly depressing.

The album also yielded a clutch of hit singles which are radio staples to this day including I saw the light it wouldn't have made any difference and hello it's me

He has been incredibly prolific as a solo artist you look at those albums like runsunt, A Wizard a True Star,

Todd, Hermit of Mink Hollow, you can just see the growth

and he continues to interpret other people's material as well in cover versions.

And we haven't even mentioned there's ventures into Prague Rock with with Utopia and of course there's numerous productions for other artists

some of which have been hugely successful probably the most successful of which was

Bat Out of Hell for Meat Loaf which is still one of the biggest selling albums of all time.

And of course, they were less commercially successful, but still critically well received projects like

ECC's Skylarking, which is also one of my personal favourite albums.

And he's also produced Badfinger and Grand... which is also one of my personal favourite albums.

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