Utopia Dreamin With Todd Rundgren

Turnback Inn, Mellier is an address located somewhere in the author's anterior lobe. Todd Rundgren entered Mr. Stein’s mind via interview in Chicago recently and somehow ended up in those darker recesses where stands the aforementioned extremely gothic roadhouse.

TURNBACK INN, Mellier - “I’m only in this position that I’m in now because I’ve taken control of myself as a person,” said Todd Rundgren. “Not because I’m just me and happened to fall into this lucky break. And everyone who’s in this position has done that to a certain extent, but some of them do it in blindness. And they wake up later and think, ‘How the fuck did I get here?’ ”

It was late at night, and outside the Turnback Inn the wind howled. Occasionally, other noises, moans and shrieks and whispers, made dreadful harmonies with the wind’s voice. But inside, the fire was stoked to a roaring cheeriness by the sleepy barkeep as his last two patrons finished their eveninglong conversation.

On the morrow, Todd and his company - all of whom had wisely retired early - would set forth from this last outpost into the gloom of the Dark Forest. Their quest was a vital one, fraught with danger from land, sea and air, but they were a determined band, especially their leader, whose long face looked even longer as he stared into the flames. Your intrepid correspondent had caught up with him only that day and was now attempting to elicit from this enigmatic figure some faint semblance of a sane reason for his mad daring.

“It’s like the rock and roll business,” Todd continued after a long pause, punctuated only be a deep sucking sound as he inhaled the contents of his long, curled and weather-beaten pipe “They do everything that the manager and agent tells them, you know, because they are told, ‘You’ll be successful if you do this.’ So they go out and do it, and all of a suddeh, they’re on top; and everybody’s looking at them. And they say, ‘What am I going to do now that everybody’s looking at me?’ ”

Todd and his band, a hale but motley crew, had decided when they had first dubbed themselves Utopia that their path would not be the well-worn Yellow Brick Road. Little did they know that it would bring them here, close to the edge. Yet there was no talk of turning back, for somehow they had sensed it would eventually come to this. Still, Todd refused to regard himself and his companions as more than average mortals.

“My position as a leader is only exemplary,” he explained. “Because there are things that people think are not humanly possible or not possible under present circumstances or not possible for the average persdn to do. And my gig is simply to prove.them wrong, to say, ‘Look, I’ve done it, and it was not particularly ridiculously difficult for me to do.’ ”

He paused as a particularly chilling call came through the chimney seemingly from very near, although we knew every human within 100 miles was within the inn’s walls. He was apparently thinking aheqdto the Grogolo River,

whose deep and treacherous waters wound through the Dark Forest and would have to be crossed several times. “The most that I have to do is learn to float on my back in terms of swimming,” he said at last. “You know, the very minimal things that you can do and still survive.

"... there are things that people think are not humanly possible... my gig is simply to prove them wrong..."

It's just that we spend so much inside our heads anyway, we might as well start paying attention to that environment and start utilizing it to accomplish things.

“I’m only as good a guitar player, for instance, as I desire to be. If I don’t practice and if I don’t concentrate and get into it, I’m pretty mediocre, an average, lame guitar player. If I want to go home, get into my scales and chops and everything and practice and practice and practice, I can play as good or better than John McLaughlin. In fact, there are nights on the road, just brief flashes, when I play as good guitar as anybody. But that just happens as a combination of things.

“It’s not as if I want to work to be the best guitar player in the world. Because that doesn’t mean anything to me. What’s important to me is to be the best person that lean be in everything that I do.

“If I’m a generally more efficient vehicle, then all the things that I become involved with will become elevated and more effectively done. People deal with only a single aspect. When I say someone can do anything I can do, the first thing they think of is, well, write lyrics or write songs or something like that, But that’s not how you approach it. You turn yourself first into what you want to be and then decide what you want to do. It’s like trying to loosen a big screw with a little teeny screwdriver.”

The barkeep shuffled up to our table noisily and asked us if there was anything else we wished. We realized that it was time to make an end to our prattling. The brave band would be making an early start tomorrow, and Todd needed all his wits about him for the adventures ahead. As we tossed down the dregs of the rum in our flagons and stood up, I probed one more time, still unconvinced of his postulate that anyone could be in his perilous place. In his eyes, the reflected fire gleamed strangely bright eis he replied:

“It’s something that first you have to address the basic reality of if you want to do anything. You have to make yourself a one-pointed person, to be able to concentrate your entire energies for a reasonable duration of time into one thing. And the more you do that, the more you discover what your weaknesses are so that you can strengthen those.” He gave me a hearty slap on the back and laughed, understanding that I still was not convinced that he wasn’t a most extraordinary man to attempt this quest. I wished him a fervent godspeed and watched his gangly form walk down the hallway to the band’s sleeping quarters, as the firelight twisted and stretched his strange form into even stranger shadows on the wooden walls.