from Music Connection Magazine
Vol. XIX, No. 12
June 12 – June 25, 1995

Todd Rundgren, Multimedia Poster Boy

Who better to grace our Multimedia Special than an artist who has been consistently at the forefront of technology? We talk with this wizard and true star (a.k.a. TR-i) about his past and future technological explorations and his new interactive-only release, the aptly titled The Individualist.

by John Lappen

If there is such a thing as a renaissance man in rock music, then Todd Rundgren fits the bill as well as anyone.

The veteran musician has come a long way since co-founding the Nazz back in the late Sixties -- a Philadelphia-based quartet which served as the launching pad for this wunderkind's fabulous career, one that continues successfully nearly 30 years later.

Along the way, Rundgren -- a consistently interesting singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist -- has expanded his many interests to include video, production, computer software development and interactive & multimedia explorations and innovations.

Even as far back as 1972, with the release of his much-heralded solo LP, Something/Anything?, and his classic 1973 follow-up, A Wizard, A True Star, Rundgren exhibited an advanced technical side to his work.  I can't lay claim for inventing anything new back then -- but it does seem like I'm either ahead of my time or behind it,  laughs Rundgren during a lengthy and revealing interview.  I wasn't the first person to use the studio technologies that were available then. I was, however, exposed to things before they became more familiar to the populace at large.

 But I am very aggressive when it comes to technology. If I decide to get involved with a technology, I do so because it fits into my overall strategy. It's a natural inclination on my part to expand the breadth of my language into other areas. 

In addition to fashioning an impressive body of solo work, this sonic wizard has also lent his production expertise to a variety of outside talent. His production touch has graced classic works by Cheap Trick, Badfinger, Hall & Oates, Grand Funk Railroad, XTC, the Psychedelic Furs and one of the biggest selling records of ail time, Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell.

In fact, Todd can thank Meat Loaf for helping him to get started in his early, groundbreaking video ventures.  I invested all the money I made from the first several years of Meat Loaf sales in a video studio. I lost the entire thing -- over two million dollars. The part that was important to me, though, was being able to construct video projects. For that reason, I didn't mind losing the money, because I wanted to work in video a certain way -- my way. I wanted to go into my video studio and work any time I wanted. 

And what fan of contemporary pop/rock music can forget Rundgren's classic catalog of songs? Whether singing emotional ballads such as  Hello, It's Me  and  Can We Still Be Friends,  creative covers of tunes such as the Beach Boys'  Good Vibrations  or wry pop songs typified by  Bang The Drum All Day  and  We Gotta Get You A Woman  -- the legendary Runt has carved a visionary path as one of the most creative artists working in rock today.

Rundgren's formation in 1974 of the progressive rock unit Utopia -- a quartet that featured like-minded musical technicians such as keyboardist Roger Powell -- added another impressive credit to Rundgren's ever-expanding resume.

If he'd felt content to rest on his extensive musical laurels, the Pennsylvania native would go down in rock history as one of the genre's most interesting and innovative artists. But the ever-curious and experimental Rundgren has seen fit to explore methods in which to expand the content and form of his music throughout the years.

He's certainly assembled an admirable resume as one of the pioneering multimedia artists. His impressive list of achievements includes the first interactive television concert (in 1978) and the first live radio concert broadcast nationally, an event that linked 40 cities nationwide.

In 1979, he opened Utopia Video Studios, and his first produced project, Gustav Hoist's classic, The Planets, was selected by RCA SelectiVision as the initial demonstration software for their then-new videodisc format. The inimitable Rundgren can also take credit for directing and producing the first music video to utilize compositing of live action and computer graphics (the video,  Time Heals,  was also the second to be aired on MTV).

His forays into programming resulted in his creation of the first digital paint program for PCs, a program he licensed to Apple Computer. Todd's 1982 live national cablecast of one of his concerts via the USA Network was also a first.

Rundgren jumped radically into the establishment of a new musical genre when he composed, produced and performed the world's first interactive audio-only CD-ROM project, the 1993 Rhino/Forward Records release No World Order, which was also licensed to Philips Interactive Media and Electronic Arts. The disc won 1994's Best Interactive Disc of the Year award from Video magazine.

 Forward Records was very liberal-minded when it came to the No World Order project. It benefited me hugely, and it didn't benefit Forward at all. My benefit was that I got lots of publicity, which has helped bring me to the position that I am today. Their problems were that they were in the record business. They were trying to start a record label, which can be tough going initially. I encouraged them to invest in the interactive area. To their credit, they did. They put their faith in me, and I got lucky. Unfortunately, they weren't a multimedia company, so they didn't benefit like I did. People weren't as interested in the record part of it as they were hugely interested in the interactive part of the project. But I'm grateful to them for sharing the vision. 

Rundgren continues to establish his reputation as a pioneering multimedia artist with the release of his latest work, The Individualist. What makes this disc noteworthy is that it will be the first title ever released exclusively on C-D+. The CD+ format allows conventional CD listeners to listen to the full album of audio tracks when operated on a standard CD player, while PC and Macintosh users can also view graphics and other vivid visual elements.

Released via an exclusive licensing arrangement with ION, a BMG-distributed interactive label, Rundgren describes it as a multimedia album.  I guess I am the multimedia poster boy,  chuckles Rundgren.  It's made a lot of things possible for me -- particularly accelerating my long-term goals and interests along these lines. I spent lots of time toiling in obscurity, but it's amazing how quickly things move when one becomes the interactive poster boy. 

When asked if he minds being a spokesperson for the technological new wave, Todd defers, saying,  I'm a spokesperson for me. Now that I've gotten the attention, I want to help characterize the so-called industry in ways that I think it should be characterized. I'm not a spokesperson for the industry, because I think there is a lot of bullshit in it. But I'm not afraid to share my ideas on matters related to new technologies. If anything, I'm a talking head when it comes to these matters. 

And as if all of this landmark activity wasn't enough, Rundgren also currently hosts a weekly radio show called The Difference With Todd Rundgren, a show syndicated nationally to over 35 major-market stations.

Recently, Todd was recognized for his contribution to the arts when he received the prestigious Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Popular Culture Society at UC Berkeley. Fellow recipients included film director Robert Altman, Aretha Franklin and Beach Boy Brian Wilson.

 The acclaim is certainly appreciated by me,  says Rundgren.  I do the technology related things I do because I want to impart my knowledge in different technological languages. Sometimes the experience is successful, and sometimes it can be a distraction. I've tried to be more careful in how I invest my time in general, though.

 Considering the time I have left on the planet, I have to decide if I want to spend it watching I Love Lucy reruns or learning how to program in some obscure language -- something I keep getting sucked into, anyway. I have to undergo this learning process, though, if I want to keep expanding my knowledge or if I want to accomplish a certain goal. 

Rundgren, who has been quoted as saying that he would have gone to school to become a computer programmer if he hadn't pursued his musical inclinations, explains what whet his interest in new technology.  I've worked in a variety of media, but what's different these days is the element of interactivity; that is, the ability of the audience to have a greater degree of fine tuning over their experience of entertainment. I resisted my involvement in interactivity for a long time because I knew if I got involved, it would eat away a great deal of my time. I've spent a lot of time in front of computers, but in order to redefine myself as an artist, I knew I should make the move into the new technology. 

But, although his enthusiasm for and personal involvement in multimedia remains strong, he's not convinced that record labels are currently doing enough to explore the use of the new technologies.  Record labels are very unimaginative when it comes to their involvement with the new technologies. Labels look for something to market; something goofy or controversial. They like it better if an artist craps onstage or says fuck 30 times on the Letterman show.

 During the end of my time on a major label, it was tough getting certain people at the label excited about me as an artist. In the end, a standard label is not the answer for me these days. In the past, I'd been coasting on certain assumptions regarding my success on a label. I'd been avoiding integrating the copious knowledge I'd gained about computers and interactive issues with the music I'd been making. They were the two things that consumed the most time in my life, but I treated them separately.

 But, until I came upon this interactive music idea, I hadn't figured out a way to integrate the two. I had to have a justification for merging my music with new technology. I simply recognized that there have been changes in the way people listen to music these days. Regardless of the kind of music I made, I wanted to connect with these changes. 

Being an avid consumer of technology and an innovator gives Rundgren an appreciation for what he feels the consumer wants to experience when it comes to musically oriented multimedia projects.  I think the consumer wants additional experiences, but I think they'll be shortchanged in the short term. Initially, artists and record companies are going to tend to put out CD-ROMs that are filled with useless information just to be able to fill the pipeline with CD-ROMs.

 Why would anyone want to buy music that isn't that great and then have to suffer through the biography of the poor person who put out this boring music? It's going to be a case of giving people a chance to pay money for a double dip of boredom. There's too much of an inclination on the label's part right now to put out filler material for additional content on CD-ROMs. Most will fill the disc with feckless biographies that will be meaningless except to the most die-hard fan. Right now, nobody knows what they're doing in regard to multimedia and music. All that these companies know right now are games. Nobody has even really made any money off of the high-profile music titles that are out.

 I look back on some of my early ventures into this area as somewhat naive. There was some trial-and-error involved with my attempts to merge interactivity and my music. Phase One was to develop a way to start dealing with the initial problems. We built the technology necessary to do that, and I recorded the music necessary to demonstrate the technology. Now I'm into Phase Two, developing ways to improve upon my initial forays into these ventures.

 Initially, the goal was to get a reaction and make adjustments based on those reactions. The long-term goal is to fully satisfy the desire for people to re-purpose music; to make it more vital than the drawing room experience that artists and labels have tried to characterize it as, which it no longer is. 

Rundgren also feels that there will be numerous further developments beyond the current development of CD-ROM and CD+ titles that are edging their way into the music mainstream.  All of that stuff will have a short-term effect because these discs will never have enough capacity for the amount of data that people want to have available to them. That's why all of the phone and cable companies will be offering the consumer internet services at terrifically fast speeds. A record store will simply be a giant file server someday.

 What most people don't realize is that the disc that they buy is not a piece of property that hey j own. They own the plastic, but they don't own the sound on it. All that this represents is a license to listen to the sound on it, but the record company owns the sound, so all you want as the consumer is the sound, not the piece of plastic, in the future, people will pick up their TV remote like they're looking for their favorite TV channel, except they will want music.  When it comes to the current crop of interactive music offerings available, Rundgren points out that interactivity is still in its nascent stages.  There aren't that many titles available right now. So because the pickings are slim, it's hard to comment. But it'll get better as time goes along and the technology is integrated more fully into the mainstream.  The advantages to the merger of new technology and music is the re-definition of the listening experience to something that reflects the particularly tailored presentation of music that is appropriate to the situation one is in. The situation may be something the consumer is already used to. For example, one might want to hear Abbey Road from beginning to end. If it's not in one's record collection, all one'll have to do is just dial it up on the Internet and listen to it, without having to pay for the whole record. The only payment is for listening to it once. One will also be able to use the new technologies for reference matters as well. The possibilities are limitless. 

Although Rundgren undertook an interactive approach for his No World Order tour, whereby the audience participated in the evening's show by virtue of interactive means, he'll be fronting a rock band in the standard format when he tours this summer.  I felt the interactive tour was successful on many levels. The material itself always reflects ideally the content I want to convey, but obviously the live interactive performance was a radical attempt to alter the form.

 Content is always more important than form,  says Rundgren.  The message is the most important thing. An entertainer can't tart up the message and suddenly make it meaningful or entertaining. The musician has got to have something to say, something that the artist believes in and is important to sing and write about. I'm not concerned at all that, at least in my case, the use of technology will override any of the emotional or intellectual content of my music. 

The inventor laughs softly when asked if he considers himself to be of an iconoclastic nature.  I suppose in as much as I have a disregard for the rules, yes. There are certain rules one should follow, but music business rules are mostly unenforceable, anyway. Besides, I'm having to make up lots of my own rules as I go along my chosen path.  Spoken like a true renaissance man.