CYBER-TROUBADOR by JEFF STRATTON If the world of popular music were seen as a decathlon, Rundgren would be its superstar. If wearing different hats was the main barometer of genius, then Rundgren must be in the very top echelon. Though he began his first career as a clever tunesmith, writing Beatleish ballads on guitar and piano with his first band, Nazz, he has ended up as a producer, engineer, video artist, radio talk show host and futurist techno-head. He has been the first to develop and test some of the newest technology that's become commonplace in rock - often years before his contemporaries were prepared to embrace the future. "I've become sort of a cyber-troubadour, I guess," Rundgren says from a recent tour stop in Arizona. For a man who has always been at the cutting edge in terms of tools and gadgetry, Rundgren's new work is revolutionary. His newest project, The Individualist, wasn't released on compact disc through a record company; it's a multi-media CD-ROM sold in software stores as well as record shops. One of the pioneers of interactive media technology, digital video and computerized musical equipment, Rundgren's last trip through the area two years ago was in support of the No World Order project and featured a unique stage set-up, where the performer was encased in a pod-like structure in the center of the club, surrounded by video monitors, keyboards, MIDI equipment and guitars. The audience was encouraged to join Rundgren onstage at times to try out the gizmos for themselves. Rundgren finances his high-tech escapades largely through royalties reaped from Meat Loaf's multiple-platinum album Bat Out of Hell. "And my latest show is like the solo stuff I used to do in the mid-'80s," Rundgren says. "It's just me, a guitar and a piano and some multi-media stuff. That element, thankfully, has been reduced to a compact and efficient subset of equipment compared to what I used to haul around. We can fly the principal parts of the show in our luggage." Even in the late '70s Rundgren was using video screens and computer-generated images during his live shows. Back then, however, it was unusual for nightclubs to have any kind of a video setup, and Rundgren found himself with tons of untested and bulky gear that, more often than not, failed to work correctly. But like a true visionary, he stuck with it, and today's simplification and popularity of high-tech gear only proves how far ahead of his time he really was. Though it was made available to the public over a year ago, Rundgren is still on tour promoting The Individualist. A few years ago, he became completely cyber-fied and, in a Prince-like move, abandoned his given name and asked to be addressed as TR-i - Rundgren interactive - though he seems to answer to nowadays. That came with the No World Order project, one of the world's first interactive musical recordings. Using a joystick-like contraption, users with the right (read: expensive and difficult to obtain) hardware could pilot their way through the music like a fish in an aquarium, traveling to different locales on each listen, or rearrange the verse/chorus structure of songs. The result was music that was three-dimensional and that could be manipulated and programmed at the listener's whim. With The Individualist, he's demonstrating the interactive element as part of his current tour. "I just start it up and it runs kind of a karaoke version," he informs. "I just perform in front of it - there's not really a teacherly element. I don't go into a lot of explanation about what's going on. Most people have never experienced anything like it." Even if audiences are so moved to check it out themselves, they might find the CD-ROM isn't easy to find. Most computer stores in the Denver area didn't have it in stock when we called, and record stores are uncertain how to market it. And there's no question that a new Rundgren album doesn't fill anyone's cash register or record company exec's pocket with money. The price of being as diversely talented as Rundgren has proved his bane as well, as through the course of his 30-odd recorded catalog of albums, he's produced as many clunkers as gems. Even his worldwide network of diehard fans would probably name as their favorite song tracks from his '70s period or '80s as leader of the prog-rock Utopia than anything he's done in the last decade. Born in Philadelphia in 1948, Rundgren's start with Nazz as a teenager found him writing brilliant pop songs in a vein informed by both Beatles/Beach Boys/Byrds melodies and the roughened texture of white boy Philly soul. His first two solo outings, 1970's Runt (a nickname given to him by Patti Smith) and 1971's The Ballad of Rundgren, positioned him in the mold of a hard-working, intelligent folk-rocker with soul and a small dose of weirdness. In '72, stunned everyone who thought they'd had him pegged by releasing the monumentally ambitious double album Something/Anything, where he wrote, performed and recorded all the music on three of the four sides. Launching the hit singles "Hello, It's Me" and "I Saw the Light," that remains his pinnacle, though A Wizard a True Star (his second best), Hermit of Mink Hollow, Faithful as well as Utopia's Oops Wrong Planet and Utopia belong in any music fan's collection. Forming Utopia in 1974 as an outlet for his prog-rock tendencies, began to explore long-winded bombastic concepts, chronicles of various psychedelic experiences and mystic/metaphysical journeys. Eventually Utopia mutated into a power-pop quartet and then a collective desperately trying to catch up to the mass acceptance of new wave (which Rundgren predicted yet never capitalized on). Throughout it all was 's fascination with anything new or different - technological or otherwise. He was among the first musical artists to experiment with video as a medium, and projects he helped invent and/or popularize, like the Video Toaster and other video synthesizers that injected black and white images with color and animated photographic images pointed the way toward today's computer-generated visual effects. At one point he had amassed well over $2 million in video equipment alone, in addition to a huge, state-of-the-art studio, Bearsville, which he built in upstate New York. The fortune he'd seen grow came not from the sale of his own music but from his demand as a producer. Albums by The Band, Grand Funk Railroad, Badfinger, Patti Smith and other '70s icons made him a household name, but the Bat Out of Hell from Meat Loaf (which sold over 27 million copies) was his cash cow. For the last 15 years he's been reaping hundreds of thousand a year in royalties, and he recently sold his future interests to Sony for a reported seven figures. Lately, he's fallen off a bit (his last production was for Denver's Jill Sobule), but his most controversial was back in 1986, when he was put in charge of the XTC album Skylarking. After the record was released, band leader Andy Partridge went on a tirade in the press, complaining loudly about 's heavy-handed methodology, claiming to hate the way the record ended up and citing Rundgren's drug consumption as another roadblock. "Whenever we'd go into the studio, would be sitting there, wreaths of smoke all around his head," he claimed at the time. Sour grapes, says Rundgren. "It's a big responsibility to do someone else's record," he sighs, obviously skilled at remaining emotionally detached from his clients. "Especially if they don't really want you or it wasn't their desire in the first place. You stand a chance of being in a politically uncomfortable position when some hard musical decisions have to be made. Then you get into power plays in the studio and that's no fun. "With XTC, the record company wanted to get a producer and let them influence the record, because they thought the band's albums were getting too freaky. Andy was used to this routine of starting out with a producer and then wearing him down until he left. Then he'd finish the record with the engineer or something. I knew that was his pattern and I told him upfront that I was going to finish the record no matter what. At some point, Andy didn't want to cooperate anymore, and he just gave up. That's when he became very bitter about it - he no longer wanted to go through the uncomfortable routine of allowing me to test his ideas and constantly remind him of the record company's objectives. So he did an uncharacteristic thing when we got to the mixing stage - he stuck around for a couple songs and then went back to England. I think all Andy did was go back and nurse a grudge." Of course, Skylarking became a very successful album for XTC and remains one of the late '80s standout works. "I enjoy the record myself," laughs. "I'm not exactly sure why Andy had to take it so badly." Evidently, Rundgren prefers working alone. No longer constrained by the democracy of Utopia, his upcoming tour finds him solo on stage, controlling everything from a computer. With that topic one may well descend with him into a mire of techno-babble and product promotion. In terms of his favorite platform, it's the Macintosh he stands behind (he appeared in a print ad for the Powerbook) and isn't dismayed by the apparent supremacy of the Windows/Microsoft/IBM threat. "I'm just more comfortable with a Mac," he says. "It has audio-visual capabilities, so I don't have to worry about extra parts. I've never really been comfortable using PCs. I just find them less dependable. My general take is that it's like VHS and Beta. Beta was generally considered a better format, but because of whatever circumstances, the inferior format prevailed. I think Microsoft managed to succeed because they appealed to people's baser instincts - essentially, to be cheap. People are cheapskates, and that's why they went for it, not caring that it was an inferior product. "But computers are not really that fascinating in the long run. The model for the future is going to be much more Internet-oriented, therefore Microsoft won't have much of an advantage. They realize that; that's why they're giving away their software for free. Instead of buying programs and buying big computers, a lot of people are going to start using applications and storage that's not even in their home - it'll be kept remotely. It's not going to happen right away, but eventually people won't be going out and buying shrink-wrapped software; they'll start using programs they can access through the Internet. They'll be able to do word processing and databases or whatever like big corporations do with intranets, all on one file server, on some central computer somewhere. When that happens, the experience is going to be more about the TV instead of the computer. The operating system is going to be in a box that sits on your TV rather than a box that sits on your desk. "And hopefully," he chuckles, "that'll put a crimp in Microsoft's day." Constantly upgrading his equipment, Rundgren is ever forging onward with his quest for more tools and toys. After abandoning the Bearsville studio, he now operates from a ultra-high tech rig in Hawaii. A new project called Waking Dreams involves his own World Wide Web delivery system for his own musical output. "I'm going to be offering the music directly rather than through the typical record distribution network," he crows. "On my Web site, people will be able to listen to the music and subscribe to a service that makes the music available as I make it, rather than having to wait two years until there's enough to put on a disc." That seems a logical step, beaming music out to his fans. Even if his best songs are in his past, he's still an explosion of ideas, which may be one of the reasons his fan base is still fiercely loyal. This week, an Internet search turned up at least 18 home pages on the Web devoted to Rundgren as well as a Usenet group, alt.music.todd.rundgren. It's interesting to , who does eavesdrop, but rarely initiates dialogue. "I'm not really that kind of communicator," he says. "I don't want to become embroiled in some contentious issue. I'd rather let them sort it out themselves. Some people get enjoyment out of ongoing discussions about what the lyrics mean, or whatever, and if I were to go in and explain it, it would take all the entertainment value out of it for everyone. Then there'd be no mysteries to argue about."
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