Utopia
The Old Grey Whistle Test (October 1975)
Bearsville promo photo (l-r): John Siegler (bass), Ralph Schuckett (keyboards), Moogy Klingman (keyboards), Roger Powell (keyboards), Todd Rundgren (guitar), Kevin Ellman (drums)
Contributor: Steven Sonsino
Dedicated to Chris Rowlands
1961-1988
Who is the friend who most influences your musical taste? And which band or artist do they introduce to you? My musical pied piper is Chris Rowlands, a school friend from Shrewsbury, and the band he swears I should listen to in 1977 is Todd Rundgren’s Utopia.
I prove difficult to convince, however. Not least because it’s 1977. Mostly I’m listening to The Stranglers or Ultravox. Utopia, in comparison, is definitely at the progrock end of the spectrum. (And with a few exceptions that’s not my thing right now.)
Utopia suffers a disconcerting stop-start turnover in personnel early on. First, Chris describes a ragged five-piece Utopia that tours for barely two weeks. In the band are the Sales brothers who backed Rundgren on his first semi solo outings. That’s Hunt Sales on drums and Tony Fox Sales on double-neck bass. There is also David Mason on organ and a green-haired M. Frog (Jean-Yves Labat) on synthesizers. But the shows are beset with problems. Few of the venues have enough power to get all the gear working. Click here for a rare but ropey audio recording from that tour in 1973. The Hunt brothers leave, but resurface in 1977 on Iggy Pop’s Idiot and Lust For Life albums and then again in 1989 with David Bowie in Tin Machine. (So, musicians worth following, obviously.)
“We went out on tour with a grand concept,” Rundgren says later. “But no product to promote, nothing that remained after we did it.” That embryonic lineup splinters before ever recording anything.
Utopia then becomes a completely different six-piece that records an album and a half of mostly live material before becoming the final four-piece that goes on to craft a further eight studio albums.
What worries me most in my honeymoon period with this band is Chris’s description of Utopia’s latest concept album, Ra, and the tour that goes with it. It sounds positively freaky.
The ‘Ra’ tour, Atlanta 1977 (creative commons photo)
He describes (and shows me a concert review from Record Mirror in February 1977 to prove it) a giant sphinx at the back of the stage and a pyramid that Todd climbs to play a guitar solo. There are clouds of dry ice in the show, tumbleweeds blown across the stage by huge fans, piffling squirts of water as you might see at Disney’s Epcot park (soon to open in 1982). And giant flamethrowers shooting fire at a paper dragon. It sounds dangerous, if not ludicrous, and above all immensely pompous. When I see This Is Spinal Tap in 1984, I’m convinced the director Rob Reiner must have seen the Utopia show.
Here’s a snippet from the Ra show, just 1m16. (Go on. You know you want to.)
Full Spinal Tap experience
If you’re interested in the full Utopia-does-Spinal Tap experience here’s Singring And The Glass Guitar from Ra, as shown on an Old Grey Whistle Test special about Utopia’s parent label, Bearsville, in 1977. (Note that even the BBC can’t stomach the whole track, throwing in an intriguing if pointless edit of Rundgren talking about innovations in video to shorten the thing.)
Toppermost #1: Overture/Communion With The Sun (Ra, 1977)
After repeated Utopiawashing by Chris, parts of Ra begin to grow on me, particularly Hiroshima which is difficult to listen to but is so admired on the band’s Japanese tours. However, I’m not sure I believe Chris when he says the opening Overture that bleeds into Communion With The Sun is based on Bernard Herrman’s Journey To The Center Of The Earth. (Really?) Whether it is or not, this is a great introduction to the four-piece line-up of Todd Rundgren (on one of only two aluminium Veleno Ankh guitars), MOOG specialist Roger Powell on keyboards and synthesizers, Bette Midler’s drummer John ‘Willie’ Wilcox, and new boy Kasim Sulton from Cherry Vanilla’s band on bass.
Bearsville press photo: Ron Pownall
Todd loves the sound of his Veleno Ankh
(source: Todd’s Facebook page)
Who is this Rundgren guy, anyhow?
After introducing me to Ra, Chris takes me back to the first two Utopia albums. Actually, that’s not strictly true. First, he plays me a bunch of Rundgren solo tracks and I’m sold. The guy is genius. Plays all his own instruments. Is a phenomenal guitar player. And writes outstanding ballads as well as in-your-face thrash metal.
Chris has been a Todd Rundgren fan from the first two semi-solo albums made with the Sales brothers (Runt and Runt. The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren) and he delights in showing me a Rolling Stone review he’s kept from 1971 by a then-unknown Patti Smith. In the review she says – musically at least – Rundgren isn’t a runt anymore.
Chris also manages to join the Rundgren fan club by returning a postcard from the brilliant if radical solo album, A Wizard, A True Star. (Kudos from me. Because, let’s be honest, shipping a postcard across the Atlantic Ocean is no easy feat in 1973.) This gets his name on the famous poster designed by Sarah Southin, based on the Bill Klein cover photo that captures Todd with green and pink hair. It’s composed entirely of 10,000 fans’ names and Chris’s name is somewhere down near the bottom right. (He shows me many times.)
I won’t go into Todd’s solo work as Robert Webb has done a great job for Toppermost, but to give you something against which to measure Utopia click here to listen to a remastered early recording from 1974 of the stunning broken-heart ballad, A Dream Goes On Forever, written that year and appearing on the Todd album. Clearly Rundgren composes at the piano as a solo artist.
Toppermost #2: Utopia Theme (Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, 1974)
Utopia Theme is the first track from the first Utopia album, and on this video from November 2011 it’s played almost note for note by a semi-original and brilliant line-up. Ralph Schuckett (Carole King’s Smackwater Jack pianist) on keyboards, John Siegler (Hall & Oates) on bass, Kevin Ellman (Bette Midler Band) on drums and percussion, Jesse Gress (Tony Levin Band) on rhythm guitar and Kasim Sulton (Meatloaf) on bass and keyboards. The performance is in honour of original Utopia keyboard player ‘Moogy’ Klingman who loses his fight with cancer days before, at just 61 years old.
This is a great concert film. Watch all of it if you can.
For a more intimate watch, check out the Moogy Klingman Benefit Concert itself, available on CD and DVD from all great independent stores. Click here for a 2-minute snippet of Never Neverland. It’s beautiful.
Utopia Trivia Department: the guitar Rundgren plays here is a facsimile of The Fool, a Gibson SG that was originally Eric Clapton’s before he gave it to George Harrison.
Solo Todd or Rundgren band?
After learning about Rundgren and Utopia from Chris, I ask what seems an obvious question to me.
“Why does Todd need a band if he’s so brilliant? And successful financially, right? That single I Saw The Light was off the scale wasn’t it?”
We discuss for years whether Rundgren actually needs a band. It’s certainly a question the label, Bearsville Records, asks itself. “Utopia is Todd’s toy,” they seem to think. “Now just pump out another Todd single and have done with it.”
There’s a comment on the Todd Rundgren Toppermost that seems relevant here, from Calvin Rydbom, an archivist at the Akron Sound Museum, Cleveland State University and contributor to this website. Calvin reports Kasim Sulton saying the Utopia studio vibe is completely different from working on a Todd solo album. Which you can understand if Rundgren is doing most of the writing and playing on his solo albums.
So, a large part of it, Chris and I are thinking in the late 1970s, is that Rundgren just enjoys rocking out, riffing in studios with a bunch of friends and playing guitar live on tour. We’re partly right. In an interview some years later with Paul Lester, Editor of Record Collector, Rundgren confirms that Utopia gives him his first opportunity for serious guitar wizardry since the 1960s with The Nazz (Hello It’s Me), even if virtuosity for its own sake isn’t a priority.
“I’d made my success as a songwriter and singer so I wanted a band principally so I could play guitar in one form or another,” he says. He has John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra in his sights.
But there is more to it, especially experimentation and innovation for the now six-piece band, which as well as Mark ‘Moogy’ Klingman and Ralph Schuckett on keyboards, John Siegler on bass and Kevin Ellman on drums has the green-haired M. Frog (Jean-Yves Labat) on synthesizers.
“We all looked at this as an opportunity to do something aggressive and experimental in instrumental music,” says Rundgren. “It was a lot of fun. The tenor was enthusiastic and experimental.”
But this whole ‘experimental’ approach – it seems to Chris – is storing trouble for the future.
“What kind of trouble?” I ask.
“I can’t put my finger on it, but this will be a problem,” he says.
Is Utopia better live or in the studio?
Whenever we can, Chris and I worship on the floor facing his gigantic Wharfedale speakers (in my memory they’re the size of washing machines) and we argue constantly about whether this live version or that studio recording is the definitive version of a Utopia song. Because the band tours constantly and there are masses of live bootlegs kicking around.
But Chris is an adept musician (violin and piano) and almost always comes down on the side of the live recordings.
“Look,” he says, “there’s no point Rundgren writing a song if it isn’t going to be performed.”
It’s hard to disagree, but what about the ambient noise, the coughing, the cheering – doesn’t that spoil a record? Doesn’t it get in the way of a song?
“I don’t care,” says Chris. “Because to some extent, the audience reaction is central to the song. The band playing on its own doesn’t matter.”
He is irritating when he gets like this, so I push him. But he insists: the noise of the audience doesn’t matter. What’s important is the effect the audience has on the musicians.
“The fact the audience is there changes the singer, changes the band and how they play, and together that changes the song.”
I dimly sense something in what he says, but can’t put it into words. I blether something about live recordings often seeming warmer than studio tracks.
That’s only the half of it, he says. There’s a reason Utopia songs are better live, he says. It’s because Utopia plays live a lot.
“That’s just a circular argument!” I’m tired of the Spinal Tap BS and get up to leave.
Toppermost #3: The Wheel (Another Live, 1975)
“No, listen! Utopia songs are written to be played live,” he says. “Why do you think they have such long outros?” Are they just jamming, he asks, riffing off each other? Or are they building anthems? Something for an audience to sing along with, or tap their feet, or clap, or dance to? Or are they trying to co-create an experience to remember with the audience? This floors me.
“Look,” he says, holding up Utopia’s first two albums. “Both live,” he says. “That’s a statement, right there.” And he throws the second album, Another Live, on the turntable and drops the needle on the second track.
“This track was NEVER recorded as a studio version. It could NEVER be a studio version. It can ONLY be played live.”
It’s The Wheel. And while it has a very flowers-in-your-hair, 1960s vibe I begin to see something new – the truly interactive nature of a song.
This is Utopia, he says.
Another track the band never lays down in the studio (though I’m not sure why) is the third track on Another Live, Seven Rays, which is also the song at the head of this Toppermost, the version recorded at OGWT in 1975. This was Utopia’s first UK trip, with the first show at the Hammersmith Odeon widely bootlegged, but only released officially in 2012. It’s a great show and the sound is really clean. The Utopia line-up at the time features John Siegler on bass as well as MOOG maestro Roger Powell on keyboards and Willie Wilcox on drums. Backing vocals are by Anthony Hinton and someone about to dwarf Utopia: the million-selling and superstar-famous Luther Vandross. (This is how you do it, Utopia: Never Too Much.)
What is Utopia’s unique sound?
Chris is adamant that Rundgren’s inclusive leadership style – not to mention ensuring everyone shares the royalties – encourages all band members to write and contribute songs to Utopia. It’s also great for reducing the reliance on Todd to write and sing – sometimes he can just play guitar. Importantly, this keeps everyone personally committed to the band’s success.
This works up to a point and the songs the band contributes are among the most successful the band ever releases. The band’s only top 40 single, for example, Set Me Free is written by bassist Kasim Sulton and appears on 1979’s bestselling (for Utopia) Adventures In Utopia.
But does it lead to a unique sound, Chris?
Toppermost #4: Set Me Free (Adventures In Utopia, 1979)
Fun fact: everyone takes this as a love song/break-up song, but it’s really Sulton’s complaint about the Bearsville label locking him into a contract.
The Bearsville label, under its founder Albert Grossman, has a tight grip on all its artists, including the Isley Brothers, Foghat and, for a while, Meatloaf. And although Bearsville would love Utopia to create a unique sound, break through to the mainstream and get more visibility, it sees Utopia’s fans as simply being Todd’s fans. In other words the label doesn’t have to spend any money to advertise or market Utopia. Why not? Well, Utopia’s buyers already know about Utopia and what it’s doing … from Todd.
So here’s the Utopia challenge: having multiple singers and writers dilutes the band’s unique sound – if it even has one. Everything comes out of the blender a little blander. Which means the label doesn’t promote it. This is a big problem and it isn’t going anywhere.
Toppermost #5: Caravan (Adventures In Utopia, 1979)
Here’s Caravan, recorded live on the Adventures Tour (1980) in Columbus, Ohio. It’s the outstanding track for me from Adventures In Utopia, written by Roger Powell, protégé of Robert Moog, and inventor of the keytar – a mobile keyboard for the synthesizer. (You’ll see it in the video – the sparring with Rundgren on guitar is outstanding.) Caravan is a great story-based track, sharing blink-and-you’ll-miss-it insights into Islam. (“Everything has been pre-arranged.”)
It’s a great track, Chris, yes, but is it Utopia?
So what is Utopia’s niche?
Related to the issue of Utopia’s chameleon sound is the question Chris and I debate many times. What kind of music does the band play? Progressive? Or pop? Or something/anything else? Clearly after Ra flops there is some soul searching. And some genre searching, too.
1977’s Oops! Wrong Planet releases just six months after Ra – six months! – and features the Spinal Tap pyramid on the cover. Clearly with Ra the band made a mistake, they seem to be saying. And the inner sleeve of the album has the best photo of any band I’ve ever seen. They look completely flummoxed. Oops! Wrong planet, indeed.
Band photo by Fred Weiss
Oops! Wrong Planet is a great stab at much shorter, poppier tracks. Some are even nods in a punkish direction – Gangrene, for example, with drummer Willie Wilcox on vocals and Rundgren on drums, and Rape Of The Young. But the band won’t or can’t commit to the punk sound, preferring to define what it’s trying to do as ‘power pop’, whatever that means. The tracks are all of a great standard – I love Trapped (Brother John saw visions of God, so they put him in jail for acting too odd) and when I listen to the instrumental versions I get a distinct Steely Dan vibe, especially on My Angel. So, not punky at all. There is, however, one huge track on this album – an outstanding track, unbelievably underestimated – which we’ll come to later.
Probably the classiest pop potential for the band doesn’t appear till a few years later, on 1982’s self-titled Utopia album, where there are probably half a dozen potential singles. (Maybe more.) This includes Feet Don’t Fail Me Now with its ridiculous but hilarious video for the newly formed MTV and a great Kasim Sulton track, Libertine from the same album. Poppy yes, but is it Utopia? When you listen to this I defy you not to think of The Knack and My Sharona. Down to the white shirt and ties, for heaven’s sake.
Toppermost #6: I’m Looking At You, But I’m Talking To Myself (Utopia, 1982)
The track I listen to most from the 1982 Utopia album is the brilliant homage to 1970s soul, I’m Looking At You But I’m Talking To Myself. And it’s blasphemy, I know, but is there more than a shade of Otis Redding here? Or is it Rundgren’s hometown Philly sound of the O’Jays? Can’t help but wonder how Andrew Strong and the Commitments would do this. Better than Utopia, I fear, which defeats the purpose of writing the song, doesn’t it? If someone else could do it better?
Toppermost #7: Last Of The New Wave Riders (Adventures In Utopia, 1979)
What about straight up rock? Well, here’s the band on a 1992 reunion in Japan, without a recording contract and hoping (unsuccessfully) for another label to pick them up. They’re playing another Adventures In Utopia track, Last Of The New Wave Riders (1979). It’s an outstanding guitar-oriented rock track that is itself about playing guitars. (And the whole universe is a giant guitar.) But I’ve got more than a feeling the distorted guitars sound like Boston.
Utopia Trivia Department: crawling over the Adventures album sleeve for nuggets of information, as you do, you find a line saying Utopia is planning to launch a TV station and the songs on the album will be the first videos. Scouring the fan newsletters for more you find that Rundgren has placed a deposit for a transponder on an RCA Satellite. Why? He is going to own a channel on SATCOM3, which will launch into space at the end of 1979. So what’s he going to put on this video channel? After more scouring you find that Todd and his manager Eric Gardner have signed thousands of hours of music performances, promotional videos and early music videos. They’re going to launch a satellite channel composed only of music videos. Sadly, a delay in the launch means all of the locked and loaded channels lose their slots on the satellite. And there goes Todd’s Utopia channel. For the record, there’s no suggestion that Paramount takes his idea to launch MTV in 1981. (Interesting idea, though. Because Rundgren does dislike MTV intensely.)
Toppermost #8: Rock Love (Adventures In Utopia, 1979)
Then there’s disco. Utopia has been toying with disco as far back as 1976, at the time of the US Bicentennial celebrations. The Disco Jets sessions that year were perhaps an escape from the jingoism and were surely infused with one or more chemical substances – purely for creative purposes, you understand. Disco Jets is recorded at the Bearsville studios shortly after the release of Rundgren’s much-maligned semi-covers album Faithful, featuring Willie Wilcox on drums, John Siegler on bass and Roger Powell on keyboards. (As Faithful appears the year before Ra, Chris and I debate whether technically Faithful is the first four-piece Utopia album?)
Anyhow, on Disco Jets there’s a hilarious send up of the Star Trek theme by Alexander Courage, a pastiche of C.W. McCall’s Convoy called Cosmic Cowboy, complete with CB call signs, and Spirit Of 76, a mish-mash featuring Yankee Doodle Dandy. Roger Powell later says: “The album was a hoot to record. I remember laughing so hard that I cried.”
Bearsville (perhaps wisely) buries Disco Jets in the vaults for 25 years. It only saw the light in 2001. (Which seems appropriate given the sci-fi feel.) It’s released under the Utopia banner, making Disco Jets the first official four-piece Utopia album. Unofficially.
Disco Jets aside, disco is acknowledged publicly full-on in 1979’s Rock Love. It’s a little late to the party, but it does sport a super-long outro for dancing. Plus, it keeps the vampires off your neck five years before Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Power Of Love vampires.
Special mention to Willie Wilcox’s motorcycle drumkit in this 1980 concert film from Columbus, Ohio, and is that Rundgren’s Ankh guitar you’re rocking there, Kasim?
Rock Love isn’t released as a single – what is the label thinking? – however, a Rock Love video does appear, full of B-movie John Travoltas. It’s dreadful dad-dancing at its worst, but you must watch. (I do recommend, however, peering between your fingers. It doesn’t help with the awfulness, but it does help you live with yourself afterwards.)
Brilliant musicians make a brilliant band – true or false?
One of the reasons Utopia is so adept at mimicking different genres and styles is that the band’s roster is crammed with outstanding musicians. No question.
Just staying with the fab four, Rundgren, for example, is actively sought as a producer throughout the 1970s. His astonishing guitar solo on Jim Steinman and Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell is legendary (and he basically underwrites the album for Meatloaf and Jim Steinman, so when the final accounts are settled Rundgren may eventually make more money from Bat than anyone else).
Kasim Sulton is such a good bass player he plays with Blue Öyster Cult for five years – tough gig – and he becomes Meatloaf’s music director. (Tougher gig?)
Willie Wilcox becomes a composer for NBC television shows and converts Michael Jackson’s body of work into 5.1 surround sound for computer games.
And Roger Powell was a protégé of Robert Moog, is an inventor in his own right and is trusted to tour with icons including David Bowie.
This very sophistication brings with it the challenge that Chris spotted so many years ago. And the challenge is this: because the members of Utopia can play in any style, they do. It’s easy because they’re such superb musicians.
So here’s the thing. Because they are all so brilliant Utopia can only ever be behind the curve, copying other styles and never unique in its own right.
In parallel, writing and crafting songs is also easy. Doesn’t mean what they write is any good, but the process is easy. “My songwriting process became almost too second-nature,” says Rundgren in a 2010 interview with Paul Myers. “I was writing songs formulaically, almost without thinking, knocking them out reflexively, in about 20 minutes.”
What the band does NOT do, however, is consciously develop its unique voice, a musical style that builds a fan following by word of mouth, a fan following that grows with them. Despite a prolific, if punishing, recording and touring schedule, Utopia’s fanbase stays pretty stable across the 1980s, according to interviews with Rundgren himself. Album sales are superglued at round the 200,000 mark.
This is sad because these guys can see what works in other people’s soundscapes. They can advise what other singers and bands need to do to craft a unique and identifiable sound. They just don’t (can’t?) do it for themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, Todd. I’m not saying that a singer or a band has to stay wedded to a single style or sound. (That would bore you to distraction, I know.) But Madonna evolved over decades, didn’t she? Unlike Cyndi Lauper, say. (Girls Just Want to Have Fun 2025 Tour, anyone?) And U2 got out of the 1980s pretty well, didn’t they? While Utopia, to be honest, is dead in the water come 1985.
POV, Utopia’s final studio album, is poorly received critically and is the worst-selling Utopia album ever, landing only in the bottom quarter of the Billboard top 200. (It didn’t dent the British charts at all, to my knowledge.) Even though – I’d like to suggest – Utopia’s musicianship toasts U2’s abilities, Utopia’s acclaim and commercial success is a fraction of U2’s.
Not even dusting off the Ra Sphinx and
putting it on the cover of POV can save it
To be clear, commercial success for its own sake never bothers Rundgren. (His money comes from producing and to some extent from solo record sales.) But it is irritating that each new Utopia album brings in less money than the last, so the advance for every tour (no more wacky costumes or sets), and the eventual return to each band member, shrinks inexorably. Willie Wilcox and Rundgren butt heads often on the question of commercialism versus experimentalism.
When is an experiment just wrong?
Rundgren says in interviews throughout the 1970s and 1980s that each of his and by extension Utopia’s albums is an experiment. And you can see the truth of this as far back as A Wizard, A True Star, which follows hard on the heels of Something/Anything, Rundgren’s only top 30 album in the US. So, one of the conclusions I reach is that Rundgren simply has a low boredom threshold. He doesn’t want to do the same thing twice. And although Utopia is a kind of collective and the other musicians have a kind of voice, Rundgren’s vote ultimately carries the day. Been there, done that. What’s next?
The problem with experiments, though, is they need to be thought out. They need to have a clear purpose and you need to learn something from them. They shouldn’t just be carried out because they can be carried out. I fear, however, that too many of Utopia’s experiments are because-they-can pointless. For example, Rundgren writes I Just Want To Touch You as a Beatles pastiche for the Alice Cooper/Meatloaf movie Roadie. It opens with a harmonica and if you squint out of the corner of your eye it’s the mirror image of I Want To Hold Your Hand. But the song is rejected on the grounds that it’s too good. Too much like the Beatles. So what, says Rundgren? Well, the producers are worried they might get sued by a somewhat litigious Apple Corps.
“We should be so lucky!” says Rundgren.
He is incensed at the rejection and so Utopia records an entire album of Beatles pastiches. Because they can. Hoi Polloi is Penny Lane. Everybody Else Is Wrong is I Am The Strawberry Walrus Forever. The whole album is dashed off in a furious minute. They call it Deface The Music. In truth, Deface The Music is not an experiment – it’s an exercise in spite. Released in 1980, the album does afford me a pleasant afternoon spotting the sources. As you do with Eric Idle’s Rutles. Only problem? Deface The Music isn’t funny.
Indeed, the whole thing turns tragic when – just weeks after the release of I Just Want To Touch You as Utopia’s sixth single – John Lennon is assassinated by Mark David Chapman on the steps of the Dakota apartments in Manhattan.
What constricts my chest when I hear the news is that Chapman is wearing a Todd Rundgren promotional t-shirt when he’s arrested and leaves a copy of Runt. The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren on the bedside table at his hotel. The one with the noose round Rundgren’s neck. He’s a Rundgren fanboy.
I can’t believe it’s coincidence that Rundgren disappears to his New York studio at Bearsville to write and record his next album over an intensive eight weeks across the New Year period. He plays every instrument. Sings every note himself. The album is released on 28th January 1981. It’s called Healing.
By the way, the video to accompany the promotional single Time Heals was the eighth music video ever shown on MTV. Everywhere you look history is in the making.
Toppermost #9: One World (Swing To The Right, 1982)
There is one saving grace for me from the catastrophe that is Deface The Music. One track recorded for the album never makes it onto vinyl. That track is One World and it appears on the follow up Utopia album, Swing To The Right, in 1982.
The cover art for Swing To The Right is another joke at Utopia’s expense, a comment on Deface The Music, perhaps. It’s a famous photograph of that bonfire of the Beatles albums. Only, the graphic artist has switched the Beatles album for the Swing To The Right cover. (Burn after listening, as it were.)
United Press International photo (August 1966)
To be fair you can hear the Beatles vibe on One World. (Harmonica? Check. Gravel voice after all-night recording? Check.) But there’s more to this track. There’s a distinct Utopia vibe, too. It fits Rundgren’s vision outlined so very long ago in the Utopia Theme. (City in my head… Utopia.) Love this.
This is Utopia.
Toppermost #10: Love Is The Answer (Oops! Wrong Planet, 1977)
The penultimate or last track on most Rundgren or Utopia albums is invariably a soppy, sappy love song. (Even on albums produced by Rundgren. Case in point? The Tubes Love’s A Mystery.) But call me old fashioned, these end-of-album Rundgren songs are brilliant. And chief among these is the exquisite Love Is The Answer. It’s an epic, singalong, end-of-show anthem that a better world would have taken to the top of the charts and left there instead of England Dan and John Ford Coley’s cold and anaemic rendition.
This is Utopia.
So, was Utopia a successful band?
Utopia is never truly successful in a commercial sense. Of the 10 mainstream albums the band releases before quitting in 1986 (live and studio) only two make it into the US top 50 albums. What is also true, is that Utopia’s labels give scant support to the band. Only 13 singles are released across 13 years. Do the maths. And only three of these chart at all in the US: Kasim Sulton’s Set Me Free makes it into the top 40, while both The Very Last Time (a Boston-style soft rocker from Adventures) and Feet Don’t Fail Me Now (from 1982’s Utopia, courtesy of the bonkers insect video) only just make the Billboard 100.
Initially the lack of support from Bearsville comes from its simply relying on Rundgren’s fans to back Utopia. But then a new label for the band, Network, which has just signed a post-Fame/pre-Flashdance Irene Cara, gladly takes the band’s 1982 pop-fest, Utopia, with half a dozen obvious singles baked in. Then disaster. The label’s giant parent, Elektra/Asylum, cuts Network out of its distribution plans. The label folds before another year is out and Utopia is back on the street. Ironic on so many levels.
The Passport label bravely takes Utopia’s next album, presciently titled Oblivion (1984) and then POV the following year, 1985. Trying to avoid Wilcox’s strangled drum programming as best it can, the label releases Utopia’s final three singles – Crybaby (the zombie offspring of Tom Tom Club crossed with Bon Jovi’s Livinˈ On A Prayer), Love With A Thinker (which has a Billy Ocean ‘going gets tough’ backbeat that never gets going), and Mated (Wilcox music with pappy Rundgren lyrics). None of them charts.
Toppermost #11: If I Didn’t Try (Oblivion, 1984)
The only time I ever see Chris Rowlands cry is listening to Oblivion for the first time. Utopia has spent a decade touring, touring, touring, cranking out single material for the labels and then seeing the labels do nothing with them. In addition, the inward frustration of being unable to find a focus for the band is clearly taking its toll. There seems no optimism in the band’s music. And with the death in 1983, just a year before, of a Rundgren idol – Buckminster (Spaceship Earth) Fuller – the question confronts the band hard. Utopia or Oblivion?
Then this: If I Didn’t Try. A shade of a downer, but it shows you there’s always hope, says Chris.
This is Utopia.
So, was Utopia any good?
The quality of Utopia’s body of work is staggering, across all genres and styles. Just how staggering I didn’t realise until compiling this piece. Because when Oops! comes out, I just want more Ra. When Adventures In Utopia comes out, I want more Oops!. When Swing To The Right comes out I want more Adventures. That’s probably only natural for any music fan. But all of it together? Amazing listening. And what I realise above all is that certain Utopia songs – whether they’re rock songs, or ballads, or anthems – speak to a view of the world that is hopeful and optimistic, I might even say uplifting. Despite the problems we seem to have as a race, of relating positively to each another. (It’s a bad news day as I write.)
And then I remember reading an interview with Rundgren about the band’s original philosophy:
“There were no 10 Commandments of Utopianism”, says Rundgren, “but I did feel that we should have quasi-spiritual objectives. More than a commune, Utopia would be a model for human interaction.”
There is a feeling of furious spiritual uplift about the best of Utopia. And perhaps a naivete? So my conclusion 50 years after Chris Rowlands introduces me to the band is that Utopia is neither solely progressive nor solely pop. Its body of work, however, is passionate and purposeful. Which surely is music at its best. I might even say utopian.
And with the ugly twin heads of Spinal Tap and Pseud’s Corner rearing I’ll stop here.
TOPPERMOST #12: Only Human (Swing To The Right, 1982)
Swing To The Right is an album I hate when it’s released, but it keeps me listening through the years. Because it deals with things like the swing to the right, the love of money (listen to this and you will never hear Philadelphia’s O’Jays the same way again) and censorship (riffing joyfully on Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” – who’d have thought).
But what tops them all is a beautiful anthem, Only Human, in classic Rundgren style with brilliant improvised vocals and great harmonies. Singalong-a-Rundgren it may be, but it’s heartfelt and uplifting.
This is Utopia.
CODA – Just One Victory (Another Live, 1975)
Chris Rowlands taught me so much about music. Not just to hear it or listen to it. You should question it, he says, question what it means to you. And then you need to learn from it. But most of all, he says, you should live it. I’m still learning what that means.
When Utopia quit, Chris moves to Australia in the mid-1980s. No connection, it’s just that the coincidence is burned in my mind. Because the AIDS wave takes him, along with so many others. I miss him dreadfully. But I still see him rocking out every time I throw Utopia on the turntable.
His favourite Utopia track is Just One Victory. It’s an optimistic, involving and uplifting track. And it’s right to end this tribute here. Because, he says, no matter how difficult the times are that we live in, we live in hope.
This is Utopia.
| Track | Album |
|---|---|
| Overture/Communion With The Sun | Ra |
| The Wheel | Another Live |
| Utopia Theme | Todd Rundgren’s Utopia |
| Caravan | Adventures In Utopia |
| Set Me Free | Adventures In Utopia |
| I’m Looking At You, But I’m Talking To Myself | Utopia |
| Last Of The New Wave Riders | Adventures In Utopia |
| Rock Love | Adventures In Utopia |
| One World | Swing To The Right |
| Love Is The Answer | Oops! Wrong Planet |
| If I Didn’t Try | Oblivion |
| Only Human | Swing To The Right |
| Just One Victory | Another Live |
Utopia playlist
Another Live (1975) US cover
Another Live (1975) UK cover
Todd Rundgren bandcamp (+ links)
Toppermost #431: Todd Rundgren
Steven Sonsino never saw Todd Rundgren or Utopia live, but his great friend Chris Rowlands did and never stopped rubbing his nose in it. They did however see a ton of other bands including Blue Öyster Cult, the Clash, Thin Lizzy, both Ultravoxes, Pink Floyd (The Wall at Earls Court), Moody Blues, Roxy Music and Neil Young. The last band they saw together was Genesis with Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett at the Milton Keynes Bowl in 1982. (‘And that’ll have to do, Chris,’ says Steven.)
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