Todd Rundgren, who is best known for his 1972 smash hit “Hello It’s Me,” says it’s goodbye to you if you go to one of his concerts and support Trump.
The aging rocker is putting out the word that Trump supporters are not particularly welcome at his concerts because “they don’t belong with the rest of us.”
In a recent interview with Variety, Rundgren noted that because of his outspoken nature, Trump supporters wouldn’t have a good time, anyway. To be fair, based on the quality of Rundgren’s music these days, they’re probably not the only ones.
“If I had the power, I’d say: If you’re a Trump supporter, don’t come to my show, because you won’t have a good time,” Rundgren told Variety. “And also, I don’t understand your frickin’ values. Because I’m not singing about that. If you don’t understand that basic thing, you’re just fooling yourself. I guarantee that in this show, if you’re a Trump supporter, you will likely be offended. Let the buyer beware! I mean, if you can’t take a joke, or you can’t admit that you’ve made a mistake, you don’t belong with the rest of us.”
That’s fine. As a Trump supporter, I appreciate his honesty — not that I ever had an inclination to see him in concert myself. But can you imagine the caterwauling that would have ensued had a country music star said during the Obama years, “if you are an Obama supporter, you don’t belong with the rest of us”?
Rundgren collaborated with “a wide variety of peers and famous fans” for a new album, White Knight. The anti-Trump single, “Man in the Tin Foil Hat,” written and recorded with fellow anti-Trumper Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, reportedly “tapped into the alienation both artists were feeling after the election last November.”
“I’ve known Donald since he spent some time living out at Kauai, where I still live, and he just happened to be on vacation on the island in January. We went out to dinner, and I thought, Well, geez, why don’t I just spring it on him?” recalled Rundgren. “The song was primarily driven by our common frustration with what happened in the recent election. It was still pretty fresh, and we were still pretty mad about it, so it happened pretty organically.”
In the video below, Rundgren performs the bizarre “Man in the Tin Foil Hat” in concert while a giant screen flashes anti-Trump, anti-GOP images in the background. The video shows a news anchor named “Bill O’Rangutan” wearing a gorilla mask reporting the news while various members of the Trump administration — including Trump himself wearing a tinfoil hat — appear on the screen.
Rundgren is promising (threatening?) to go on tour with his politicized rock show on a tireless schedule.
“For the foreseeable future, I’m going to be every place that I can get to,” vowed Rundgren. “I’ll be onstage at Coachella with the Lemon Twigs! I will go on tour with Yes, even though it’s not my show and I have to make compromises in my set to get in front of a larger audience. All that stuff would have bothered me hugely in the past, but I realized, if you’re all in, you’re all in. And at this point, I’m all in.”
And Trump supporters are all out.
Then again, anyone with decent taste in music wouldn’t “have a good time” at a Todd Rundgren concert if the above video is any indication.
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