Todd Rundgren, one of the great experimenters in rock music in the last 20 years, is experimenting again.
”My concert dates didn`t amount to more than two weeks in all of 1986, so I`ve been trying to open up other areas,” says Rundgren, a cult artist whose albums don`t exactly make the top of the charts. ”There are 100,000 or so people who buy every single album of mine,” he said. ”I`m like Bruce Springsteen without the volume.”
Rundgren scored four episodes of ”Pee-Wee`s Playhouse,” which gives grown-ups another good reason to watch comic Pee-Wee Herman`s behavioral fluctuations along with their children on Saturday morning. Rudgren also has written music for NBC-TV`s cops-and-mobsters series ”Crime Story,” but that effort was short-lived.
”I did the pilot and two episodes and decided that I really was not interested,” he said. ”The subject matter of the show and the working environment were just not enjoyable.”
Not so with ”Pee-Wee`s Playhouse.”
”I did the show with the Hawaiian luau, and I did one just a couple weeks ago in which the cast has a party and dances.
”It`s fun because they don`t tell me what to write or where to put it or anything like that. They just send me a tape and say, `Hey, make this happen.` ”
Freedom to create differently is the key.
”I don`t see any point in doing things the way that other people do things,” he said. ”The only validity in my making music is to ruminate on things that aren`t getting enough attention otherwise.”
That individualism has earned Rundgren, 38, critical raves for many of his LPs, the best of which remains 1972`s ”Something/Anything.” That was his third outing as a solo artist, after playing in Philadelphia`s legendary rock outfit the Nazz.
Rundgren turned listeners` heads in 1973`s progressive ”A Wizard, A True Star” and in other albums from his band, Utopia, a highlight being 1980`s monumental ”Adventures in Utopia.”
”We still don`t have any specific plans to have Utopia do anything, but we haven`t officially disbanded,” Rundgren said of the group, whose last album was 1985`s Zen-influenced ”P.O.V.” (”Point of View”).
Rundgren`s solo efforts have continued with ”The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect” (1983) and ”A Cappella” (1985), which relied on his heavily overdubbed and synthesized vocals for its sole, but very creative, musical content.
Besides shaping the sounds of his own records, Rundgren has produced albums for Grand Funk, Hall & Oates, Patti Smith, the Tubes, Meat Loaf, Cheap Trick and the New York Dolls.
Some of Rundgren`s work has been called trival and self-serving. He took flak for devoting a full side of his 1976 solo album, ”Faithful,” to classics by the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. The recordings were painstakingly constructed to sound as close to the originals as possible.
”At the time, it was 10 years since I had started being a professional musician, and these were all songs that had been a big influence on me. I just wanted to create 20 minutes of ultimately listenable music as if it they were on the radio in 1966, when practically everything that came on was something you wanted to hear.”
Rundgren is currently writing songs for ”Up Against It,” a musical play to be produced by Joseph Papp. It is based on a 1967 screenplay by the late British playwright Joe Orton. At one time, ”Up Against It” was thought to be the leading candidate for the Beatles` third movie, following ”A Hard Day`s Night” and ”Help.”
However, any significant remnant of the Beatles` spirit is unlikely, Rundgren said.
”There was no point in trying to re-create that for a generation that doesn`t really remember or identify,” he said. ”We`re 20 years down the line now.
”It`s the project I`m most excited about at this point. Essentially, it`s up to me to write the music any way I want. It will be pretty hysterical, I think. It`s mostly real funny.”
