From Mix Magazine
Vol. 5, No. 4
April, 1981
by Bruce C. Pilato
As I rang the buzzer outside the main entrance to Utopia Video Studios in Bearsville, N.Y. my friend and I could hear the yelping of what seemed to be a small and very excited dog. As the door opened we were greeted by a tall and lanky Todd Rundgren and his pet mutt, Furburger, a dead ringer for Toto.
It was a Saturday during the coldest part of winter and the town (just a stone's throw from Woodstock) seemed deserted. For Todd, today would be yet another interruption from his relaxing lifestyle at home to talk again about his newest project and foremost concern: Utopia Video.
Having been an accomplished solo artist and group member since 1967, as well as one of rock & roll's most successful producers, Todd Rundgren is now focusing on the marriage of audio and video by building and maintaining one of the foremost studios of its kind.
Located about 2½ hours north of New York City, Utopia Video occupies a new 2500 sq. ft. building, employs never less than 10 people and sometimes as many as 30, houses some of the finest state-of-the-art video equipment, and thus far has cost nearly $2 million. And according to Rundgren, it cost a staggering $40,000 to $50,000 per month just to keep open!
Dressed in a Utopia warm-up jacket and pants and a pair of space sneakers, Rundgren stretched out in front of the control board and talked for several hours about Utopia Video and the present state of the video and music industries, as well as his career as a musician and record producer.
"I don't think that I crystallized on the fact that video was the next big thing; initially it was just something I was interested in," Todd said matter-of-factly. "I didn't know it was going to become as popular a medium as it is now. I mean, it was always a popular medium but not as attractive to musicians as it is now. I just got into it because I was personally interested in it. That was about six years ago."
Utopia Video began about two years ago in Todd's audio studio located in his Bearsville home. Soon afterwards, he moved it into one of the big vacant rooms in the Bearsville Records studio. Rundgren's former manager, Albert Grossman, built the current studio to Todd's specifications and presently leases it to him. Grossman is president of Rundgren's label, Bearsville Records, and is a former manager of Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin.
For Todd, getting the studio going didn't require an immense amount of initial planning. "I just started ordering equipment," he said as though it almost required no decision at all. "It's still not completed, though. We're always trying to keep up with the state of the art."
Rundgren purchased some of the finest video equipment available, among them: the Squeeze Zoom, the Rutt/Etra video synthesizer, the EMS Spectre synthesizer, the BJA Chromaton, a massive computerized lighting system, the Ultimatte keying device and a row of Sony 1" broadcast quality video recorders.
Of the Squeeze Zoom, Rundgren said: "It's the new generation of popular video manipulation devices that you see on commercials constantly. The networks use them a lot, too. They're just used for shrinking pictures and rotating them. It's a reposition and rescaling device. It gives you a lot of control in the end, but it only remembers one frame. You can only freeze one frame."
The RUTT/ETRA is the original video synthesizer. It is black and white and the picture has to be colorized later on. The machine is generally used for graphics and, like the Squeeze Zoom, the image is also repositional. "It works on a different principle," said Rundgren. "You can change the characteristics of pictures. You can take a square picture and make it spherical."
Rundgren's first piece of video equipment was the EMS Spectre. "That's the most like a video synthesizer in the sense that it actually provides you with raw material to mess with. The other synthesizers are all processing devices; they don't create images, they just process them. But that synthesizer actually has a catalog of patterns and images that you can combine and homogenize and just generally mush together. It can also process some material, to an extent."
The BJA Chromaton is a similar synthesizer to the EMS Spectre, the main difference being that the BIA is somewhat analog while the EMS is digital. The studio's control board was purchased as a standard board and then customized by Rundgren's engineers after it arrived and was installed. Rundgren bought the board and the Squeeze Zoom as a package; both are made by Vital Industries.
Although the building seems filled entirely with Utopia Video, I wondered if Rundgren was considering combining his video and audio studios in the future. "Well, we have audio here, already. We've got 16 tracks in case someone wanted to use it for something. It's a Stevens machine. In fact, I did all my old records on it before I moved up to 24 tracks. It was first used on A Wizard, A True Star."
In 1979, Rundgren did his first major production in the new Studio. It was a video adaption of Tomita's interpretation of Gustav Holst's The Planets. The sci-fi story centers around a young boy who escapes out his bedroom window into a waiting spaceship and journeys through the galaxy. I guess you could say it's kind of a cross between Peter Pan and Star Wars.
While trying to get the uncooperative TV monitor to work so we could see The Planets, Rundgren spoke bitterly of the project which, after being half completed, is presently in a state of limbo.
Rundgren's reason for choosing The Planets in the first place was because of RCA. Not only did RCA own Tomita's record, but they also owned the patent on the SelectaVision, a model of the video disk. RCA had told Rundgren to go ahead with the project, which they thought they could use as a demonstration piece for their video disk machine.
The production took months and $150,000 to complete the first half of Tomita's recording. When Rundgren showed what he had accomplished to RCA executives they said, in Todd's words, "thanks, but no thanks." It wasn't the production they were questioning, but its cost. RCA said they were not willing to invest that kind of money for the development of software until they were assured of a stronger market. They paid Rundgren $30,000 for the promotion rights. He was out $120,000 and had no funding to complete it.
Rundgren left the meeting with RCA furious. In November 1979, he spoke at a major music/video conference in Los Angeles. After showing the half-completed production, Rundgren mounted the podium to a standing ovation. His 30 minute presentation, however, was mostly an attack on RCA and its SelectaVision system, "RCA has spent $100 million developing the machine," he told his audience angrily, "and has not spent 1% of that to develop new software."
"I was doing this thing for RCA in the hopes that along with this mercenary attitude they have, they might develop some artistic responsibility... but, of course, I was wrong."
Over a year has passed since meeting with RCA, yet his disgust over the whole affair hasn't decreased one bit. RCA was never interested in it from a realistic standpoint. Not from the point that they'd have to pay for original software. They're only interested in things that have already been released elsewhere. And then they only pay a minimal licensing fee. It's set on a royalty basis. It's not like the music industry."
"They don't want to finance the software," continued Rundgren, "because they don't have the confidence in the sales potential' of their machine, essentially. In other words, to get a return on something that cost $100, $200 or $300,000 to produce, you gotta be able to sell 300,000 copies of it. And when you've only got 10,000 machines in the market, you're not gonna sell that many."
Rundgren has more problems surrounding the release of The Planets, besides RCA. When the Holst Estate heard about the video production made to Tomita's album, they brought action against Rundgren, telling him he couldn't use the music. Rundgren's lawyers tried getting them to change their mind, but to no avail. 'Well, the bad news from the Holst Estate is that under no circumstances will they issue us a license for the use of the music," said Rundgren, sounding even further disgusted. 'They've got this 'ass-holier-than thou' attitude and won't let us do anything with the music at all. So we're investigating other possibilities."
Rundgren stressed the point that the Holst Estate was not upset with Rundgren's video interpretation of the music, but rather his use of Tomita's record. "Well, they didn't let him do it; he just did it. Then they brought litigation against him saying 'you can't release that album', for some ridiculous pompous reason I'm sure they're more pompous than the original composer ever was, which is a problem"
"Yeah," said Todd shaking his head in disbelief, "it's still only half completed; it's still in limbo." Rundgren says he may either finish it with a straight classical interpretation of the music, or he may write and record an entirely different musical soundtrack.
Todd's experience with The Planets left him with a sour taste in his mouth for the video disk. I asked Rundgren if he thought the video disk would go the way of quadraphonic sound systems, in the sense that the industry would hype the hell out of them only to discover that there's really no market for them. "I think the video disk is sort of a quadraphonic, myself. It has turned out to have a lot of disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that you can't erase what's already on the disk. A lot of technology is overtaking it as well. There's two way cable at this point, where you can order up anything you want. So why should you have disks that you can't erase at a cost of $25 each, when for $5 subscriptions you can get whatever you want and much quicker. Then there's a lot of things that will be originated for subscription cable TV only and won't be available on video disk at all."
According to Rundgren, today's economy can't really stand to create a market for anything except for the video tape players which are presently available to consumers. "I don't think there's anything else necessary. Subscription is probably the broadest media in terms of video software available. Although it's not available to everyone yet, eventually it will be. I' mean, they're hooking up a million homes at a time and it's always going, whereas video disk is hoping to sell 50,000 machines in a year. There is no way that video disk marketing can keep up with cable. And then there's going to be direct to home satellite TV as well."
According to Todd, the reason he built Utopia Video is to produce artistic video (and audio) showcases for cable or network TV. "Essentially, it's the same reason I built the audio studio. If you want to get totally immersed in the artistic process and not worry about a clock or budget or things like that, you have to have a facility that's independent of those considerations. And video is an even more expensive medium than audio to work in, in terms of personnel and hardware and things like that. So I didn't have any alternative. If I wanted to get seriously involved I had to have a facility like this one. I needed something that wasn't going to represent or resemble a rat- race situation."
Two other projects that Rundgren is working with are a TV show featuring his group, Utopia, entitled Adventures in Utopia, which promises to be a 1980's version of The Monkees, and a more serious TV series entitled How to Run For President. Although they will happen eventually, Rundgren says it will be some time before he gets to complete them.
"All those things have taken longer than first proposed, mainly because of the state of the economy. They've slowed it down. The problem is the day to day finances of the studio; the financial burden of keeping the studio open is so great that I can't even work in it!" said Todd, laughing slightly. "I have to spend all my time producing records and things like that in order to get enough financial support to keep the studio going. It's a personal liability since I own the studio. Subsequently, we may have to take some financial steps to put the studio on another level and relieve some of the burden so we can get on with other projects."
Will that mean giving up a piece of the ownership? "It may mean that," Todd told me as though that was something he could deal with, "though it may mean something else. I may give up part of the ownership, but I would never give up the control. Not in terms of percentage, but in terms of direction."
Although Rundgren doesn't want Utopia Video to be exclusively a music oriented video center, he realizes that a majority of the productions that come out of there will be based around music and/or musicians. In the Sixties and Seventies, if a rock musician wanted visual exposure on the screen it was either in the form of live television (Ed Sullivan, Shindig, American Bandstand) or in films Help!, Woodstock, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, etc.). In recent years however, it seems as though every group has a video presentation to go along with their new release. And it also appears that the rock oriented film, such as A Hard Day's Night, is now obsolete, or at least impractical.
"Rock music is the music of our generation," Rundgren told me, "just the way Bebop and Swing music was the music of the last generation. And all through the 1930's there wasn't any television but there were a whole lot of movies based on the contemporary music of the time. It's just that lately, the movies have been really bad and drawn upon the worst music for their basis—disco music and things like that. Because of the mercenary attitude of people in the music industry, it's been recognized as transient in nature. It's a real discredited music form and they make movies like Can't Stop the Music and
Xanadu. They become novelties and they become dated. People are no longer interested in that kind of music and they don't go to those movies. Aside from that, the music is not that spectacular. I mean, it's all right, but nothing remarkable."
One alternative, especially for Rundgren, would be to produce video films. In 1971, Frank Zappa produced and released 200 Motels, the first film ever made entirely on video. "I haven't seen that or Baby Snakes (Zappa's second video film.) I think we've thought about it, but in our particular case, which is Utopia, we're not a giant enough commercial entity to be able to justify that type of thing. The reason is that we're always going for something artistic rather than something commercial. That's why we never became large enough commercially to engage in the grandiose artistic consciousness. If we ever did, it wouldn't be a Can't Stop the Music or Xanadu; it would be something where the music was much more important."
The music industry of late has taken to video. As the video industry and market continues to expand, record companies see their most visual artists as naturals for the 19" screen. In the last five years, it has become a common practice to release a video accompaniment to an artist's hit single. More recently, some groups have done video presentations of entire albums, among them, Blondie. Inside the jacket of the recent double live Kinks album, One for the Road, there is an order form to buy a Kinks video featuring four selections from the album. The cost: $30.00.
Aside from hard core Kinks fans, it doesn't seem as though many music fans would shell out 30 bucks to watch them play four songs, especially when they can catch the group on Midnight Special, Fridays, Solid Gold or several other national or syndicated TV shows. 'That's exactly what I'm saying!" said Rundgren enthusiastically. 'That's why I'm not oriented towards the so-called 'rock video market'. I do them occasionally, but you know they were originally done for promotion. They weren't intended to be sold anywhere. They were originally done so groups could get exposure on national television, or more importantly, on international television. So you get exposure on European television, without having to go over there. They were just a promotional device; big commercials. A commercial the length of the song, to sell the song. That's why we're oriented towards more or less show pieces that are designed for the cable or broadcast market, 'cause that's where the exposure is."
Rundgren also doesn't believe that video will completely replace the art of live performance. However, with the growing cost of touring and the ever increasing competition on the road, he does feel that video could offset a substantial portion of live tours, and relatively soon. I mentioned the recent Grateful Dead Halloween Concert from Radio City Music Hall that was shown in theaters all across the country. Both the video and audio quality was far less than desirable, yet tickets cost nearly as much as the actual concert.
'The big problem is you don't have a lot of control, or as much control with the live performance," Todd continues. "You can't go to one hundred cities and make sure everything is going smooth. When things like that happen it only hurts the concept. I don't really think it's such a bad concept. The difference is that you're not at home sitting there watching it on TV—you're there with all the other Dead Heads and it's a real party. It depends on how high you are as to whether or not you notice the shitty quality," he says laughingly.
Rundgren thinks that in the near future, some artists (especially major ones) will videotape one of their shows, sell it to cable or network TV for something like $100,000 and get it shown to millions of people in one shot, instead of touring for three months.
Some artists, David Bowie in particular, have not been available to tour and therefore have done very artistic video presentations. "I haven't seen that much yet. I've seen David Bowie's stuff, which obviously has a lot more work and thought invested in it than most other videos. It's personal and goes beyond just being a promotional thing. I like the fact that it's a versatile statement."
For the 33 year old Rundgren, Utopia Video is just another step in an already successful and challenging career. In the late Sixties, he led the Nazz, one of the better pop bands to emerge out of the psychedelic era. Following the band's break-up in 1970, Todd pursued a solo career in which he released several albums, including 1972's Something/Anything, a double LP in which he wrote all the songs, performed all of the vocal and instrumental parts, and engineered and produced as well. Since 1974, while occasionally releasing solo albums, he has led the increasingly popular Utopia, a band which now includes keyboardist Roger Powell, drummer Willie Wilcox, and bassist Kasim Sulton.
Last summer Utopia performed in a live three hour concert that was broadcast on Warner-Amex's QUBE closed circuit TV system in Columbus, Ohio. The system should have allowed the audience to communicate their opinions and preferences directly to the performers. The system refused to function until the show was nearly over; however, the band gave their audience a tour of Utopia Video after the show and used the system to answer questions asked by viewers in Columbus. It was one of the most popular shows in QUBE's history.
Because of Rundgren's financial responsibility to Utopia Video, extravagant Utopia tours seem highly unlikely in the near future. "At this point we can't afford it," says Todd. "The last tour we did we took a certain projector with us and it required certain kinds of towers in order to have room for the projection. We needed extra equipment and, in' the long run, we lost money again. We lose money on all our tours! So at this point we can't afford to go out and do anything special this time. Ticket sales at concerts have been off, as you know, so far that promoters all over the country are going out of business. We can't afford to not break even, at least."
Rundgren was quick to admit that he only tours now out of necessity. "Yeah, when necessity arises, you have to tour. I mean nobody tours out of the pleasure of it anymore. It's not a pleasure. I like playing, but touring is .a different thing. There's the advantage of performing, which is an exhilarating experience, but there's also all the down things. There are all the events that lead up to the performance which are less than enjoyable: constant travel, crappy food, sound checks." Since the formation of Utopia, Rundgren has also maintained an active and equally successful solo career. He has use his solo albums to cover certain musical areas that are not suited for Utopia, especially the more pop oriented directions.
When he's not busy at Utopia Video and not recording or touring himself, Todd is usually buried in a recording studio producing someone's next hit record. Some of the artists he's produced in the past include: Tom Robinson, Rick Derringer, Patti Smith, Grand Funk Railroad, the Tubes, Badfinger, the New York Dolls, Hall & Oates, Shaun Cassidy, and Meatloaf, whose debut album has sold seven million units worldwide.
Rundgren recently said, "Grand Funk paid for my audio studio and Meatloaf paid for my video studio." His production style had yielded what is known as "the distinctive Rundgren sound," which features crisp, upfront vocals, lots of background vocals, plenty of synthesizers and a very heavy rhythm section.
"I never go after producing people. You really don't want to say 'Let me produce your record.' It's like saying 'Let me run your life!' Someone has to come to you. I get a lot of offers and I turn a lot of offers down. The single major reason why I won't produce a band is because of the material. It's not their execution. A lot of people have good execution nowadays because that's what they think they need to succeed. It's not that, it's the material."
One of Rundgren's earliest successes as a producer came when he was asked to finish the third (and eventually the most popular) Badfinger album, As Todd recalls, "This guy that was directing Apple Records in New York just called me up and asked me if I was interested. Apple Records was really a mess; that's the reason they didn't do anything else. At the time, they'd been working on the album for a year, and when I got involved it took, like, a week and a half. A lot of the problem was with Apple Records, which was a problem for the Beatles. I had a real sleazy time with George Harrison. He didn't finish any of those songs, yet when they became hits, he took credit for them. He's got a reputation as being less than the spiritual guy he professes to be all the time."
Rundgren's 24 track audio studio is adjacent to his house, within a couple of miles of the video studio. Todd says he has no plans or desire to convert his audio studio to digital. "I don't think most people can tell the difference. It has to do with the sounds you get. I don't usually go most of the time for a reality kind of sound; I'm going for surreality. Subsequently, it's hard to tell the difference. If you're recording horns or other acoustic instruments, say drums, in an acoustic sort of way, rather than a super acoustic way, which is the way they used to record horns, then digital might make a difference. But in most of the things I hear everything is souped up beyond reality, anyway. And there's no way I can make it sound like a band playing in your living room.., it's always going to have jet engines or something like that."
Our conversation gradually drifted back toward video and Todd began talking about the difference most artists experience between making records and making videos "It's the working situation. The artist has liberated the audio recording medium, more or less. When you make a record you outline what you want to do and then you work on it until you reach that objective. Bruce Springsteen still takes a year or two to make an album, because that's how long he wants to take to make it. But if someone is doing video it takes days by comparison. They spend so little time on it and plan so little on it, and so the quality is naturally second rate by comparison."
Finally I asked Todd if people who watch and tape these video presentations won't eventually get tired of the visuals and simply just listen to the audio like they do now with records. "It's possible," he says. "People get tired of music, as well. A lot of people don't listen to records anymore, they just buy them as background music for other activities. I won't buy a record that I won't 'listen' to. I have to sit down and listen to the whole record. The reason why people would get tired of watching the video portion is because you can't do other activities while the visual is on, so it all gets down to the same thing. When you put on Sgt. Pepper you may still listen to some part but you won't listen to it the way you did when you first bought it, because it's so familiar. You don't feel it requires that concentration, so you do other things while it's on. I mean, once in a while you might get really nostalgic and drop some acid and really listen to Sgt. Pepper."