He also wrote catchy melodies and straightforward, workaday (and occasionally wryly humorous) lyrics. The 1979 Knebworth Festival poster with Todd Rundgren’s Utopia on the billĭrummer Willie Wilcox might have been the group’s most limited singer, but he could carry a tune credibly. That appeal was furthered by the ensemble vocals of the four, led in turn by one member (usually but not always the primary composer of a given song). For the same of simplicity we’ll consider the songs as chiefly the work of their lead singer.Ĭombining the synthesizer virtuosity of keyboardist Roger Powell with a strong melodic sense, anthemic tracks like “The Road to Utopia” had an infectious, anthemic appeal. All songs are credited to the group as a whole, so it’s difficult to know who’s responsible for what. Those ambitions aside, Adventures holds together as a suite of songs. A small credit inside the album’s gatefold liner notes read, “All songs originally performed for the Utopia video television production, Utopia. The group had recently built its own multimedia production studio in Upstate New York, and had hoped that the album would serve as a calling card for more work in that regard. Time has dimmed some of the band’s recollections about the genesis of Adventures in Utopia, but there’s a general agreement that it was devised in part as a kind of audio answer to the concept of a television pilot. In fact, it spawned a hit single that – for once – didn’t have a Rundgren lead vocal. As a collection of songs from a group with four writers, it was Utopia’s most balanced songwriting effort to date. Released just after Christmas in December 1979, the album featured ten songs, eight of which made it in under the five-minute mark. More than two years passed before Utopia returned with its third album by this lineup, Adventures in Utopia. Utopia Adventures In Utopia, Warner Bros. With a dozen songs written by various combinations of members, it included pop songs (albeit pop songs of a rocking variety, like “Love in Action”) and even a ballad, the original version of Rundgren’s “Love is the Answer,” a hit when covered by England Dan & John Ford Coley. The centerpiece of that record was another lengthy piece, “Singring and the Glass Guitar (An Electrified Fairytale).” But fans who wanted something a bit less weighty could still enjoy some of the cuts on Side One, three of which actually clocked in at under five minutes each(!)Ī mere seven months after Ra appeared, Utopia returned with Oops! Wrong Planet that LP signaled an abrupt and major change in the group’s approach. The first release from the quartet lineup was 1977’s Ra. This Utopia was meant as a songwriters’ collective, but the marquee value of Rundgren’s name – and the status that came along with it – meant that keeping a balance among the four musicians would always present a challenge. As a result of that (and likely other factors as well), by the middle 1970s, Utopia was pared down to a quartet. VIDEO: Todd Rundgren’s Utopia with Tony and Hunt Sales at CW Post on Long Island, 1973Ĭritics and concertgoers tended to appreciate Rundgren’s psychedelic-progressive work with Utopia, but record sales weren’t all that strong. (As a result, the grooves on the LP’s second side had to be cut close together to allow space for the side-long track that meant a corresponding decrease in volume, something that led Rundgren to add turn-it-up instructions on later vinyl albums.) A slightly more stable seven- or eight-man lineup made a self-titled debut album, highlighted by the sprawling masterwork, “The Ikon,” an ambitious piece that ran in excess of thirty minutes. That early Utopia lineup went through myriad personnel shifts a very early lineup – albeit one that never recorded – included Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of TV personality Soupy Sales they’d resurface many years later in Tin Machine with David Bowie. And so it was with Rudngren’s group, a kind of side-project operated concurrent with his own (sometimes but certainly not always) more pop-oriented solo career And while those two groups sounded very different form one another, at their best they shared a goal of pushing the boundaries of rock beyond the four-on-the-floor boogie of (great in their own way) bands like Uriah Heep and ZZ Top. In its original form, Utopia was a progressive rock band modeled on a foundation similar to that of acts like Yes and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Utopia – or Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, as it was originally and would years later again be known – started out as one thing and became another.
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