(3 of 4)
Ireland's druids of drone, U2, go a step further in their concerts: they program and project their own interactive special effects. Bono (or The Edge) will use a remote control to move a cursor (which can be seen on the two huge screens) that allows him to set a song's instruments and tempo. Then the band joins in. The onstage screen shows the choices he has and the decisions he makes. Between songs Bono can regulate four projections of himself; when he clicks on one of them, it will tell a joke, start singing or talk. "U2 love playing with these new technologies," says their "interactive producer," Philip van Allen. "They're more than just musicians -- they're show people. These big rock shows are so sophisticated that the artist becomes only one small point. We're giving the power back to the artist."
On MTV the notion of interactive rock is in vogue if not yet in practice. The latest Beavis and Butt-head video, I Got You Babe, has the two cartoon metalheads cackling wildly as they put on virtual-reality headsets, plunge into cyberspace and select a "chick" from a computer screen menu. Among the choices: "sexy," "wild" or "was married to dork." The boys choose No. 3, and out pops Cher.
In Amazing, a new video from rave-rockers Aerosmith, a pimple-faced lad summons up an image of himself on his home computer and magically erases those zits. Then he ups the ante. Feeding the computer an image of his dream woman and, donning the mandatory virtual-reality gear, he steps into a higher, hornier hyper reality where all his lusts are gratified. He and his girlfriend ride off on a motorcycle, make cyberlove, hitchhike a ride on a biplane and sky surf off the wing. If there's a rock 'n' roll virtual heaven for teenage testosterosis, this might be it.
Yet it still isn't interactive. MTV may soon be involved in the technology. But a few artists -- such as Billy Idol, the British punkster whose first band was named (remember?) Generation X -- are already living it.
"I got into music to do it myself without the oppressive thumb of convention," says Idol, who released a Macintosh floppy disk with his album Cyberpunk. Yet for years Idol was "trapped in recording studios with my band trying to get the music right -- playing, arranging, figuring it all out -- while the money clock ticked away." Then he found a technology that allowed him to create a "virtual studio" in his home. "I was excited. It was 'live' to the computer."
Now it's computer to computer, musician to listener, and everybody's a performance artist. For Gabriel and Rundgren, interactive rock is not just a career move; it is a techno-mission.
Rundgren bought his first computer in 1979, spent a year learning how to use it and then wrote a software graphics program that executives at Apple liked so much they licensed it. Now he can marry his vocation and his avocation into popular art with a message. "Musicians nowadays tend to use music as much for obfuscation as for revelation," Rundgren says. "I'm trying to use this technology to change it back to revelatory."