In recent years we’ve seen favorite Baby Boomer acts like the Police, Genesis and Return to Forever get back together to go on one-off tours relying wholly on old material, and the reunions have been well received. So why not Todd Rundgren’s Utopia?
Apparently, that’s what the band’s linchpin Todd Rundgren wondered, and so he got his band mates together and reconvened a group that had ceased being a going concern back in 1986. Very occasional reunion tours have materialized (most notably, in 1992, which yielded a live document Redux ’92: Live in Japan) and seven years after their last meeting in 2011, Rundgren was ready to give it a go again. For the 2018 tour he rounded up founding drummer Willie Wilcox and longtime bassist/vocalist Kasim Sulton. When original keyboardist Ralph Schuckett backed out, auditions were held and Israeli keyboardist/vocalist Gil Assayas was chosen to fill in.
Rundgren himself hadn’t exactly been inactive or frozen in time, that goes completely against his nature. It was but a couple years ago when he released White Knight, which found him pushing forward with state of the art production techniques and following the current trend of loading most of the tracks with guest stars. But with the Utopia reunion tour, Rundgren & Company are livin’ in 1975 on up to 1985.
Live at the Chicago Theatre captures the Windy City stop of the tour, a broad assortment of two dozen songs that points up to the diversity of Todd Rundgren’s creation that within the rock realm was nearly as diverse as those of the band’s creator. Every one of Utopia’s ten studio albums are represented, save for the Beatles sendup Deface The Music. And that long-held thesis that ‘if you’re a Utopia fan, you’re also a Todd Rundgren fan’ still holds true.
Utopia started out as Rundgren’s own private King Crimson and the show starts out that way, too, diving right into extended, largely instrumental pieces (“Utopia Theme,” “The Ikon,” “Another Life”) that in retrospect has held up to the test of time pretty well. The intricacies of these compositions don’t bog the songs down thanks to Todd Rundgren’s flair for hooky melodies, and the solo wankery is kept in check.
Utopia made an about-face with its fourth album Oops Wrong Planet and then it became Rundgren’s private Wings. And like Paul McCartney’s Wings, Rundgren’s Utopia had plenty of standout moments and some modest chart success on its own. “Set Me Free” is their only US Top 40 hit, written and sung by Sulton, who gets plenty of lead vocals for this concert (“Back on the Street,” “Love In Action,” “Monument,” “Swing to the Right,” “I Will Wait”) and sharing that chore with Rundgren on “Trapped.” The bassist’s voice, sounding much like a nasally Rundgren, remains in fine form and even Wilcox gets his turn on the hard rocker “Princess of the Universe.” All this serves notice that Utopia is not a pure Todd Rundgren vehicle, the other guys have contributed songs and singing: as it has always been, it’s a band of equals with one more equal than the others.
Aside from “Set Me Free,” “Road to Utopia” was another minor hit to come from Adventures In Utopia, a catchy, Todd-sung gem that’s presented with more grit here. The album-oriented radio hit “Love In Action” is repped here as well and is highlighted by an analog synth aside from Assayas.
There’s a few covers thrown in (where they had appeared on studio albums), and the best of these is arguably the rockin’ cover of The Move’s “Do Ya,” which they recorded the year before Jeff Lynne took his song back for ELO and made it a hit. Utopia never had a #1 hit but their own anthem “Love Is The Answer” was one for England Dan and John Ford Coley. That song, with Todd pouring his whole soul into it — maybe a little over the top, even — was usually Utopia’s set closer but this time they end it with up-tempo numbers “One World” and a classic solo Todd Rundgren tune, the aspirational “Just One Victory,” bolstered by choir-like backing vocals (post-production?).
These guys might be old but they certainly don’t play like it. So what if perhaps no one asked for a Utopia reunion? It’s a question that should have been asked. And Live at the Chicago Theatre is … yes … the answer.
Live at the Chicago Theatre becomes available April 5, 2019 in Blu-Ray, DVD and 2 CD set forms by Cleopatra Records. Vinyl fans can wait just two weeks after that for the double-LP green discs in a gatefold jacket.
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