THE TODD RUNDGREN & UTOPIA CONSPIRACY

There’s a standard story about Todd Rundgren that you’ve probably already heard. It goes like this: He’s great. An enormous talent. Can write songs blindfolded. Thousands of ’em. But he got weird. Put together a band. Band wasn’t very good. He doesn’t care. And that’s that.

Basically, this is the same review rewritten three thousand times in three thousand newspapers, the same one that must really make Todd Rundgren mad if he reads it, but he probably won’t anyway. It’s also the same review that must make Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and Willie Wilcox equally non-happy, because they’re Utopia and thus the “not very good” band everyone’s always talking about. Makes no sense, of course, because Utopia is a very good band and most people who write otherwise either haven’t been listening lately or else are too busy paying lip service to other outmoded concepts, too. Deface The Music, the most recent Utopia album, is not only that band’s best album evet—it’s one of the best pop albums of the year, something few critics bothered to mention while pulling Bedtle quotes out of it like silly schoolkids. It was^ great. Didn’t sell worth diddly, though—any LP that has Todd Rundgren’s name on it probably sells twice as much as any plain Utopia album—but that’s really par for Utopia’s course.

What we’ve got here, essentially, is a very boring line of logic to be swept under the carpet as fast as possible. Todd Rundgren’s been responsible for 19 albums since The Nazz in 1968, not counting Swing To The Right, the newest Utopia album, due out in a few months. A total of 20. The first two Nazz albums have been personal faves of mine for years, not to mention every Rundgren solo LP until Todd, which was occasionally pretty boring and made me wonder if he was as good as I thought he was. The problem here, of course, is that this is exactly the TR party line I mentioned earlier. You’re not supposed to like much of Rundgren’s work after this, and don’t ask me whose fascist concept this is, that’s just the way it is.

And there are exceptions. You’re allowed to like exactly one half of Faithful— that’s the one where the other side’s all that studio-imitation jive that sounds great once—and all of Hermit Of Mink Hollow. The verdict isn’t in yet orf Healing, but I think it’ll probably rate a thumbs-up eventually. The point, aside from the fact that this vis all mumbo-jumbo, is that Todd Rundgren has been tucked away in A little critical cubby-hole ever since that very first Utopia album and no one’s let him out since.

Why? There are several reasons. The main one, probably, is that Todd Rundgren is many things, but first and foremost a songwriter. The first Utopia album—with Ralph Schuckett, Moogy Klingman and M. Frog Labat—was filled with everything but songs: Mahavishnoid guitar gyrations compounded with fake Jan Hammer riffs that might have been interesting if there wasn’t so much other stuff that sounded like it but was better. Rundgren’s talents were, for want of a better word, buried in technoflash mud. BUT: with the formation of the current Utopia, the one that debuted with Ra, technoflash took the backseat to group democracy. Rundgren let the other Utopians sing, which was forgiveable, and write, which maybe wasn’t. His impeccable ear for melody couldn’t help but pale the other Utopians’ efforts, and the end result was what seemed like an ass-backwards American Gong album—and when Rundgren produced Steve Hillage of Gong a year earlier, with Utopia backing him up, we should have expected as much.

But Initiation, Rundgren’s solo splurge of 1975, really told that tale much better. Here TR was openly embracing the instrumental flash that was central to British art-rock bands like Gong and Hatfield & The North—not to mention the Mahavishnu Orchestra—with pomp that was hardly circumstantial: “A Treatise On Cosmic Fire,” the side-long instrumental showpiece, hinted at the sort of Oriental mysticiam that Sri Chinmoy wouldn’t dare belabor us with. It seemed—and occasionally still seems—that Rundgren’s flair for romantic lyrics took a backseat to cosmic Moonology.

So what does this have to do with Utopia 1981? It’s simple: Utopia had three major problems, initially. First, of the bunch, only Todd Rundgren could write a memorable melody line. Secondly, the band concentrated on notes for the sake of notes, which usually sounds as exciting as it looks. And thirdly, personality. The band had very little of it.

Most rock critics Judge music on its trendy aspects.--Todd Rundgren

AND: I am happy to report that these problems have been resolved.

How? Point by point, it goes like this: Deface The Music, and even the earlier Adventures In Utopia, displayed an unexpected songwriting maturity among the three non-Todd Utopians. Though credits are such that all Utopia’s songs are attributed to the entire band, it isn’t difficult to figure out who wrote what. “Set Me Free” from Adventures, the first legitimate Utopia hit single, was written by bassist Kasim Sulton. Deface The Music was potentially full of hits, many of them clearly the work of Sulton, Powell or Wilcox. “Clearly” because a)Rundgren’s favorite chord progressions can be spotted a mile away and b)the other guys finally stopped trying to write those same progressions.

Point two: the current Utopia plays songs, not rambling homages to the Great Green Belly of Buddha. Maybe they’ve decided other people can do it better, maybe they’ve finally figured out John McLaughlin’ll never write a pop song in his life. Either way, it doesn’t matter. If it’s a bad song, it’ll only last a few minutes.

Finally: personality. Impeccable Aryan Roger Powell no longer comes across onstage like an est trainee, Kasim Sulton’s played a few gigs of his own out there, and Willie Wilcox not only drums but sings. Go see ’em and you’ll see what I mean.

And now, of course, the big question: DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER?

Well, in the cosmological scheme of things, I suppose, no, not really. The inherent sociological value of the modern day Todd Rundgren & Utopia experience doesn’t really rank right up there with a cult band from England whose lead singer hangs himself or, on the other hand, with the concept of a David Lee Roth. But big deal. Social relevence and rock ’n’ roll are only good for one album anyway.

☆ ☆ ☆

So here I am, old Todd Rundgren fan, watching 1981’s Utopia emerge onstage in camouflage gear—Echo & The Bunnymen they ain’t—while the local ON-TV crew videos the whole shebang for later broadcast. Turns out Utopia gets all rights to the production after X amount of showings—ol’ Todd is a business shrewdie, if nothing else. A further media tie-in: both shows are being recorded for an upcoming King Biscuit Flower Hour, answering the unasked question why not do three things at once and make money at the same time? The band whips through a reasonable backlog of material, Something/Anything’s “Couldn’t I Just Tell You” through the previously unheard Swing To The Right material, which—get it?—explains the costumes.

And, as usual, it’s the same faceless CE^wd Faithful was indirectly named after. While Rundgren’s following must be growing after all these years, how come every show draws the same number of 15-year-old girls? Must be the melodies, I guess, though Powell and Sulton especially have their teen appeal down pat; rather have my daughter at a Utopia show instead of buying Dead Kennedys records, but I don’t even have a daughter.

"I'm some kind of a technocrat, but I can't help it." —Todd Rundgren

Backstage, Utopia’s road manager unwittingly looks like Gabe Kaplan while he tries to find the band. Eventually he brings Sulton and Wilcox, both ready and willing to communicate the Utopian experience to the common man. What’s the scoop, I ask, with Kasim’s solo recording career? He tells me he did a few unsatisfactory sessions in January, but more is forthcoming. “It’s just pop, heavy pop,” he tells me. “Just me and a drummer.” Willie reveals his songwriting partnership with David Lasley, James Taylor cohort who sings on the latter’s latest LP.

Of course the shadow of Rundgren hangs half-ominously over the proceedings; understanding fully that everyone wants to talk to Todd, but maybe not as many people are interested in the other Utopians, I try to talk around him. It isn’t easy.

What happens when Todd records solo albums like Healing, I ask. Does he bring the stuff around and ask you guys what you think of it?

Sulton laughs. It’s unthinkable. “No,” he grins at Willie, “no, he doesn’t ask.”

“I haven’t even heard the whole thing,” says Wilcox.

Oh yeah?

“That’s why we all have our solo things,” Sulton says. “It would be a real drag if Roger and Willie and I just did this. ’Cause Todd has so many diverse talents and does so many things that the times he wasn’t working with the group we’d just be sitting around twiddling outr thumbs. For me, I’ve always been into different things—but it’d be a drag if I was nothing but the bass player in Utopia.”

How do you guys feel, though, when the audience cheers all the old Todd material but quiets down for your stuff?

“Ah, you just have to roll with the punches,” says Sulton. “I mean, he’s got a 10 or 12 year professional career on top of us.”

“Jt’d be worse,” notes Wilcox, “if we played one of those songs and there wasn’t any reaction.”

OK. Who decides to pull the singles off your albums, anyway?

“The record company,” Sulton says. “We don’t really care about that stuff, though. I mean, we have feelings about it, but if we were to tell them we thought something should be a single and we were really pushy about it, and if it came out and flopped...” He makes a face. “We’re sick and tired of pointing the finger at them, so we just let ’em run with the ball. And drop it.”

Bearsville?

“Our record company sucks. They’re the worst record company in the business. We should be a lot more popular, we should sell a lot more records than we do—and it’s partly the record company’s fault. I mean, you meet musicians every day who blame their careers on their record companies, but if you were in this group, lemme tell you... you would too. It’s a do-nothing label, they don’t suppon you, they battle you tooth and nail for everything.”

But then you guys talk about Todd and his 12-year career there...

“Well that’s where it gets confusing. Because it’s been great for Todd, he’s built a niche there that few people have, he’s respected and admired. But for a group like us it doesn’t work. And I think that Todd managed to break in his career when the record company cared—which was, you know, six or seven years ago.”

How about you guys? You like getting interviewed instead of just Todd, as usual?

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45

“Sure,” Sulton nods. “We did this interview once, the whole band, and this guy came in and sat us down. He was kind of a pushy type, ya know? He asked Todd a question and Todd didn’t want to answer it, so one of the other guys—I think it was Willie—started talking and the guy hit ’im! He didn’t actually haul off and wham ’im, but he gave ’im a slap in the arm and said ‘Hey, shut up, I’m talking to Todd... ’

“When stuff like that happens,” says Sulton, “you want to kill. You can taste blood... ”

Naturally enough, this concludes our interview. I want to talk to Todd.

☆ ☆ ☆

Gabe Kaplan, road manager, brings Todd Rundgren and Roger Powell into out backstage interview cubicle, ostensibly for photographs. “Hey,” asks Rundgren, “are these for CREEM, the magazine that hires high school kids to write the captions under the pictures?’’ Photog Bob Alford snaps away while the boys make faces; eventually he departs, taking Sulton and Wilcox with him. Rundgren and Powell grab a seat while I wheel out my recorder. “So, ” Rundgren drawls, “you’re the lucky guy who’s gotta do the Utopia story, hmmm? What did you have to do, draw straws?’’

I mumble excuses. Hey, we like you, that’s why we’re doing this interview. Rundgren settles down. We talk about Utopia old and new, instrumental meanderings versus actual pop songs.

“1 still like instrumental music,” says he. “Music that’s not burdened by some lyric, pinned down by some lyrical.idea. It’s just that I think that there was a period there where everything possible was played. Every note that could possibly be played was, so there wasn’t much else you could do but break it down into the ground and start from a simple, direct songwriting approach.”

The conversation develops. The subject of rock critics arises: “Most rock critics are obliged to judge music not on its inherent merits but on its trendy aspects,” says Rundgren. Which makes perfect sense, I figure, for a guy who had rave reviews for the first half of his life until, um, things changed. The Utopia concept. There was a period there when everything possible was said, and all that.

. But I’m not there to cast doubt upon the efficiency or proficiency of Utopia; I just want to know, say, why England Dan and John Ford Coley had a hit with “Love Is The Answer” when Utopia should have had it in the first place. Are there any easy answers?

“Well,” says Rundgren, “I don’t want to point any fingers, but our record company has always had a lot of trouble breaking records. Not just our records. They’ve had extremely few successes. I think it’s partly the record company, partly the position they’re in with their distributor, which is Warner Brothers. And Warner Brothers’ subsidiary labels always take a backseat to Warners’ own product.”

“And those guys who did that tune,” says Powell, “they had a string of hits before that anyway. They had more credibility to begin with.”

“More singles credibility,” Rundgren adds. “We’re an unfamiliar name to break into AM radio.”

Well, say I, I think that Deface The Music had more hit singles on it that any other album I’ve heard this year.

“Yeah,” nods Rundgren. “Well, it did, when it first came out, get a lot of response —in terms of programming and play. But I think the thing that would have elevated it beyond being a novelty album would have been to have a hit single. And for some reason the record company never got into that. Because if there was a hit single off it, the market is such that those people would never have known anything about the album, that it had to do with the Beatles. It would have just been a hit record.”

OK, so it wasn’t a hit record. No point in another anti-Bearsville tirade. Try Todd Rundgren, rugged individualist. There’s always that lyric to “The Death Of Rock And Roll” on Initiation: “Just the other day,” sings Todd, “I got a call from a friend/'heard what you been playin’ and I think it’s a sin/Why can’t you make a living like the rest of the boys/instead of filling your head with all that synthesized noise?”’ So the big question is, why this defensive posturing, why this urge to do exactly what your critics and fans don’t want you to do?

“I think that the solo albums that I do— where I go the most out on a limb—are usually the ones that have the most problems with the critics,” Rundgren says. “Usually ones that I enjoyed the most, like Initiation, the ones where I have the most fun.

“Something/Anything, as much as I enjoyed the exercise, was unsatisfying for me in the end—except for the live part, which was something that I hadn’t done before. But writing songs in that vein becomes so...automatic...that I didn’t feel like I was being creative. It started out being a single album, but by the time I was finished it was a double album. I was writing a song every day, in 15 minutes I’d come up with a song. It became too easy, it was all formula, essentially.”

But what about Isaac Newton? He thought his physics and math were OK but he really wanted to see his philosophy published. And of course his philosophy stunk...

“The thing is, when you’re dealing art, you’re not necessarily talking about your reputation. It’s not what you want to do, it’s what you feel obligated to do. If your priorities happen to be financial, then you feel obligated to make commercial music. But since I’ve gained a certain independence through producing other people’s records, when I make a record the only thing I have to confront is the music itself. I don’t have to worry about what it’s final impact will be. And so I strive as much as possible to do a record that I’ll enjoy listening to afterwards.”

OK. Then what do you think you’d be doing if you never had to work another day in your life? The same stuff?

“I’d be doing a lot of work in my video studio,” says Rundgren. “I do a lot of computer programming—which is gonna confirm a lot of people’s suspicions that I’m some kind of technocrat, but I can’t help it, it’s something I enjoy doing.

“But it’s not as if I’m gonna stop making music. I have no intention of quitting making records. I don’t know how directly I’ll be involved in the business...but there’s some things that can only be expressed in musical terms. And I’ll always resort to music if I feel I have to.do that.

“But there are other things that are better expressed in other media. And the important thing to me is always the value of the expression, whether something is useful and important to say. Or fun to say. It doesn’t always have to be earthshaking...” ☆ ☆ ☆

Todd Rundgren, Unwilling technocrat, who says he doesn’t always make commercial music because he doesn’t have to. In a band—Utopia—that’s making commercial music now because it wants to. In a magazine that hires high school kids to write the captions under the pictures.

Once there were three people. One said he thought there were rules about which bands he should like. Another said his record company wasn’t giving his records the proper push they needed to be hits. The other said he was sick of talking about conspiracies and went Out for a walk. Later that day he got hit by a bus and nobody even noticed.