Utopia – Deface The Music (1980)

“Outstanding in their field!”

For some years now, the Utopia staff had settled from the prog/avant-garde sextet of the beginnings to a compact quartet that was more oriented towards a simpler and more direct pop/rock.

The seventh album of Todd Rundgren’s Utopia was therefore a tribute to Liverpool’s “4 fantastic 4”, maniacally made with the same or similar instruments and played in perfect and equally maniacal style.

After all, Mr. Todd had already anticipated his intentions in the 1976 solo album Faithful, where on an entire side dedicated to six incredibly “faithful” covers, two were from the duo Lennon / McCartney (Rain and Strawberry Fields Forever).

Our new “fab four” were fresh out of their most successful and latest recording effort – Adventures in Utopia – a very complex project that included quite articulated music and video productions, what better time than this to indulge in a holiday based on immediate music, simple and melodic?

Starting from one of his songs, I just want to touch you, which was born for the soundtrack of the film Roadie but immediately discarded because the producers of the film were terrified of possible legal actions due to the excessive reference to I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Todd then decided to create an entire album of excessive references to the Fab Four!

And he did it with inspiration, taste and great class: the pieces are fantastic and there are some absolute immediate classics like the irresistible Take it Home, the powerful Everybody else is Wrong, the deep All Smiles, the dramatic Life Goes On, the catchy Where does the World go to Hide, the joy of Feel Too Good!

The 13 tracks (13 such as those from the album A Hard Day’s Night) retrace the career of the 4 of Liverpool, in a pastiche that goes from 1963 to the psychedelic period and each song is so well-elaborated that it can seem an authentic product of the Beatles:

On the left the songs of Deface The Music and on the right the Beatles songs to which they are inspired.

The album was released on September 24, 1980 and so far everything was great, because the pieces are really beautiful as parodies, sometimes even almost better than the originals. Even the title of the album itself, “Deface the music” is quite controversial, although probably inspired by ELO’s Face the Music too.

The original cover, which was practically the same as that of the album With The Beatles, with the four “utopians” positioned as the four Liverpolians, was then replaced with an illustration containing the busts of the group. While the photo of the back, where the words “Outstanding in their field” stands out, ironically recalls Strawberry Fields Forever.

But that turned out to be a rather eventful year, the album worked very well with the critics and very badly with the fans, who despite being quite used to Rundgren’s continuous musical changes, this time found themselves totally disoriented by the sudden turn from the very modern stadium AOR and prog rock, to 60s brit-pop.

In addition, many rockstars were very agitated by the excessive interest from the fans and it happened that, shortly before the release of the album, on August 13, Rundgren suffered a traumatic robbery.

During an evening with his partner and friends, four masked characters broke into the house, taking away hi-fi apparatuses and paintings, threatening him to amputate all his fingers if he did not give him all the drugs he had in storage, all while whispering his famous hit “I saw the light”.

In addition, on December 8 of that year, John Lennon was shot dead and a boy named Mark David Chapman, apparently a self-declared Rundgren fan, was accused of the murder (the previous day he had been unsuccessful, looking for him at his Woodstock home). In fact, at the time of the shooting, Chapman was wearing a promotional T-shirt of The Hermit of Mink Hollow, Rundgren’s latest solo album, and in his hotel room, the police found a Stereo 8 cartridge of the album Runt. The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren, Todd’s second solo album.

If you also consider that the good Todd had a well-known disagreement with Lennon himself in 1974, which led him to a rather acid letters exchange with the ex Beatle and that Rundgren was part of the well-known All Starr Band of Ringo Starr for several editions, well … there are some pretty curious points connecting the two musicians.

But now we are interested in talking about Deface the Music and, more than anything else, enjoying these 13 tracks so, Happy Listening!

Deface The Music – Utopia

• Todd Rundgren – lead guitar & lead vocals
• Kasim Sulton – bass, backing vocals
• Roger Powell – synthesizers, keyboards, backing and lead vocals
• John “Willie” Wilcox – drums, percussion, backing and lead vocals

Recorded at Utopia Sound
Cover [Cover Illustration] – Jane Millett
Engineer [Assistant Engineer] – Chris Andersen
Photography By – Kenneth Siegel
Producer – Utopia
Producer, Engineer, Mixed By – Todd Rundgren