Category Archives: Jude and Megan

Music Sundays | Top 100 Albums | Todd Rundgren’s Auspicious 1972 Début

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Dating back to the late 1960s, through until today, I have often found employment as a music critic.

One of the great delights of my young life was to walk onto the property of Warner Bros. or Capitol Records, and be taken into the warehouse in behind the offices, leaving the premises with one hundred or more new albums, all ready to return to the home Cathy and I shared at Simon Fraser University.

From those days til today, my love for music, for discovering new music has known no bounds, as will remain the case through the end of my days.

Of course, I was very lucky — as were all members of the boom generation — to grow up in the era of The Beatles, and the rush of new music coming out of the UK, and down south out of Los Angeles. These were halcyon days of discovery, more often than not enhanced by the intake of cannabis (there is hardly any greater joy than listening to music stoned).

One of my early discoveries was Todd Rundgren, whose music career began in 1967 at the age of 19 with the Philadephia-based garage rock band, Nazz.

Over the next four years, Nazz released three albums, all to little acclaim, prompting Rundgren to leave the group, move to New York, and educate himself in the fine arts of audio engineering and production.

Upon arriving in New York, Rundgren was soon signed by Ampex Records, where he began work producing for various rock groups of the day.

1972 proved to be a critically important year for Todd Rundgren.

After signing with Bearsville Records — a recording studio started in 1969 by legendary music impresario Albert Grossman, manager of Bob Dylan, The Band, and Janis Joplin — Rundgren’s musical career took off into the stratosphere.

A few years back, a friend asked me, “So, what kind of music do you like?”

Today’s post constitutes one of a series of columns I’ve been writing on the Top 100 début albums of the past 75 years, music that has both changed and informed my life, my love of almost all musical genres also knowing no bounds.

I love life. I love music.

Today’s Music Sunday column tracks the early work of Todd Rundgren, and his multi-platinum solo, self-produced début album, Something/Anything?

Early in 1972, soon after signing on with Albert Grossman, one Friday afternoon early in the year, Todd Rundgren was in the Bearsville Studio offices for a pre-production meeting for his upcoming album the studio intended to record. All went well at the meeting, and at the 5 o’ clock hour, as the cleaning crew arrived, Grossman prepared to close the studio for the weekend.

Rundgren said, “I’ll have the cleaners let me out. I’m heading to the washroom.” Everyone bid their adieu, going home to their families.

But not Todd Rundgren. Instead, Rundgren hid out in a closet and slept for four hours, readying himself for the marathon production weekend ahead.

The cleaners left shortly before 9pm, when a sleepy Todd Rundgren emerged from his closet home. What occurred over the next fifty-seven and one half hours is part of rock and roll history.

From 9pm on that Friday night, until 6:30am Monday morning, Todd Rundgren wrote, produced, mixed, sang and played guitars, keyboards and all other instruments to produce the groundbreaking multi-platinum, multi-Grammy award winning hit machine, Something/Anything?

Every voice is Rundgren’s, every instrument played by the nascent songwriter-singer-producer, Rundgren over the weekend innovating on the recently acquired 8-track production studio equipment in ways previously unheard of and unimagined, writing a new chapter in the ongoing history of rock ‘n roll.

Twenty-five songs on a two disc album, recorded at a rate of under one fully produced song every three hours. When Bearsville Studio staff and executives arrived at their offices on Monday morning, they found Rundgren passed out, a master tape, track list and album cover art work on the console.

Over the next three weeks, working with Rundgren, studio engineers fine-tuned the 25 songs, the double Something/Anything? album released to critical acclaim in April 1972, out-selling every other album that year.

Something/Anything? spawned a half dozen chart topping hits, including I Saw the Light, and a remake of the Nazz near-hit Hello It’s Me, which shot to No. 5 in the week it was released. As a reminder: both songs featured Todd Rundgren producing, as well as on all vocals and instruments.

It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference was the third smash hit off Something / Anything? to top the Billboard charts in the early autumn of that year.

A dozen years later my children and I lived together at SFU with a woman, a younger doppelgänger for my now ex-wife, dubbed by my friends, and referred to by my children as Cathy 2 — as my friends said, “the sane Cathy,” and so she was.

One day when I was off teaching class, Cathy 2 put on the Rundgren album.

When I arrived home to our two-bedroom apartment at Louis Riel House, Cathy 2 greeted me, smothering me in kisses, excitedly exclaiming …

“Raymond, Raymond, I’ve spent the entire afternoon listening to Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? It’s gorgeous, it’s groundbreaking, I’ve never heard anything like it. I think I’m in love with Todd Rundgren!”

And so she was, and so should we all be.

On a closing note, and to provide a bit more background on Todd Rundgren.

In 1972, Rundgren began a relationship with model Bebe Buell. During a break in their relationship, Buell had a brief relationship with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

On July 1, 1977, Buell gave birth to Liv Tyler, the future model and actress.


Todd Rundgren raised actress Liv Tyler as his daughter for the first 18 years of her life. Even when she became aware that Steven Tyler was her father, she maintained Rundgren as one of her two fathers.

To protect the child from Tyler’s drug addiction, Buell claimed that Todd Rundgren was the biological father, and named the child Liv Rundgren, Todd Rundgren raising her as his daughter.

At age fifteen, Liv learned that Steven Tyler was her biological father.

Even so, Liv Tyler still calls Todd Rundgren her father, and still maintains a very close relationship with the now 76-year-old musician.

Stories of a Life | Redux | The Ties That Bind Daughters and Fathers

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Fathers and daughters

When Megan Jessica Tomlin was born on a Saturday night, March 26th, 1977, at Burnaby General Hospital at 10:26pm, given that she was a breech birth, the hospital room was filled with a harried collection of nurses and doctors and an anesthesiologist who’d been called to assist with the birth.

As a medicated Cathy lay peacefully, stock still on her white-sheeted hospital bed — given that she was infused with anaesthetic drugs to aid in the birth, to keep her sedated for what turned out to be her second, very difficult birth — upon delivery, a nurse gathered our new daughter, Megan, and brought her over to me, as I stood to Cathy’s left, just behind where her head lay, and handed my hushed newborn daughter into my arms.

For the 10 minutes that followed, a seeming lifetime of remembrance and love, Megan her eyes all blue peered directly into my eyes and deep into my soul, and for those few brief moments I into hers, as my daughter imprinted on me / bonded with me as the father who would become in her early years, and in succeeding years through to her late teens, the single most transformative person in her life, a father she trusted & loved with all her generous heart.

In the weeks that followed Megan’s birth, the wheels began to fall off the bus that was my marriage to Cathy, as Cathy seemed to lose herself, quitting her job at the Ministry of Human Resources office, drinking, staying out all night long, and otherwise engaging in self-destructive behaviour.

Why?

The British Columbia Teachers' Federation logo

Given my position as the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation Learning and Working Conditions Chair for the Interior, and my long years of work previous with the Federation, and the great relationship I’d developed with Linda Shuto — working with her to form the first Status of Women office within an NGO anywhere on the continent — as well as BCTF President Jim McFarlane and, more especially with BCTF Vice-President Don Walmsley, as you might well expect from a Federation comprised of mainly older members, Executive plans were afoot for Federation generational leadership change — and I was targeted as the person who would become a future BCTF President.

Don Walmsley visited Cathy and me multiple times throughout 1977, in our newly acquired Interior home, to advise the both of us that plans were in process to, at the spring BCTF AGM in 1978, run me as a second vice-president of the Federation, with an eye to soon becoming BCTF President.

Here’s how the Federation saw it, Don explaining to the both of us: my organizing bona fides in the Interior had gained provincial attention, Cathy and I were a young couple “from the Interior” (the left of the Federation liked the idea of running candidates from rural areas), Cathy was a professional, was sophisticated and presented well, we had two children — we were, as far as the Federation was concerned, “the perfect couple”.

Here’s what Don Walmsley told Cathy and I …

“Next year, Raymond, we’ll run you for 2nd VP. Cathy, you can run as a Board of Education COPE trustee candidate for Vancouver School Board. Raymond, we’ll find you a job in Vancouver, find you a house, and Cathy we’ll make sure you’re employed, as well, finding you a job in the city similar to what you’re doing up here. Next year (1978), once you’re on the Executive, Raymond, and have moved down to the city, you’ll be closer to the Federation offices.

In 1979, we’ll run you for 1st VP, and depending on how the election goes for President of the Federation, if our candidate loses, we’ll run you for President in 1980. If our candidate wins, and serves a three year term, we’ll run you for President in 1983.”

Sounded good to me — and not so good to Cathy, as elucidated above.

Once Don had left our home, Cathy told me that she had no intention of having the next 20 years of her life being planned by the teachers’ federation, nor was she enamoured of the idea of living in my shadow.

Understandable.

You know how when you’re watching an awards show on TV, and the winner is (almost invariably) a man, the first person he thanks, whom he gushes over, is his wife, saying ardently, “I couldn’t have done it without her — she’s been my rock, and has stood by my side throughout the entire journey that has led to tonight. I will love you for always, my beloved.”

Believe me when I write: Cathy was having none of that arrant palaver.

Two-year-old Jude Nathan Tomlin, baby Megan Jessica, and dad, Raymond, in June 1977
The summer of 1977, when Megan was a few months old, and Jude was two years of age

Long story short, by early 1978, I had been awarded custody of both Jude and Megan, Cathy was off gallivanting around the globe, drinking and carousing with a rock ‘n roll band she’d joined — and I was left to raise our two infant children.

From the outset, Megan was a bright and engaged child, far ahead of her milestone maturational markers — walking at 9 months, speaking at age 1, reading at 18 months — and by the time she was two years of age, as in control of her environment as any 11-year-old child of my acquaintance.

Where Jude — 21 months Megan’s senior — wanted to be out and about all the time, one of the friendliest, most gregarious and social children you’d ever want to meet, Megan was quiet, reserved, pensive and thoughtful, as big a “daddy’s girl” as could possibly be imagined, by my side throughout the day, and separated from me only when she was in daycare, or asleep.

As Cathy and I often remarked to one another as Megan was growing up, “Whose child is this, anyway? Megan certainly can’t be ours — she’s just so much brighter & more capable than either of us, or both of us combined.”

For me, there has never been anyone to whom I have been closer, who has understood me and “had my number”, with whom my relationship has proved more loving & honest than has long been the case with Megan & me.

We acknowledge — as if we have known each other across many lifetimes — that we have found one another on this Earth, in this lifetime, and as I josh Megan by referring to her as her very own diety, in this life the two of us take succour in the knowledge that we love one another, that as we live lives that are separate, Megan now married with children, and me in my west side home spending hours each day writing stories just like this, that as we run across one another from time to time, as we often do in my Kitsilano neighbourhood, that the first words each of us will utter will be, “I love you” — as we set about to continue our day.


The knowing glance tells you everything you need to know about fathers & daughters.

Sunday Music | Elton John | 1970 | Eponymous Album

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Each summer, from the late 1960s through the 1980s, legendary broadcaster Terry David Mulligan traveled to Great Britain, in search of new music, breaking artists, and the “next big thing.”

In 1970, the next big thing was Reginald Kenneth Dwight aka Elton John.


Love Song, side2, track 7, my favourite Tumbleweed Connection song, that got lots of radio play from me

Elton John’s self-titled début constituted his introduction to North American audiences. Tumbleweed Connection was his first British release, and went on to (lesser acclaim than his 1970 album) become his second North American album release.

At the time, Terry was employed by CKVN (that station had been, and would be again, be CFUN, a giant of pop radio in Vancouver).

Arriving back in Vancouver, Terry was excited to spin Elton John’s disc for all the jocks at the station, who — in the main — were as enamoured with the then unknown Elton John, as was the case with a gregariously enthusiastic TDM.

The number one smash hit off the album was Your Song, which became a staple at weddings of the era — including mine to Cathy, on December 19, 1970.

To this day, Elton John’s eponymous début remains my favourite Elton John album, a serious, incredibly well-composed, almost operatic album, much at variance with the more pop-oriented albums and songs Elton John would compose and release — with lyrics by Taupin — over the next 50 years.

“The album which I am quite proud of is the very first one [I did with Elton]. The ‘black album’ was all done in a week. If I could go through that week again, I would just love it to death.”

Gus Dudgeon, Producer

Elton John is a classic, Top 100  album in the pantheon of rock music.

John and lyricist Bernie Taupin’s songwriting had an immediacy ingrained in the music, sharper and more diverse than Tumbleweed Connection, or any music the two released after 1970.

Taupin is all about American mythology and old men’s regrets. Elton likes his harps and harpsichords. Together they gaze beyond England.

Listen to the music. Elton and Taupin clearly have their hearts in the South.

Take Me to the Pilot, a rocking gospel piece where John’s driving piano takes centre-stage over the strings may not make much sense lyrically, but John’s good sense ground its willfully cryptic words with a catchy blues-based melody.

Next to the increased sense of songcraft, the most noticeable change on Elton John is the addition of Paul Buckmaster’s grandiose string arrangements.

“It only took the first hearing for me to call Elton’s manager and express my enthusiasm. I heard the potential of what he and Bernie had written. I had already begun to hear what I was going to do with Your Song, for a start. It was the sort of thing that I was dying to have a go at.”

Paul Buckmaster

Buckmaster’s orchestrations are never subtle, but they never overwhelm the vocalist, nor do they make the songs schmaltzy.


First Episode At Hienton, one of my favourite songs on Elton John, one I often sing to. I know that I am still alive and thriving, when  I can hold the extended note (wwwooooommmaaannnn) at 4:13 in.

Instead, they fit the ambitions of John and Taupin, as the instant standard Your Song illustrates.

Even with the strings and choirs that dominate the sound of the album, John manages to rock out on a fair share of the record. Though there are a couple of underdeveloped songs, Elton John remains one of his best records.

In a rather uneventful period in rock music, John’s music emerged as so staggeringly original that it wasn’t obvious that he was merely operating within a given musical field (such as country or blues or rock) but, like Randy Newman and Laura Nyro among others, creating his own field, borrowing from country, rock, blues, folk and other influences, but mixed in his own way.

Aretha Franklin would hardly have covered Border Song — a great gospel tune with a bombastic arrangement — if she’d sensed an artificiality.

The resulting songs are so varied in texture that his music defied classification.

While his voice, in those days, mostly resembled Jose Feliciano, there were also detectable touches of Leon Russell and Mick Jagger.

Sitting behind his own piano, with Nigel Olsson on drums and Dee Murray on bass, John’s new sound was much earthier than his earlier work, even if there was an essential sweetness to his heavily orchestrated North American début album.

All these years later, in 1970 and fifty-four years on, with Elton John’s arrival on the music scene, the sense existed then that in Reginald Kenneth Dwight here was a legendary artist destined to play a featured role in the history of rock ‘n roll.

Stories of a Life | Redux | Jude, Megan and Me | Movies | 80s and 90s

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Cinema | Megan and Jude Tomlin, and their dad, love cinema, love the movies, stories of a life

Film has always been a central, organizing force in my relationship with both my daughter, Megan, and my son, Jude.

Our collective love of the cinema, attending film festivals and discussing what we saw following the various screenings we attended (usually at the Fresgo Inn on Davie, which was alive no matter the time of night or early morning) was, over the years, a central feature of our relationship — the relationship between son and daughter, and dad — that allowed us to delve deep into discussions of the meaning of life, and our collective responsibility to work towards creating a fairer and more just world for everyone.

Heart and deep caring for humanity was at the centre of our love of film, and at the centre of our loving familial relationship, informing the choices we made about how we would conduct ourselves in the world, and the projects and causes to which we would devote our time and our energies.

In the 1980s, when Cathy and I were going through a rancorous divorce, film brought us together.

When in Seattle — which we visited frequently, always staying on the non-smoking 33rd floor of the Weston twin towers — in 1984, we took in a screening of Garry Marshall’s The Flamingo Kid — the story of a working class boy (Matt Dillon) who takes a summer job at a beach resort and learns valuable life lessons.

Megan was seven years of age, and Jude 9 — both were uncertain about the efficacy of our trip south (without their mother’s permission — we called her upon arriving at our hotel), but the screening alleviated and, finally, repaired any of their concerns, and all went well that weekend. Fortuitously, too, upon our return, the divorce proceedings inexplicably moved forward into a more reasonable and thoughtful direction, reflective of all our collective concerns.

Whenever there was “trouble” in our relationship — generated, most usually, by their mother — film served to salve the wounds of dysfunction, allowing us to find our collective centre while healing the wounds that rent all of our lives during a decade-long, million dollar custody dispute.

Film spoke to us, made us better, took us out of the drudgery of our too often protean daily and, more often, troubled lives, and engaged us while putting our lives into a broader and more human scale perspective. Never once was there a film that we saw together when we didn’t come out of the screening feeling more whole, and more at one with ourselves and the world.

Such was true, at the screenings of Glenn Close and John Malkovich’s Dangerous Liaisons over the holiday period in 1988, or months later at the screening of Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams, which we took in at the Oakridge Theatre, a favourite and comforting cinema haunt of ours.

When Megan wanted some “alone time” with me, it almost always revolved around watching a film together, although as Megan matured (and as her love for film matured), Megan made it plain that she was present in the theatre to watch the film, not “share time” with me, choosing always to sit in a whole other section of the theatre (it drove her crazy in the times that we were sitting together in a theatre that I would check in occasionally with her, looking at her to determine how she felt about the film — talking during a film was an unforgivable sin, so that was never going to happen).

Some days, Megan would call and say, “Dad, take me to a film.”

And because I was a film critic at the time, and had a pass to attend at any cinema in North America, off the two of us would traipse to see Kathy Bates’ Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) or Johnny Depp’s Benny & Joon (1993) at the old 12-theatre complex downstairs in the Royal Centre mall.

Other times, post dinner and after Megan had finished her homework, I’d say to Megan out of the blue, “I’m heading out to attend a screening of a film. Do you want to come along with me?” Megan would ponder my question for a moment before asking, “Which film?”

In 1991, one very long film screening we attended was Kevin Costner’s directorial début, Dances With Wolves, about which we knew nothing other than it starred one of our favourite actors, and off the two of us went.

At screening’s end (Megan and I actually sat together at this particular screening, which took place in the huge Granville 7 Cinema 7, because the preview theatre screening room was just packed), Megan turned to me, and said, “Dad, I knew this was going to be a great film.” And it was. “And, you know what else? It’s going to pick up a raft of Oscars this year, too, and be considered one of the, if not the best, films of the year.”

Jude and Megan also attended film festival screenings with me.

Almost inevitably, Vancouver International Film Festival founder, and co-owner of Festival Cinemas Leonard Schein was present with his wife Barbara, and at a screening’s end, Megan would make her way over to wherever Leonard and Barbara were sitting to enquire of him whether or not he intended to book the film into either the Varsity, Park or Starlight.

Following screenings of Neil Jordan’s 1992 putative multiple Oscar award winner, The Crying Game or, that same year, Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, Megan marched over to Leonard, and asked him boldfacedly, “What do you think?”

When Leonard indicated that he thought the films were not quite his cup of tea, that both films would have difficulty finding an audience, and that it was unlikely he’d be booking either film into one of his cinemas, Megan lit into Leonard with a passion and a vehemence I had rarely observed coming from her, saying …

“Are you out of your mind? Strictly Ballroom and The Crying Game are wonderful films, and just the sort of films that not only should you book, but that you MUST book — these are both groundbreaking films that will only serve to reinforce your reputation as an arts cinema impresario, but will also make you a tonne of money, and we all know that you’re all about the money. Either you book these films into The Varsity, or believe me when I tell you that there’ll be hell to pay when you see me next.”

And with that, Megan marched off.

At the 1990 Vancouver International Film Festival, I’d caught a screening of Whit Stillman’s directorial début, Metropolitan, in preview, and knew that this would be a film Megan would just love (and be astounded by, at the revelation of one of the characters, mid-film).

I made arrangements to pick Megan up from University Hill Secondary at 3pm sharp on the day of the festival screening, we drove downtown, found a parking spot, and rushed over to The Studio Cinema on Granville to catch the 4pm screening of Metropolitan — which as I had predicted, Megan loved.

In early December 1993, on a particularly chilly and overcast day, at 10am in Cinema 2 at the Granville 7 theatre complex, I caught a screening of Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking new film, Philadelphia — a film about which I knew little, and a film that knocked me out (along with the handful of film critics in attendance at the theatre for the screening).

Emerging from the theatre just after noon, making my way onto Granville, I looked for the nearest telephone in order that I might call Megan at school.

I called the office at University Hill Secondary, and asked them to find Megan and bring her to the phone. When Megan asked, “Dad, is everything all right?”, I told her about the film I had just seen, and that when it opened in January, I wanted to take her and Jude to a screening at the Granville 7. We talked about the film for a few minutes, with her saying about 10 minutes in, “I’m holding up the school phone, and calls coming in. Let’s get together after school. Come and pick me up, and we can continue our conversation. I’ll see you then, Dad. I love you.”

There are gifts we give our children. From my parents, it was what would emerge as a lifelong love for country music. For Jude and Megan, my gift was a love of music, a love of the ballet, and an abiding love for film.