Shoild have been a rock star - Todd is Godd and pyramids in the mid west

Todd is Godd and Pyramid Power at KU

In the spring of 1980, Todd Rundgren and his band utopia played a concert at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. I was always a huge Todd Rundgren fan. He ranks right there with the Beatles, separately and as a group, Neil Young and the Who with me. He had put out several; masterful albums as a solo artist and with Utopia.
You never knew what you would get from Todd. He would do an album of power pop ballads such as :Something Anything”or show up in the LP racks with a synthesized work of long, intricate opuses like “Born to Synthesize.” To me, he was the epitome of a renaissance man, often playing every instrument on the album. Mo had played the “Something Anything” LP to death when we were in college. Not that it bothered me… I was a dedicated fan.

Kansas U. was a big school to me. Tim went to OSU and was used to a bigger place. I had gone to little Sterling College. A lot of the people in Kansas referred to KU as Snob Hill. I guess it was because they weren’t an aggie university like K-State, but nothing I ever saw there made me think anything negative. After all, I was interested in a girl there.

That girl was my connection in Lawrence. Even though I was just about through my first year as a teacher and coach at Sapulpa High School, I had been keeping in touch with Cas Turner who was a student at K.U. Cas, I had actually met when I was student teaching at Nickerson High School. I had a world history class that she had taken because she wanted to take a class under my mentor and got stuck with me.
In class, while discussing Da Vinci and Michelangelo, I had brought Todd’s “Born to Synthesize “ LP as an example of Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” Da Vinci’s drawing, of man within the mathematical perfections of geometric shapes, a bit updated and colorized, graced the cover of that particular Todd LP. It was then hat I had my first conversations with Cas, also a fan of Rundgren’s music.

Cas picked up tickets for my younger brother Tim and I. Tim was starting his freshman year at Oklahoma State then I believe. On the date of the weekend concert, we drove north in my unair-conditioned yellowish-orangish Toyota Corolla, zipping along highway 169 bound for Utopia.
When we arrived in Lawrence, Tim and I checked into the Jayhawk Inn, a small and ancient motel. It met the criteria for what we needed… simply a place to sleep. And minimalist is best how to describe it. It was basically two single beds and a light bulb. But, sleep wasn’t what we had come for. This would be the first of many times I would get to see Todd live and in concert.
We met up with Cas and her buddy, Dixie to get tickets and then Cas left to meet her then boyfriend somewhere. I was interested, but she still had a boyfriend there. I have never been a pushy guy when it comes to attraction and in fact probably a little backwards and shy instead.
There was a theater, The Lied Center I think, on campus where the concert was to take place. We sat in the balcony, overlooking the stage. It was a great place… with a perfect view of the whole stage. I think anytime I got to see musicians perform live, it was always nearly perfect.
There was no warm-up band. At most of the Rundgren concerts I have seen, he plays alone. The only time I saw anyone open for him, it was Hall and Oates at the Zoo amphitheater in Oklahoma City. They were old Philadelphia buddies of Todd’s. Todd’s concerts didn’t need a warm-up because he and the band would be on stage a long, long time with songs from his whole career.
The band had recently released the “Adventures in Utopia” album. It had classics such as “The Road To Utopia” and one of their MTV hits “You Make Me Crazy.” The lights flared up and they opened the show with the appropriate “Road to Utopia.” I was pumped. Cas got there about ½ way through the song, but the band was amazing.
The band played songs from their own albums and from Todd’s solo career. Every member of the band sang something, reminiscent of old Beatles performances. The bulk of the show came from the “Adventures…” LP and the next most recent LP called “Ra.” That album was made with an ancient Egyptian theme, including the song “Eternal Love” sung by bassist Kasim Sultan. Sultan went on to play with Meatloaf and some solo stuff after Utopia was disbanded. He still does some tours with Todd as a solo artist too. He even teamed up with Todd on bass when Todd sang lead vocals on tour with the New Cars this past year,
The two most dramatic songs of the show came from the “Ra” album. The band played the 7-minute song “Hiroshima,” about the bombing during World War II. It is a dramatic song that begins with instruments sounding lie something you’d hear in Japan and then reaching a crunching Rock power chord finale when the band screamed “don’t you ever fucking forget!” and the stage front exploded in flames that shot to the ceiling.
The second was an 18-minute song called “Singring and the Glass Guitar.” The stage opened up to reveal a 26 ft. pyramid on stage. It was made of the four corner poles running to a point over the stage. Behind the pyramid sat a 25 or 30-foot tall King Tut death mask. During the song, which chronicled a fantasy story of the spirit of Singring trapped in a glass guitar, the four Utopia members each battled the elements, one by one with long solos that ended with the collection of keys to open the case hiding the glass guitar.
Roger Powell’s keyboards imitated the winds while being blown around stage. The drummer Willie Wilcox played in rhythm as fountains of water shot up around his drum set. Kasim played while fire shot in spurts from a dragon behind Tut’s head. The grand finale came as Todd soloed, slowly walking up the side of the pyramid as he wailed on his Ankh shaped guitar. At the peak, his solo reached a crescendo and he reached below and flipped into the air to be lowered to the stage and finish the song. They opened the case and smashed a glass guitar, splattering like ice crystals across the stage. The crowd went wild!
When the band returned to the stage, they finished the show with a song with which I would hear Todd finish every concert., “Just One Victory.” It was also the song I listened to before every game I played in college. The song has always been a meaningful thing to me.

After the show, we all walked to Cas’s dorm room, sat and gossiped, listened to some new music from Linda Ronstadt. Tim and I eventually left for our digs at the Jayhawk motel. We woke the next morning and made our way back toward Oklahoma on ending our own little trip to Utopia.
It would not be my last trip to KU.

The Road to Utopia – by Todd Rundgren and Utopia

I blink my eyes and then it happens again
I lose my way but I discover a friend
It's a typical day on the road to utopia

I walk along until my feet are sore
I rest a minute then I walk some more
There's no time to delay on the road to utopia

And my destination is the unknown
But I'm never far away from my home

It shines like laser light
It's in my dreams at night
'Cause I've been all my life
On the road to utopia

I will be there to share your tragedy
I know that you would do the same for me
It's no trouble at all on the road to utopia

When day is over and I'm trying to sleep
It comes so easy 'cause I'm not counting sheep
I am counting the smiles on the road to utopia

And I may lose my way again and again
But I'll cross that borderline in the end

Trouble trouble trouble whirling all about
But if we stick together we can stick it out
Will we ever find the loves we lost again
Does this crazy journey ever have an end

And will I find what I'm after
Do I know what I'm after
Guess I'll join in the laughter
On the road to utopia