TODD RUNDGREN: Veg-O-Matic Into The Void

I would much prefer Todd Rundgren had a squirrely girlfriend—you know, one of those emaciated things that is always curled up cross-legged with her bespectacled nose in a book—than this show biz creation Entering and Exiting grandly with the bazoombas ever so thinly veiled beneath white crepe pajamas. Though it's nearly midnight, Todd himself is squirreling about in the backyard visiting his saplings and his would-be saplings, his corn, tomatoes, and cauliflower, his eggplants—which, he points out with the flashlight, are finally developing that all-important second layer of leaves that is their natural protection against the Nasty Eggplant Bugs.

We've just arrived at Todd Rundgren's dream home in the Woodstock forest. He has turned on the outdoor spotlights, and, within the house, where paramour Bebe scurries about turning down the house for the weekend, lights illuminate the large stained glass windows. It's pretty and impressive. Crickets crick or whatever. Mosquitoes dine luxuriously (their first taste of good red man-blood in a week) as Todd and I check the week's vegetable body count (the heavy rains of two days before had b^en hard on some of the pussier plantlife hereabouts) and.. .there's not a delicatessen in sight. I'm hungry. Todd and Bebe are vegetarian. And salami doesn't grow on bushes, trees, or vines. Do cheeseburgers?

"Let us know if there's anything you need," Todd calls out as he and Mademoiselle B. ascend the stairs to thejoftlike second floor (wherein their bedroom is located) of the modified Aframe. Mumble, I answer, returning to the small guestroom where my everpatient girlfriend waits in hunger—not for me.

Ethics. Morals. Manners. There comes a time in the middle of everybody's night when the imperative is to ransack the rockstar's kitchen. Open cupboards cackle at us with their repulsively wholesome contents: oats, granola, herbs, vitamin pills. Somehow it seems more like trespassing to open a stranger's refrigerator without asking. Somehow it seems worse to open it and find...VEGETABLES! On every shelf, in every drawer, concealed in compartments on the door...VEGETABLES!

But I like Todd Rundgren. I liked Utopia. I liked Todd. My favorite album is, A Wizard, A True Star, for chrissakes. You can see I'll pretty much go with the guy anywhere. I thought the pink and green hair was kind of cool too, thought of doing it myself after happening by Todd on Bleecker Street one day a year or two back. But this, this vegetable stuff...What happened to my old Todd? What happened to Bleecker Street?

Beneath his muddy overalls he sports the shocking-pink Nazz t-shirt that he wore for the two days I watched Utopia rehearsals in New York. Todd kneels beneath the midday overcast between the cauliflower and the brussel sprouts, carefully creating nests in the dark, damp earth for some ngw seeds. I feel kind of dumb, extraneous and somewhat like a war journalist in the rice paddies of Nam as I lay my tape recorder down in the dirt beside ,.the pop - star - turned - Vietnamese - rice -farmer. v

I always associated Todd with New York City, 1 confess to him, still somewhat numb from midnight vegetable shock. You know, you were the City Boy, the New York Scenemaker. "Yeah, I was," he responds, perhaps smugly. "When I do something I take it seriously. You may have noticed this ain't no itty-bitty garden here. Now we got ourselves a GARDEN!" He's right. The few acres that are cleared out from his woodland homestead are covered with nascent food and ornamental gardens. "I don't like to waste my time," he explains. "'If I'm gonna be a scenemaker—and I was at one time and I knew it—then I was a scenemaker. And all those associations live with you a long time after because most public people make their Personality through just one distinguishable avenue of... freakiness or whatever. People who've cared to keep any thread on the personality part of Todd Rundgren will realize that it doesn't stabilize anywhere. The personality and career don't remain the same in terms of direction or the manifestation of direction. But fo me, my entire life makes sense and everything that's happened leads up to now."

"I grew up ignorant in a world that I hated."

Now diddling in his gardlens (there are chirping birds on my interview tapes), now closing out Saturday's rehearsal with one more run-through of "Sunset Boulevard" for the benefit of the new drummer: "And when the shit hits the fan," sings Todd,""I guess I'll have to get my ass back to Sunset Boulevard..." To many Todd Rund,gren fans it seems a long and difficult path to follow from "Sunset Boulevard" and "Slut" and the like to the "Eastern Intrigue" that cosmically locates his latest album. But to get to know him personally, however slightly, is to have it all hang loosely together and, yes, even make sense, at least in terms of him, if not quite in terms of reality.

"So you're one of the Back-to-theOld Days movement." Todd is annoyed with me as he stands over the kitchen sink "inoculating" some beans by slushing them around in a pan of black sludge that, he instructs, will help them better utilize the soil's nitrogen content. ("These look like pills," he remarks off-handedly of the blackcoated ovoids—indeed, farmer Todd wasn't always strictly organic.) "I hate to think of people associating me with "Hello It's Me* and that whole...Something/Anything." But that's V great album, I argue. "I know it's a -great album. But the majority of the songs are sitting around, getting stoned, just laying there type songs."

We're back to the vegetable patch with the new batch of bean's. Furburger, Todd's little black mutt, sniffs about*; outside the garden fenc^, excluded in the interest of plant safety and health. Up the hill is the lovely" chalet-like house of unstained wood, behind it a trench which is the beginning of whatf will be a Japanese pool-garden within a few months. At the southern edge of the flourishing corn crop, not'too far from where we're talking, a steep, stony natural grade leads to a quick little brook whiqh proverbially and soothingly babbles through Todd Rundgren's isolated property. He's only had the place since October; things are still a little rough, but when the holiday-idled bulldozer next to the house and the landscapers and gardeners (including T.R.) finish their jobs (which should be by the end of summer), this retreat with the "Utopia" shingle over the entranceway will be positively idyllic, absolutely living up to its name.

Todd notes that some weeding should be done, starts planting another row, and continues our discussion. "Something/Anything's an escapist album. What 1 do nowadays, the records that I make, the Initiation album, well, the reason that people can't listen to the second side of that is that they want to sit there and be manipulated in an easy manner, and,, the music wasn't designed for that. At a point in my life, I looked around and said, "Where am I?" So I thought, well, here I am in a position of where I'm selling a fair amount of records and I've got a certain amount of people following my example. So now what should I do? Should I completely forget that? Or should I build upon that, use that for something more important?"

More important than entertainment?

"Yeah. More important than entertainment. I would say that entertainment that's just entertainment only is important to people who have a lot of boredom on their hands."

At this point, I'm reminded of the girl who told me how Todd Rundgren's music, particularly Something/Any -

"I could end the entire game right now."

thing, had helped see her through a drawn-out and profoundly depressing disengagement from a long involvement with speed. And I tell him how important I think entertainment is, in terms of just providing some goddamn relief.

"That's fine. But my way now of going about that is attacking with two prongs at once: trying to distract someone from their problems and, at the same time, attacking the problem. I'm not making records like "Hey, baby, I love you," stuff like that. How many songs like that can you listen to? I know people love "em, but there's billions and billions of them and they all say the same thing a hundred different ways. I try .to show people a new avenue to explore; hopefully one that is different from what they're accustomed to exploring, otherwise why would they need that entertainment? Why would they be so intensely miserable that they had to have this totally visceral escapist entertainment to take them so far away from life...All I'm saying is basically, "Get off your ass!" And I'm showing my stance which is off my ass."

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 49.

Off his ass, he lopes about his little estate with long (even for someone of his height) and ambitious strides, sowing seeds here, checking up on stricken stalks and leaves over there, pointing out this new sprout, as I trudge behind him diligently, cassette recorder in one hand, cigarette in other, essentially and finally convincing me that emphysema is laying fatal siege in my inorganic nicotined-blackened lungs.

"I think why I'm doing this," Todd continues in a tone that becomes a sort of calm anger, "why I am devoting my energies to the whole of the people as opposed to myself and my friends is for several reasons. I grew up ignorant— not stupid, ignorant—in a world that I hated, and I couldn't figure out any of it. I couldn't figure out why I looked like I did, why people treated me the way they did, why my parents treated me the way they did. I didn't appreciate anything that was naturally here. I always wanted something and I didn't know what it was..I was generally just an average fucked up person, and somehow I got un-fucked up. And I realized if I could have been as fucked up as I was and gotten un-f.ucked up, it's possible for anybody. And the thing that pisses me off the most is that I had no help doing it and that there is help for pfeople to do it—or there's a good excuse for people to do it, to get unfucked up, and they consciously won't do it. They'll just consciously pretend that it's not important, or they'll get ihto this fatalistic thing with all this drugs and sex and free love and liberation and such. This is the generation that six years ago was into peace marches and all that, and now it's just like they're strung out on speed and fucked up."

How Todd himself avoided this apocalyptic generational burn-out is not exactly clear. The anger subsides. "A year or two back I had some involvement with psychedelics. I'm not saying I had bad experiences, but I was very confused." Somehow one gets the feeling that there were some fairly bad experiences, preferably not remembered, but Todd maintains that ultimately "psychedelics expanded my consciousness, opened me up to things." Permanently? "Yeah, permanently," he says with no regret, in fact, indicating that he's all the better for it. Initially, however, he says his "confusion" did overwhelm him, and in seeking help he stumbled upon a cer* tain book of Eastern mysticism, a sort of primer of Oriental spiritual practice and philosophy, and this put it all back'fogether. "It showed me that there really were different, higher states of consciousness?" (Apparently as opposed to what we might call, and he originally did call, confusion.)

Texts on mysticism, Zen, Yoga, and various oriental philosophies now fill the large living room bookcase. Living room furniture consists pretty much of these brightly embroidered oriental satin pillows and low slung tables (you know, like the tables in real authentic Chinese restaurants). Likewise, his last album, Initiation, is furnished Eastern with the second side even taking its title from one of Todd's treasured books. In spite of all. the trappings, Todd maintains that he is into the Eastern thing on the "scientific" level. (He's into a lot of things on a scientific level for that matter. The downstairs bathroom magazine rack is amply and exclusively supplied with copies of Popular Science and Scientific American, scattered about the floor of his bedroom are various mysterious electronic consoles, and he tells me that a video studio is in the works; of course, one also musn't forget his intrigue with synthesizers and his mastery of the recording studio.) The science of living and coping that these spiritual disciplines offer, Todd says, rather than their god-beings, is what draws him. I mention George Harrison. "Well, people do spiritually oriented records like John McLaughlin and Santana and George Harrison , but that's all within their particularized vision, having to do with, I think, personality worship, the personality of some god, especially of some god as personified by a human being.. .like the Christian concept of the old man with the white beard out there somewhere."

While Harrison and company may be working on visions that are too particularized, Todd seems to be working on a vision that is very little, perhaps too little particularized...at least, I think... "Utopia," as a word, a concept, whatever, seems to me to be a central point to this vision. Exasperated after nearly half an houf of circling the subject of Todd's beliefs, I finally ask: What is Utopia? Todd is as evasive as the concept is elusive. "What do you mean?" he says. I mean, I say, feigning patience, is it just the name of your band? "Well, yes, it starts as the name of my band—or a band that I'm playing in. Do you want to know any more about it?" Maharishi Babapajama nonsence! I think to myself. I oughta shove that goddamn trowel down his throat. "Come on," he teases. "You think too." Well, what is this "city in my head" thing? (I'm fishing.) Todd becomes merciful. "Well, I have no specific thing along those lines. It's just that I've developed a societal attitude due to the fact that I'm a societal figure. My livelihood is based on my close association with society. If I was literally a farmer then my livelihood wouldn't be based on any such close association, except as much as society might buy my vegetables, though if they didn't I'd still eat. My life is based on the whim of society." I interrupt to reel Todd back to the point.

'"Oh, yeah, yeah," he chuckles, "back to Utopia. It's the same as my socalled religion" it doesn't fall into any presently defined category. Like I say, everyone has their societal idea, the way they like to live, deal with other people, the lifestyle they like to lead, and this is just a reflection of mine and the particular people I work with in this enterprise. And it's not just the'musicians, it's the whole crew. At this point, we only get together to do it in terms of music, bpt we do it as if it was part of our ideal societal vision, working as well as we can within the current structure. Of course we get a lot of rude awakenings on the road when we're ; trying to check in to a Holiday Inn and run into7 some jerk-off there at the counter." (I picture the face of a sleepy motel clerk at three in the morning confronted by a group of ^six men who insist on a room with a sextuple bed and a view of Mecca, no TV but three synthesizers, and hot and cold running yogurt.)

"We aren't really economically motivated. We're artistically motivated in the main. Personally I'm spiritually motivated, as are a' few of the others, and artistically motivated and probably lastly financially motivated." And a person can support himself in Utopia with this non-capitalisticattitude? "Yes, now we can. I personally had to support Utopia for-a year or two years from money that I got from production."

Unquestionably Todd is dedicated to his vision and to the People, whom he thinks will benefit from Jt. He has forsaken the "Hello It's Me" and "We Gotta Get You A Woman" type love song for what he believes is a broader view. "At a certain point I felt like expressing love on one person, now I feel like expressing it on as many people as I can." He dismisses any notion that this might be a more shallow viewpoint—not as satisfying to hjm ("I get more satisfaction") or to his audience ("Before you split," he tells me, "read the fan mail"). He will not budge, in-« sisting that what he is doing is right and what he must do. "People who are responsible for the vision, like artists, aren't facing it and are escaping from the issue, acting like Elton John or something. They just think that the whole thing is to be a vicarious expression of monetary gain for people, and that's just crap."

But, I ask him, isn't there some conflict, in that he is making money on his albums, though he has told me he is basically set for life financially, and wouldn't cheaper records make his vision more accessible to a wider audience? He admits that he isn't yet living out his principles to the fullest, but rather is being-cautious. "1 could have left my record company and tried to start a new one and wound up like the Grateful Dead. Where is their record company now? There are many convoluted ways—most of them dealing with undesirable things—to accomplish your ends. And if I decide at some point to be the totally moral person, the record company would not be on my first priority to go. The first on my priority to* go would be the telephone, second on the list would be the electricity." (Subsequent to this last disclosure, my girlfriend remarked to me, "Where'would he, of all people, be without electricity?" Would you believe a bellows-operated synthesizer?)

Priorities notwithstanding, Todd begins to rail. "I don't enjoy rock "n" roll anymore. I have to say honestly I don't enjoy the scene. And I seriously wonder if I was meant to make myself deaf in front of a bunch of people, just like playing this super-loud frantic music and making myself deaf—if that's what I'm really supposed to do, if that would be making something of my life. And I'd probably have to say I'd be pretty bitter if I was sitting around at forty, half-deaf, just because I wanted to get my rocks off in front of a bunch of people. I would never be able to enjoy music again because my hearing was gone.. .and only because I had to blast a guitar amp io my head."

Me, I've loved his music and would h^te to see Todd Rundgren give it up. But, look ^t this] the man is seething. You sound like somebody's making you do it! I exclaim to him. Why don't you just stop!? "No, nobody's making me do it. And I will stop eventually. Make no mistake about it. It's not gonna be like the Rolling Stones for me. I won't be doing this when I'm thirty. I know I won't be doing this when I'm thirty." Todd turned 27 the week following our interview, and I tell ya, I don't expect this very angry man to be playing rock ,"n" roll three years from now. Quoth he: "I could end.the entire game right now—rock "n" roll, not my life—the whole game of rock "n" roll!"

Anger, laughter, love, hate, conservatism, abandon, fear, ingenuousness: somehow he manages to put it all together into a whole, a totally integral duality. Furthermore, to see it closeup, it is boring and illogical and logical and fascinating. I don't get it. The fact is, I don't think Todd does either. Ba-" sically the principle he operates under—he says, "I have a very Zen attitude towards life"—is: if it comes out of me, it's there and has to be there, and it's neither good nor bad, right nor wrong, just there. Get it? I'm still working on it.

Todd Rur\dgren is consistent in his inconsistency, makes sense because he never really makes sense, is finite in his-'-well, I won't say infinity—finite in his...vagueness? As we're parting with Todd and Bebe on the doorstep under the sign that reads "Utopia," I remark on how long it should take to transcribe the interview tapes; Todd thinks I'm talking about the actual writing of the story. His words of farewell—a paraphrase of a line from Initiation : "Keep it in the abstract, please..."