Forgotten But Not Gone - Utopiate: Todd Rundgren

Utopiate: Todd Rundgren
A certain culture critic recently made the claim that the capricious goddess fame imbues those she likes with a certain amount of popularity; three years to be exact. While three years is much more significant than the Warholian 15 minutes, the shelf life is still much too short for artists who might have something to say. Rather than hitting the oldies circuit, prog rocker Todd Rundgren struggled to find ways to stay in the game. And it seems he found one: high tech.

Design & Publishing: In 1999 are you finding it to be a struggle to do music people care about?

Todd Rundgren: Well in 1990 or 1991 I had a revolution in the head. I realized that people who have been in the music biz 20 or 25 years go into eclipse because of the demographics of the music industry. It skews to a very young audience. All record buyers are under 35 and when you get into your 40s, it seems like your audience stops buying your records, the record company doesn’t want to promote you and so on.

So to remain vital, I had to build a new audience—and in the process of doing that I completely redefined myself as a musician. And a big part of that was the aggressive incorporation of computer technology. To not only alter the way music might be performed, but how it might be presented. My No World Order lets you deconstruct the music on the fly.

D&P: Has this, thusfar, managed to be a successful strategy?

TR: I think so. From my standpoint it was hugely successful considering that so many other people had failed. Billy Idol failed miserably when he thought he could become a cyberpunk because he figured out how to do email on AOL.

D&P: But you’re crediting technology? TR: In the late ‘70s or early ‘80s I was way into computers and I was always touring so one day I just drove over to Apple to see what it was like and show them what I was doing. I had designed a program that emulated painting and there was no such thing at the time. So I did this thing that used a graphics tablet and showed it to them and they flipped out that a pop musician had done this but I had learned how to program. Took a year off and did nothing else. But the grim reality is that you really cannot make your music nor have anyone hear your music unless it goes into a digital domain. So I now, with my PowerBook, 8500, or 9500, am doing that. But I don’t want to fixate on the technology because that misses the point and it’s pretty unfashionable. Though the magical aspects of these technologies no longer frighten as they once did, they still have made it more possible for me to be heard.