It's been a good summer for Todd Rundgren. His latest solo album, The Hermit Of Mink Hollow, has fared better than usual in the press and in the stores. He's taken a non-Utopian band into clubs in New York and Los Angeles and recorded material for an upcoming, probably two-record live collection. He's been readying Utopia for an album and late summer tour. He's been getting deeper and deeper into the video work which he considers the key to the future—his included.

And, he's turned 30. Finally hit that age where nobody has to talk about him in terms of prodigy, about expectations based on his precociousness. If he thinks about it at all, it probably relieves him to have one more preconceived public notion dispelled.

Todd has fashioned a career out of frustrating people's attempts to make him fit into the slots they were most comfortable with. He's a very slippery guy. Guitar prince, romantic balladeer, mystico-progressive, technocrat, nextbig-thing for how many years? Rundgren has fouled up the tagging procedure causing all the people who thought they had him pinned in one of those niches no end of disappointment.

don't expect people to buy my records. ■

If he's failed—or declined—to become the big commercial property it was long assumed he would eventually be, so what? It's not like he's a starving, abandoned old washout. And his peculiar place in the scheme of things makes it easier for him to get on with the work around which his life turns, and which has very little to do, apparently, with the glitz and scenemaking of the rock world. All in all, I'd say he's got it beat.

I became a Todd R. fan years ago, and have to admit that like a lot of fans, I started to get confused and queasy over the direction of his career with the onset and first few manifestations of Utopia. Then, of course, there was Faithful, some tonic for the ears of diehard "old" fans, admirers of that part of Todd's musical personality which he would call "the easy side." But then there was Ra, Oops, Wrong Planet, pyramids, fruit-fly Egyptienne costumes. Confusing sign als all around.

And now Hermit, which a lot of people want very badly to believe is the long-awaited "Follow-up" to Something /Anything. But to think of this as follow-up, you have to be able to convice yourself that the stuff that came in between didn't really count, somehow. If that's a comfortable idea, fine, but Todd doesn't look at it quite that way. A man who talks about his career in terms of "process" and "ongoing development" is not about to write off a whole body of work as if it were some sort of black hole. Besides, he doesn't see that big a dichotomy between Utopian and non-Utopian enterprises.

The reaction to the current album probably has something to do with the fact that Todd made it all by himself, like much of S/A, and that it covers several of the more comfortable bases associated with Todd Rundgren, the songwriter.

On top of the record, devotees in New York and L.A. were treated in June to week-long stands at the Bottom Line and the Roxy, where Todd gave a lot of folks what they wanted: a big sampling of decidedly non-Utopian material. The band, assembled to record live, included old friends Moogy Klingman, Johns Wilcox and Siegler and the Hello People. They dipped into the archives for goodies like "Range War" (from the Ballad album) and other decidedly traditional Todd tunes. The folks loved it in New York, where the club was packed two shows a night for a week with those fervent, die-hard fans who still insist, puppyI love like, on showering their man with i gifts, love-notes and whatnot. The Bottom Line had to limit ticket purI chasers to a maximum two seats per show, and there were many who came I to every set. According to Todd, it was the same situation in L.A.

In the afterglow of this oozing of sweet feeling for the former kid wizard, CREEM ventured up to his home base I in Woodstock (actually Bearsville, a I town down the road which appears to be owned by Albert Grossman) to see what was on his funny little mind. What follows is, basically, the gist of it.

CREEM: What are you working on at the moment? Are you mixing the live I thing?

TODD: I could be mixing the live thing, I but I'm not. It won't be released for a while, so . . .

CREEM: Will there be another Utopia album first?

TODD: We're working on that, but I don't know if that'll come out first. We've got some things done, but we've been indigent for about four, five months. We're rehearsing now for an album and tour. >

CREEM: Long tour?

TODD: Well, it's a month. And we're just playing clubs—well, we'll do one outdoor concert ... anything we do that's not a club is outdoors at this point.

CREEM: What's the live album gding to be like? Sort of greatest hits/live affair? TODD: Well, since I only have two hits, we're probably gonna have to fill it out a bit . . . have to pad it quite a bit. It'll probably be a double album—heeeeey, ^ Rundgren Comes Alive! We'll probably separate it into the best of New York and the best of L.A., rather than trying to mix them up, because they sound too different.

CREEM: So how's Mink Hollow selling?

TODD: It's selling pretty good.

CREEM: Better than the Todd Rundgren norm?

TODD: Yeah, beyond that borderline. CREEM: People have a tendency to write about you in terms of ongoing expectation and disappointment with your commercial performance. Why, after all this time, is it still necessary to say things like that?

TODD: I don't know. It should be obvious that I don't operate out of a total awareness of the commercial market. I'm just trying to do things in a musical sense, not a commercial sense. The record is much more permanent than what anybody writes about it, than anyone's^ opinion of it. So the record will win out in the end. Ultimately, people will pick up*on it, hear about it, long after people have stopped writing about it.

CREEM: At the same time, you really seem to get off on that fan trip. You have that sort of fan, the ones who give you gifts and things, the teenage idolatry.

TODD: Yeah, well, it depends how much of a job it is to be a fan for somebody, the degree to which they display their ardor and appreciation. If it's really easy to be somebody's fan—if your straight friends give you a lot of support—then it doesn't require a great deal of commitment. Buy a t-shirt off the rack in the lobby. But if it's more work—if people say "Who's that," or, "He's not cool like . . . uh . . . Foreigner," ha ha, or something like that, then it's much more challenging, requires a greater commitment of energy and more thought. A lot of people, when we played the Bottom Line and the Roxy, bought tickets for every single show, which is . . .a real lotta money. In L.A., there were some people there every night, and we did 14 shows. A lotta money.

CREEM: Do you have tp go through any sort of phase shift to go from working on your own. records to working with Utopia? i*ODD: Not really. As opposed to most musicians, I'm not style-oriented, in a sense. A lot of musicians will accomplish what they accomplish and be recognized because of a personal style which they are very attached to; and whatever environment they're put into, that's essentially the way they'll perform. I guess the reason I'm a good producer is that, in one sense, I make myself totally a slave to the music, looking for something totally in the musical realm, and ignoring exactly how I come off within that particular framework. There are things I can and can't do, and I do them as well as I can do them. But other than that, I'm un-self-conscious about being in any particular musical environment. CREEM: But there does appear to be a difference between a Todd Rundgren album and a Utopia album, between the songwriter and musician trips., TODD: Essentially, the idea of playing in a permanent band is that you develop something as a musical unit. As an individual, you can do any dance you can do yourself . I always wonder about the old musical identity crisis, which is that people become famous because °f the sameness of their sound. And I've always been challeng' ed by my own records to sound different. I'm not an imitator of records I've done. It's a development process, and I try to make an adventure out of it. I'm not looking to cash in—I'm looking for that relationship I have with a piece of music. That's more important than the ultimate financial outcome.

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CREEM: Does the fact that this album has been more popularly received than some others tempt you to continue in the same vein, or to reject a certain mode arid bolt in another direction? TODD: The next solo album I do won't sound likfe this one. If people find this one—which is songwriting, which is fairly simple for me—more accessible, I guess it comes more naturally. But I still feel a personal obligation to learn something in this process, so I have to try new things. In a way, I'm taking a selfish attitude about it, but I don't expect people to buy my records. CREEM: How do you like the records you've produced for other people? TODD: I like them to varying degrees. Production, in the main, is a . . . job, a craft that you learn. I doesn't necessarily require any personal artistic vision, just your musical sensibilities.

CREEM: Is there a connecting strand running through the people who come to you for production?

TODD: Mostly their lack of mainstream acceptance.

CREEM: And their desire for it? TODD: I don't know if that's always the objective. Steve Hjllage . . . he's super music-conscious, and hardly conscious at all of the desires of the audience. He just plays what be plays. Some of them want to be successful commercially, and some don't care.

CREEM: What kind of reputation do you have in the business as a producer? TODD: The only thing I can say about it is that I don't ever have to look for things to produce. I've had an opportunity to produce about 75 percent of the major artists in this business. If my total concern in producing was making money, I could choose those things that are a real long shot, or are guaranteed not to sell. Hello People records I do because I want to do them, not because they have any great sales potential. Needless to say, Steve Hillage . . ,

CREEM: What about Meatloaf?

TODD: Meatloaf was a . . . totally unknown factor.

CREEM: Have you ever thought about writing for Broadway?

TODD: Yeah, I've been thinking about it.

CREEM:Because there are things in your work that remind me of Stephen Sondheim, and for a while Utopia was doing the West Side Story tune.

TODD: Well, I'm involved in a movie soundtrack now, and that'll be a first. And I figure, Broadway is not far behind, heheheh. I'd like to try, it just depends. I don't spend a lot of money making my records—they go really quick—but to do a Broadway show . . . writing the music is one thing, but putting the show on is another. People invest a half million dollars, a million dollars, that music's gotta have enough longevity, enough staying power to keep it on the stage, at least to pay off the investment. So the music has to be super high caliber, broad appeal-type music. It's an exercise in social consciousness, and to a degree, how much you can determine what people will like to hear.

A lot of Broadway music is really low level, and that's the thing I have the hardest time writing now. It's like, how can you underestimate the intelligence of people far enough in order to make something that's that commercially . . you know, that hits that lowest common denominator?

CREEM: Is that movie soundtrack real? TODD: It's real and it's not real, and in the end, it's just a question of when it starts. I've negotiated everything, dicked around with contracts and all that shit.

CREEM: What are you doing in video?

TODD: Right now, we're doing a lot of

wrangling to get an expanded studio into being. Formerly, I was doing all the work in my house, with less than superprofessional equipment. Now we're going up to broadcast quality.

CREEM: Who do you work with?

TODD: Right now, it's just me. I'm sort of the focus right now, because I've got myself personally invested in the concept.

CREEM: Can you characterize it?

TODD: There's not that much to say, because it's not limited. I mean, anything you see on the television, or that you don't see on the television but want to see on the television, is possible. Plotted shows,' unplotted, musical things, adaptations, great books4 of the world, cooking class, anything at all. There are alternative audiences to broadcast. Through cable TV stations, through record companies which are doing a lot of video promotion, there's a whole communication network out there, particularly in the music business.

CREEM: Do you see what you're doing in a museum or art gallery presentation? TODD: I haven't seen a lot of video art in galleries; I don't know what it is they're showing. I've seen a lot of video art that's sort of jumbly and junky, thfe most raw, primitive kind of thing.

CREEM: You told another guy from CREEM one time . .

TODD: . . . a guy from CREEM . . . CREEM: ... yeah, that by the time you turned 30, you didn't plan to be in rock any more.

TODD: You're sure it was 30? It wasn't 35, was it? I don't know. Beats me. I don't even know that I'm in rock; I don't know that I ever was. I think that's fairly close. I mean, I can't give you an exact date, but I am moving out of the musical mainstream, into the audiovisual mainstream. Ultimately, I'll play fewer and fewer concerts. I'll no longer be worth writing about in CREEM magazine. I don't care to be written about. Maybe if I get into politics I'll worry about it, but I don't know if I'll ever get into politics, either. It depends on the atmosphere, if that's the way to make things change.

CREEM: On what level would you 6xist in politics?

TODD: Well, I wouldn't run for local town assemblyman and then move my way up. You've gotta make a statement about politics, and the statement I would make would . . . have a great chance of failing. So I figure, why fail on a small level when you can fail on a grand level?

CREEM: You could do your own jingle.

TODD: We could do everything—our own radio commericials^, TV commercials . . .

CREEM: And have your own fundraising concerts:

TODD: Rock 'n' roll is a great forum from which to shoot your mouth off. But the rock 'n' roll lifestyle is not necessarily something an entire nation can adopt. It's only been lately that left-wing musicians have gotten into politicizing. For a while, I think, left-wing musicians were so far to the left that they were out of the political perimeter. And now, politics has moved that far to the left, and musicians have moved that far to the right.

Music is very "establishment" at this point. It doesn't represent the disenfranchised at all. Musicians are making too much fucking money—we're definitely enfranchised. It's no longer the revolutionary lifestyle—out in the streets, brothers and sisters, and all that other shit. It's very much: "Well what's going to be my income tax position at the end of this fiscal year?"

CREEM: Does that have anything to do with the fact that you don't seem to hang around in New York too much? TODD: Partly. I don't have a real lot to do with the scene that goes on in the music business. I don't like to hang out with people in the business, and I don't like to hang out with musicians who like to hang out. I don't like to hang out, essentially.

Usually, if I'm not on the road, displaced from the place where I usually do my more thoughtful work, that's what I'm doing—working. I have a lot of work to do in my life, for a variety of ends, most of them outward directed. I have a certain amount of socially-oriented work to do, and it may be more behind-the-scenes than' in front. Like, at this point, we're undertaking a revolution in video, and it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to go out there and be John Travolta. It means that, through the clout I've gained in the music business, I have to get an edge, drive a wedge into that television mentality. Television is more socially relevant to people than music and records are. It's going to change the record business for sure. At some point, people will still be making sound records, but the most popular records are going to be the ones that have pictures with them. W&.