Todd and Friends: Utopia or Bust By Jim Girard From Scene, August 28 - September 3 1980 SCENE photo by Linda Woods

Todd Rundgren has done his level best to keep the concept of Utopia in the fore of his fans' minds. For example, he seldom gives solo interviews anymore; at least related specifically to music. Also, the tours are billed as Utopia, featuring... The Utopia albums boast Utopia with Todd Rundgren, Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton and John Wilcox. Slowly and surely, the point is being made that Todd Rundgren isn't all that interested in being a star; he wants to be a band leader, but not its sole creator.

However, that's a tough pill to swallow for a public who has been constantly reminded of his brilliant pop meanderings, top production for other artists (The Tubes, Alice Cooper, Meat Load and Shaun Cassidy are among the latest he's produced) and video lord with his own studio for major video productions. Point is, Todd is one of the most interesting and opinionated people in the music business - on any level.

Still, this, I was told very frankly and bluntly, would have to be a "Utopia interview." Now, that means that I would either have to sit in a room and talk to four people at the same time (a horror I've endured on a few select occasions in the past) or I could do individual interviews. The members of Utopia, however, preferred to do a "group session." "Shit," I thought, "now I remember why I hide behind my desk at SCENE and watch other writers march into the front line every week. I've been at this too long anyway," I mused aloud on my way to the hotel. There weren't any batteries in the bulky old JVC unit I was carrying, so I had to haul a cord along. All of SCENE's small tape players had been ripped off over the course of the summer (money for dope?) and I felt like a fool carrying around this large and awkward item into the hotel ( a Holiday Inn, of course). There I was met by Bob Ferrell (our long-time photographer and friend of the band - and their girlfriends, I might add). One by one, the members of Utopia filed into the room at their leisure (Todd arrived last) and the interview began.

One hour later we left the band and bid adieu as they left for the Blossom sound check (in their second night of sold-out shows) a few miles away. I listened to the tape on the way home and realized that Todd's perceptions and statements not only outnumbered those of his three mates, but also constituted the most substance discussed. "Now what?" I thought. Do I just put in everyone's comments in the interest of fairness, or do I single out Todd's quotes? Was I putting special significance on Todd's statements and ignoring the others?

Another listen to the tape told me that Todd's perceptions ended up being the final say on all the topics we discussed - and simply because he was the leader and designer of the Utopia project. It was that simple Not my fault.

So, here is the Todd Rundgren interview.

SCENE: You've been using Utopia to record on albums produced by Todd Rundgren. Why is that?

TODD: It's just because we're used to working together and it's easier to work like that. If an artist has someone else in mind they can use them; but, a lot of times they don't have anyone in particular in mind and then I'll suggest Roger, Kasim or Willy. The Tubes, for example didn't need anyone because they had their own band. But like on the new Meat Loaf album, I'd have Roger play all the keyboards, but they (Meatloaf and Jim Steinman) like Roy Brittan's piano playing, so Roger plays everything but piano.

SCENE: What's the story on the Alice Cooper songs you did with Utopia for him?

TODD: We just did two Cooper songs for the ROADIE soundtrack. It had nothing to do with his FLUSH THE FASHION album. He re-did the song "Pain" on that album though - an inferior version at that (he laughs). There's also a third version of the song in the film, but that's done live and isn't available on record.

SCENE: What's the band going to do after the tour? Are you going to be visible, or cool it?

TODD: We'll be out of sight. And we'll be quite busy, so to speak. We aren't going to tour for several months, at least. And we also have a new album coming out.

SCENE: What's the title?

TODD: Why is everybody looking at me (speaking to the band)? You guys know the title.

ROGER: Are we allowed to reveal it?

TODD: What's the title, Willie?

WILLIE: It's going to be called DEFACE THE MUSIC. We were going to call it UTOPIA OR BUST.

SCENE: You're not going to talk about the album?

TODD: We decided that we shouldn't; it's going to be fairly controversial and we don't want to offer anything that might affect what people think about it.

SCENE: What about when the album comes out?

TODD: I don't think we're going to promote it with interviews at all. We aren't touring right away either. Warners says that it might come out in September, but it actually might not be out until October.

KASIM: Or not at all.

SCENE: Is it that bad?

TODD: Let's say that it's going to turn some heads and it's sort of controversial. It's what we really think and it'll speak for itself, I think..

SCENE: Do you think Warners thinks of Utopia as your folly? I've always thought that they took your solo career more seriously than they took Utopia.

KASIM: I think Warners would wish we'd go away (he laughs).

TODD: Really, though, I think it was true that they took my more seriously than the band until the last album (ADVENTURES IN UTOPIA). You realize that their interest is based almost solely in commercial success. As long as the band was less successful than my solo efforts, commercially that is, the less they liked the band.

However, we have structured it so that... for instance, I'm not under contract to make solo albums anymore. The band, of course, is. In other words, they're going to get band albums at regular intervals and they will have to do something with them. I haven't had a solo contract in three or four years.

SCENE: So when you did the HERMIT OF MINK HOLLOW, that was just a one-off in the real sense of the word.

TODD: Yeah. All my solo things have been one-offs. They're all off (he laughs). But ADVENTURES IN UTOPIA sold more albums than HERMIT did, so Warners will have to take the band seriously.

SCENE: What do you really think about the "New Wave" phenomenon? You know, four guys and garage bands and all that.

TODD: The only advantage in that, for me, is the fact that there's the independent marketing aspect to it... The reason that there are so many little custom labels coming out is that the bands realize that they won't have a chance at appealing to some record company guy in Hollywood or Burbank. So, a lit of these bands have their own custom labels. Then, if that's successful, they get picked up by a major label and they will become more slick anyway... and on and on.

SCENE: New wave is already over, I guess.

TODD: Well, in England, supposedly, the great festering boil of new wave music has now gone away and heavy metal is big. That's the latest thing. Now they're back to traditional forms of music - like heavy metal. It's funny.

SCENE: What happened to the Tomita video you were producing for RCA Selectavision on THE PLANETS?

TODD: RCA commissioned me to do it and I finished half of it. They didn't want me to continue because they didn't want to set a precedent that was unrealistic. I can understand that from the financial aspect, but I cant understand how they expect to create a strong video market without something unique. The software is going to cost money.

I think they feel they can sell old movies and old TV shows and stuff that's not going to cost them any money. I think it's weird, bit that's where their heads are at. I mean, they've spent $220 million developing hardware for this home video thing and they haven't sold one machine. It's crazy because you can only sell one machine to a family, but you can sell software constantly...

Anyway, I'm still going to finish the Tomita thing myself and we've got the music licensing now. That's one of the things I'd like to do this year.

SCENE: What about the UTOPIA television show you were working on?

TODD: Well, we don't have a pilot finished yet, but we have a lot of interest in it. Everytime we see daylight and we have some time to work on it, something else comes up. We've only had out studio finished for video since February and we did a tour, then we cut the new album and then we went out on tour again. We may actually have to enforce a touring and recording hiatus in order to finish the video work.

SCENE: Fort the home video market, isn't there some problem with albums done in video? Something with licensing? There were problems releasing EAT TO THE BEAT by Blondie on video.

TODD: Well, that's all because the musician's union wants a piece of the action. Any act who has a major album is capable of negotiation a fair royalty rate. Everyone knows that the musicians union just wants a share and there's where trouble comes in.

As every musician knows, the musicians union is like this leeching scumbag parasitic growth in the successful and creative part of this industry. Essentially, ever since I have been involved in music I have never had any use for them. At one point I was involved in music that was disenfranchised from unions. I was in a white blues band and you know that blues musicians don't join the union. You play for some piddling sum. Then, when I started recording, for example, you negotiate a contract that far exceeds what a session man makes anyway; so you don't need a union for that. All they do is send some seedy little guy to show up at all your gigs, pester you for your card and take a piece of the action. Anybody who is involved in the music business and is looking for success as a serious player knows that they get in the way.

The musicians union should stick to the people they service best: the musicians who play in Holiday Inn bars and work with session musicians. See, it costs them money to go to bat for you and they won't; whenever we have had a contract problem or whatever, they never helped.

SCENE: The format of Utopia is settled. It's been the same four person line-up for four years now; are things going to change?

TODD: We all do things other than the band, but we believe the band's concept and talents are strong enough to hold out. We're all friends and that's worth a lot.

Special thanks to Bob Ferrell who asked the band the video questions and who took the photos at the hotel and at Blossom. Due to the fact that some son-of-a-bitch stole all of his camera gear (including several rolls of exclusive Utopia photos) a few days after this interview took place, there are no new Utopia photos to accompany this story. That's rock and roll...