XTC: This Is Pop (2017)

 

XTC: Chalkhills and Children by Chris Twomey (Omnibus Press 1992)

The day after Todd arrived from San Francisco, recording got underway, concentrating on basic guitar and keyboard pans before moving to San Francisco where Rundgren had booked session musicians to work on drum-tracks and other overdubs.

Right from the off it was obvious that Todd and Andy weren't going to get on. Andy was used to having a large measure of control over everything XTC did and Todd wasn’t letting him have any say - barely paying lip service to his ideas and suggestions. Andy Partridge, the irresistible force, had finally met his match in Todd Rundgren, the immovable object. One was a producer determined to produce, the other an artist determined to resist.

Nothing Andy said or did could soften Todd or dent his arrogant demeanour. His sense of humour - often used as a way of getting people on his side - had no effect. Todd would deal Andy's jokes a fatal blow with a deadpan comment like “Stop, you're killing me", and offered none of the deference Andy was used to receiving. To Andy this was all a way of trying to break his morale. "At times he'd launch into me in an abusive fashion, ” he says. "He'd say things like Where did you get those jeans from? God, they look like you bought them from Russia! Christ look at them!' It was all a way of making you feel small so that he could stand on top and you'd accept his ideas without question. *'

On the occasions that Andy stuck by his guns and refused to give in, Todd would walk out of the studio saying, "You can dick around with this all day. I'm going up to the house, and when you've realised that my way is the right way to do it, you call me.”

After a few weeks of this ritual humiliation, Andy was ready to quit. “I’m not enjoying this,” he told the rest. "I’m thinking of knocking the album on the head. It's like having two Hitlers in the same bunker."

Dave was appalled. "Don't be daft,” he said. "Just go along with it and we ll do another record as soon as we get back. We've still got plenty of songs that Todd hasn't chosen."