''Up Against It!'' is a 1997 album by

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the bands Nazz and Utopia. He is known for his sophistica ...

consisting mostly of song demos he wrote and recorded between 1986 and 1989 for the musical theater adaptation of the never-produced screenplay '' Up Against It''. The play was originally written in 1967 by

Joe Orton John Kingsley Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967), known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his murder in 1967 committed by his partner, was short but highly i ...

for

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

Background

This album is Rundgren's score to the stage adaptation of playwright Joe Orton's Up Against It, the unfilmed screenplay originally mooted as the third Beatles film (after '' A Hard Day's Night'' and ''Help!''). They declined it, so he reworked it to lessen their presence, successfully sold it to the producer Oscar Lewenstein, and then was violently murdered by boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell in a notorious murder-suicide. With Orton no longer around to help push it along, development stalled, and the script was never filmed. It was published in book form a couple of times, however, and in the 1980s Joseph Papp decided to give the script a new lease on life as a piece of musical theater - hence this score. The full suite of Rundgren's songs for the musical was released as an album only in Japan, though three re-recorded songs from it were included on his album '' 2nd Wind''. A variant version of the song "Parallel Lines" also appears on Rundgren's album '' Nearly Human''. In 2016 Todd performed the opera in Groningen, with

Mathilde Santing Mathilde Santing (born Mathilde Eleveld, 24 October 1958) is a Dutch singer. Santing was born in Amstelveen, Netherlands. She started receiving national attention in 1981 after she appeared in a Dutch television program called ''Sonja Op Maandag ...

, Wouter Penris and the NNO orchestra (conductor Hans Leenders).

Track listing

All songs by Todd Rundgren. # "When Worlds Collide" – 3:36 # "Free, Male & 21" – 3:36 # "The Smell of Money" – 3:20 * # "If I Have to Be Alone" – 3:45 * # "Up Against It" – 3:37 # "Life Is a Drag" – 3:58 # "Parallel Lines" – 3:11 ** # "Lili's Address" – 5:51 # "Love in Disguise" – 3:55 * # "Maybe I'm Better Off" – 4:05 # "You'll Thank Me in the End" – 4:08 # "From Hunger" – 2:42 # "We Understood Each Other" – 4:13 # "Entropy" – 4:48 # "Finale" – 7:03 °Titles marked with an asterisk * above appear in re-recorded form on Rundgren's studio album '' 2nd Wind'' (1991). °Parallel Lines" (** above) appears in re-recorded variant form on Rundgren's studio album' '' Nearly Human'' (1989)

Personnel

*Todd Rundgren – composer, producer, engineer

References

{{Authority control Todd Rundgren albums 1997 albums Albums produced by Todd Rundgren