With an incredible pedigree as a musician and songwriter over his prolific and dynamic career, New York City native Kasim Sulton has worked alongside the likes of Joan Jett, Blue Oyster Cult, Scandal, The New Cars, and an extended stint as part of Meat Loaf’s touring band. But he is arguably best known for his many years as a member of American progressive rock band Utopia. While with that band, he developed an excellent working relationship with the band’s unofficial leader, Todd Rundgren, and has worked with the legendary songwriter/producer off an on since 1977, including a short-lived reunion of Utopia in early 2018.
Sulton sang lead vocals on Utopia’s biggest hit, Set Me Free, and outside of Rundgren himself, is the musician most readily identified with the band. Although he and Rundgren would play a handful of Utopia tunes on various Rundgren solo tours, fans clamoured to see an entire set of Utopia songs performed live. It was this demand that compelled Sulton, with the permission of his pal Rundgren, to put together his own version of the band. Kasim Sulton’s Utopia in now embarking on a short tour in the United States for the third consecutive year – with demand for more shows each and every year.
The tour starts Friday, Feb. 28 at the City Winery in Washington D.C., and continues through parts of the U.S. northeast, before moving into the Midwest, then down south, before wrapping up March 22, at the Iridium in New York City.
Utopia started life in 1973 when solo artist Rundgren was looking to create more progressive, improvisational and eclectic music in a band setting, initially called the group Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, because of the very fluid lineup over the first three years, before shortening the name to just Utopia in 1976. Sulton joined in 1977 and has been in most incarnations of the band ever since. The best known version of the lineup was the quartet of Rundgren, Sulton, keyboardist/vocalist Roger Powell, drummer/vocalist John ‘Willie’ Wilcox.
“The last tour that we did as a band was in 1985. I guess you could kind of count the reunion that we did when we did a couple of months worth of shows in 2018, but it’s wasn’t the original band. Unfortunately, Roger Powell is in retirement; he didn’t really want to go out on the road again. We did it with another keyboard player, a guy by the name of Gil Assayas, who is actually in my version of the band on this tour that I am doing now,” said Sulton from his home on Staten Island, New York City. The rest of his band is comprised of guitarist/vocalist Jesse Gress and drummer/vocalist Andy Ascolese.
“Utopia fans have been the best fans in the whole world. I am honoured to be bringing the music of Utopia back out on a yearly basis. And I think the loyalty and the continued relevancy of the music we did is twofold. I think it’s the lyrics and I think its just, for lack of a better term, feel. Who knows why one person loves The Answer and another person loves Set Me Free, which are two of Utopia’s biggest songs? That’s the great mystery, and if you can figure that out, they you can write hits until the cows come home, but you never really know.
“So, in answer to your question, I think it just has to do with the general, all-round vibe of the emotion that we were trying to create at the time. Whether it was a happy song or a ballad or a rock song, or a prog song, it kind of didn’t matter. It was always, ‘okay, this is what we do, this is how we do it, and if you like it, great, and if you don’t, well maybe you want to try something else.’”
Sulton is basically answering the insistent demand coming from Utopia fans to hear the band’s music played well and in a live setting, which is why each year more and more dates are added to these annual runs.
“Prior to 2018, when I did the first version of this tour and this band, I would field questions from audience members, whether it was before a show or after a show or at a meet and greet and they would always ask the same thing, is Utopia ever getting back together again. They tell me they are big fans, that they love all the records, and loved the work that I did in the band. They are itching to see Utopia back together again for a tour or a record. And my answer was inevitably, ‘everybody is busy, and we don’t know if it makes a lot of sense to do another tour.’ I just got tired of hearing these questions from all these wonderful fans. So, in the summer of 2017 I decided I was going to put together my own version of the band and go out and do some shows the following year, 2018. I cleared it with Todd and management, who both said I was welcome to do it,” Sulton explained.
“We started with three shows in the New York area, including one in New York City itself, and they were a lot of fun. I had a great time doing it. The next year, which was last year, we decided to do it again, and I did seven shows. Which brings us to this year and now we’re up to 16 shows. It’s about giving back to the audience that has been so loyal and so devoted to the band over the 10 years that I was in the band. I am bringing the show to a bunch of different cities this year, including some we’ve never been to before, like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Atlanta and Nashville. It’s just a good time and a good night of music.”
The internal workings of Utopia were always as egalitarian as possible, with all four band members during their heyday writing and singing lead vocals. At the time, though, and in subsequent years, the band has most readily been identified as Rundgren’s project, which to Sulton only makes sense, even if in practice it was a pretty democratic entity.
“Publicity wise, we’re kind of in between a rock and a hard place. Todd had such an extensive career outside of the band. He started making solo records in the late 1960s and then he went on to produce some of the biggest albums in music, from some of the biggest artists. He produced the New York Dolls, and then Meat Loaf and did a huge record for Grand Funk Railroad. He engineered a record for The Band, so he did so much stuff that it was next to impossible for us to be on the same level as him in terms of popularity and in terms of name recognition when you compared our bodies of work, because his career was just so vast and touched on so many different parts of the music business: songwriting, producing, recording, video and more,” Sulton said.
“To his credit he did try to keep things within the band as fair and equal as possible. But at the end of the day, everybody in the band knew that it was ultimately Todd’s band and as much as everybody wanted to think it was an equal four-way, four-member band, we all, on some level, deferred to Todd on a lot of stuff. If anyone really felt strongly about something, they certainly had the opportunity and the right to say something, but there was a deference that we always knew that Todd was, I don’t want to say the boss, because he really didn’t act that way, but we did defer to him more often than not.”
Although on accolade Sulton will always have over Rundgren is that the most successful Utopia single was primarily written and sung by him, not Rundgren. Set Me Free was released on what also ended up being the band’s best selling album, Adventures in Utopia, which came out in 1980, the single peaking at #27 on the Billboard Top 40.
“Yeah, I do love the success that we had from that song. But you know what, and I mean this Jim from the bottom of my heart, if it was not for the contributions of Todd, Willie and Roger, that song would not have been as successful. I brought in a raw track, albeit pretty much completed, but it was Todd’s production, Roger’s keyboard playing and Willie’s drumming that brought the song to life. It really does take a village, honestly,” he said.
Sulton can be justifiably proud of the success of that song, as he is of a minor hit that he had in Canada as well, with a solo song called Don’t Break My Heart, which made the Top 40 in the Great White North in 1982. As well, he is also chuffed about the diversity and dynamism of his career and some of the legendary artists that he has had the opportunity to work alongside.
“When I look back at my career, and trusting that it’s far from over, I could not be more proud of the work that I have done, the variety of artists that I have worked with. One year I am playing with Joan Jett and I am doing 90 minutes of mostly three-chord rockers – and I love Joan and she is great and she is a real force to be reckoned with and a brilliant artist – and the next year I am appearing in Hall & Oates’ band, and am now playing some really deep, deep pocket R&B music, with Daryl and John. I spent nearly three years playing with those guys on the heels of three years with Joan Jett, so you really can’t get more opposite ends of the spectrum than that. While I go out of my way not to pat myself on the back, I think I am very, very lucky and fortunate to have been able to do stuff like that, you now what I mean?” he said, adding that is was through Rundgren that his lengthy association with Meat Loaf happened.
“Todd got the production dumped in his lap and he decided he was going to make a record with [songwriter] Jim Steinman, and they needed a bass player. Todd decided to use the path of least resistance and gave me a call and the next day I was in the studio listening to Jim and Rory Dodd and Ellen Foley and Meat Loaf singing these songs for what would become Bat Out of Hell. And I remember looking at Todd and saying, ‘man this is really out there.’ And here we are 46 million records later, it’s one of the biggest selling records of all time. So, we did that first record and then we started Bat Out of Hell II I think in 1979, but that never went anywhere [it eventually came out in September 1993 entitled Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell].
“I didn’t work again with Meat Loaf until 1993 when he asked me to join his live band, after Todd, myself and Rory Dodd did background vocals on Bat Out of Hell II. Meat wanted me to be his utility guy, which is basically playing a little guitar, play a little keyboards, sing some background vocals, that sort of thing. I did that for about six years, and then when the bass player left, I took over bass playing duties in the band and became musical director as well and stayed for another 12 years. So, in all, I did a little over 17 years in Meat Loaf’s live band.”
Even after nearly five decades in the music business, the joy and excitement and passion on Sulton’s voice and the way he approaches his career and his craft has not abated.
“You know, it’s not always an easy life, although I certainly don’t want to make it seem like I have it so hard. Listen, I am very, very lucky, and fortunate human being. It isn’t always an easy way to make a living being a working musician, especially nowadays when artists really don’t sell as many records as you used to sell. It’s more about live performances, and working hard and being flexible and adaptable, and also making some sacrifices along the way. But, it’s like anything worthwhile in life, if you work hard enough at it, you will be successful.,” he said.
For more information on Kasim Sulton’s Utopia and their current tour, visit www.kasimsulton.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
