Article: A man and his Island

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/a-man-and-his-island-20100923-15of1.html

A man and his island Darren Levin
September 23, 2010

Psychedelic-pop genius Todd Rundgren found his personal paradise while fleeing a maniacal ex lover.

WELL before its lush rainforest setting was exposed to the world in Steven Spielberg's Jur-assic Park, Kauai was the perfect place to get lost. Hawaii's fourth-largest island — about 170 kilometres north-west of Oahu — was a haven for celebrity visitors in the 1970s, many of whom were on the run from something: substance abuse, the spectre of celebrity or, in Todd Rundgren's case, a relationship gone sour.

"I was looking to get away from an evil girlfriend," recalls the 62-year-old singer, best known for his 1972 double-album opus Something/Any-thing and producing Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell. "So I wanted to find a place as far away as possible."

Rundgren was a regular visitor to Kauai but it wasn't until a hurricane decimated the island in 1993 that he could afford to live there.

"[It] essentially flattened the island and I thought, 'If I'm ever going to buy property here, now would be the time to do it,' " he says. "I found a place I fell in love with and resolved that, one way or another, I was going to get it."

That place is Hale O Hua Li'i, or House of Runt, the expansive property Rundgren shares with his wife Michele and four children Rex, Randy, Keoni and Rebop. In many ways, his island lifestyle is a perfect metaphor for the way he's made records over the years — isolated and on the fringes of pop.

After the mainstream success of Something/Anything, which spanned the near-hit Hello It's Me (recorded earlier by his formative garage group, Nazz), Rundgren decided to go on what he describes as a "very individual and wildly omni-directional" musical journey. Sure, psychedelics played a part but it was a comparison with Carole King that really set him off.

"I thought, 'I'm going to write music that Carole King would never write in a million years,' so there was a contrarian element I suppose," he says.

The result was Rundgren's flawed masterpiece A Wizard, a True Star (1973), one of pop's great oddities, which he recorded in a New York loft-cum-studio that he built from the ground up.

"The band were running over [album track] Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel while I was still re-wiring the console," he laughs. "As time went on, this became the way I made records. I became uncomfortable in a regular studio situation where I had to be on the clock and paying attention to essentially the fees involved, or the fact that they booked someone else in and you'd have to leave."

The album and subsequent stylistic detours, including his prog-rock ensemble Utopia, confined Rundgren to a career as a self-described "fringe artist", a label he insists isn't pejorative.

"What it means to me is that I have a fringe audience but the nature of a fringe audience is they're extremely committed," he says. "They take it as a point of pride that they know something no one else knows. As a result, I'm 62 and I still have a career.

"A lot of artists took the opposite route. They figure you're supposed to pander to the audience constantly and the reciprocal devotion from that audience is extremely shallow. In other words, you didn't really invest yourself. All you tried to do was come up with a formula that would satisfy people and it satisfied them but it was empty calories in the long run."

Being on the fringe has ensured Rundgren's career longevity but it hasn't made him as wealthy as you'd expect for a guy who produced Bat out of Hell (not to mention XTC's Skylarking, War Babies by Hall & Oates or The New York Dolls by the New York Dolls).

Rundgren applies sound business nous to his decisions today, which is why his maiden tour to Australia is being conducted on a shoestring. He's bringing his guitarist along for the ride but will play with a local rhythm section for shows in Sydney, Melbourne and the Great Southern Blues Festival at Batemans Bay.

Among a "liberal dollop" of old favourites, Rundgren's set will be based primarily on his latest album, a tribute to bluesman Robert Johnson, because it allows him to strip back his personnel.

"If I had to even bring a drum riser the air-freight costs would become so ridiculous," he jokes. "That's the principal thing that's prohibited me from coming to Australia."

Todd Rundgren plays the Corner Hotel on Wednesday, October 6. Tickets on sale now.