Todd Rundgren
Up Against It

This is the story of the screenplay for what was supposed to become the third film starring the Beatles. At the end of the sixties, when it was proposed to them, the Fabs refused to give a sibling to "Hard Day's Night" and "Help," settling for the animations of "Yellow Submarine" and some documentaries. The reason? Joe Orton, the celebrated screenwriter, was gay, and the subject dealt with revolution (sexual but not only), subverting roles, a real war between the sexes... All quite destabilizing topics for a band that always had to satisfy both mothers and daughters... But the main problem was that Orton was gay, and anything that ended up in his hands or that passed through his hands risked being labeled as homosexual. At least that's how Sir Paul McCartney expressed himself on the matter, years later... Poor Orton worked even more feverishly to bring his creation to life even without the interpretation (and the considerable media resonance) of the Beatles, creating a version that would not suffer from the absence of the four mop-tops. When the project was ready, he sold it to producer Oscar Lewenstein, but the film never saw the light of day: shortly after, Orton died at thirty-four. It was said to be suicide, it was said he was murdered by his partner, the mystery still surrounds this story today. The project inevitably stalled: without him, turning the screenplay into a film or theatrical work would have been far too arduous.

Not for everyone, though...

Todd Rundgren, a lifelong absolute fan of the Beatles, a "come when you want" member of Ringo's All Starr Band and a cover artist/adapter/parodist/idolator/mutilator of Liverpool's bugs on the album "Deface The Music" with his Utopia, was the right type. If we also consider that he has managed to produce extravagant pieces and progressive suites... That at least one song per album is a vaudeville... That he is very knowledgeable in terms of rock opera, given the production of at least a couple of excellent arena rock albums with his Utopia... And that he is never short of ideas, then...

"Up Against It," recorded between '86 and '88 but released in 1997, is Todd Rundgren's version for a potential theatrical version of Joe Orton's homonymous screenplay. Not the songs of a musical composed by him, and sung by the theater company, nor the recording of a show date, but Todd Rundgren himself performing "the whole" work he composed based on Orton's subject, and doing so by putting in his songs, his music, interpreting all the characters, even the female ones, recording all the choral parts... Just him, in short, plus a keyboard and, if needed, a drum machine.

The result is theatrical solemnity in old Broadway style, at times rock opera without guitars, vaudeville as per tradition, four pieces that we will find in the subsequent "Nearly Human" and "2nd Wind" (incidentally, two theatrical pieces and two soulpop ballads), a track in which he mimics a soprano, a little waltz, a traveling show with a park music box tune, and still anthems, comedy, vocal hyperbole, pure stagecraft, interpretations at the limit of the impossible, megagalactic choirs... In short, Todd Rundgren at the peak of his eloquence. And nothing, not even a shadow, of the Beatles. Too bad only for the arrangements, too bare and synthetic as they are, nothing compared to what it could be with an orchestra at his disposal. Sounds that, nonetheless, perhaps unintentionally or perhaps not, give the listener the opportunity to focus exclusively on Rundgren and the entire range of potentials, from the wizard promptly showcased without the need to clamor for more and more...

The album was released only in Japan, with a bland cover that is nothing but the back cover of "Oops! Wrong Planet" by Utopia, from 1977 and that is twenty years before the release of this CD (and ten before its recording), which speaks volumes about why the music was so basic, homemade, and without frills. Therefore, not a masterpiece of an album. But live, on Broadway, who knows what sparks it would produce! I don't know if it would resemble what Orton desired, but I don't think he would refuse to applaud, from up there. Unless, in the meantime, he's composed another version together with John Lennon.