18. Todd Rundgren, A Wizard, a True Star (1973)

[2007 review here.]

You could probably argue that my favorite album by Todd Rundgren is psychedelic only because the production purposefully jams many of these songs and fragments seamlessly together, each one blurring into the next across a range of styles. Among other things that makes it hard to listen to it on CDs or via streaming, which routinely insert a couple of annoying seconds between all tracks. The album reminds me structurally of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, stringing together a series of songs (or fragments) under 2:00 at one point, or their White Album, with its wide and seemingly senseless assortments of rock or pop song style. Yes, Wizard has annoying throwaways—I could do without the 1:08 “Dogfight Giggle,” for sure. And it is now unfortunately dated with the crypto-homophobic ditties “Rock & Roll Pussy” (1:11) and “You Don’t Have to Camp Around” (1:06 and still lovely). Fair enough. It also has songs in Rundgren’s achingly beautiful and friendly (if slightly tinged with ‘70s self-help vibes) pop song mode (“Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel.” “I Don’t Want to Tie You Down,” “Does Anybody Love You?”). It has more songs that are intended to be inspirational in a heroic juveniles-against-the-world mode (“Zen Archer,” “Just One Victory,” “When the Shit Hits the Fan / Sunset Blvd.”). Perhaps most surprising—though also looking forward to the mistakes of his overly faithful Faithful covers LP a few years later—is an 11-minute soul medley featuring the Impressions’ “I’m So Proud,” Smokey Robinson’s “Ooh Baby Baby,” the Delfonics’ “La-La Means I Love You,” and the Capitols’ “Cool Jerk.” The last is the only clinker in that bunch. The first three are gorgeous and moving versions. Thus, much like the cover art suggests, we are set adrift here inside Todd Rundgren’s tender octagonal die-cut elfin musical world, which moves through its 55 minutes of material with masterful ease. I’m not sure Todd Rundgren ever had an imperial phase but, if he did, this album was part of it. He was producing one substantial album after another in the early ‘70s, with Runt; Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren; Something / Anything?; A Wizard, a True Star; Todd; and Initiation (plus his Utopia project). He stayed close to his pop instincts bleeding into prog and/or thrashing heavy rock on all of them. A Wizard, a True Star is his psychedelic phase.

Wave (1979)

Maybe I'm kind of an oddball Patti Smith fan, because after Horses, which safely qualifies as life-changing, this almost sad gesture toward the mainstream is my favorite album by her. Todd Rundgren as producer used to strike me as strange—in 1975, when I most adored both of them, separately, it never occurred to me their paths could cross. I recall Patti Smith in 1979 widely considered as something of a problem—unfocused, hysterical, an embarrassment. Going off a high stage in 1977 and breaking her neck was part of it. Being a woman was probably more of it. Ultimately it didn't matter because she married and went away soon after this, and five years later the whole episode felt a bit like a dream. But I really warmed to Wave once it found its way into my house, as a cutout a year or two later, if memory serves. It starts strong with the three singles, "Frederick," "Dancing Barefoot," now practically a signature song, and a cover of "So You Want to Be (A Rock 'n' Roll Star)," which reminded us, if we needed the reminder, and I think we did, that the majority of her most ecstatic roots were playing on the radio between 1964 and 1967. The focus is mostly lost by the back side of the set but momentum carries it; that and a natural focus on those first three songs, which drew me back continually. When I was working this into the shuffle in anticipation of writing about it I was at first alarmed by how weak these random songs were. But once I played it in track sequence from start to finish it all came back. As for the professional polish, yeah, it's there. But I don't think the intentions were on the order of selling out. I think they have more to do with a needy artist who needs love and has always been perfectly willing to put that out there. She does her thing, and always has, but there's one eye cocked on the audience at all times. There's no other way she could have possibly become one of the great rock 'n' roll performers, which is what she was at least the night I saw her in 1976. She was trying to please then and she's trying to please here. And not making a bad job of it either.

Nearly Human (1989)

Todd Rundgren was a deep if brief infatuation of mine in the mid-'70s, though I never quite grokked the widely hailed classic double-LP Something/Anything; I liked pieces of it but on the whole it left me cold. My favorites, such as the first Utopia project (with one side a single 30-minute "song"), veered dangerously close either to fusion indulgences or, as with Initiation's "Real Man," to a kind of self-pitying self-help project for post-adolescent males. A Wizard/A True Star was my album of choice, and by the time of the absurd Faithful I was pretty much over the whole thing. Then, nearly 15 years later, came this. I picked it out of the slush pile at a newsweekly for which I was freelancing concert and album reviews—in those situations I often clutched at anything that seemed the least bit promising. And this one repaid, perhaps because of a painful divorce I was working through at the time and the opportunity this incidentally afforded to return to a past when things seemed safer, at least from the temporary vantage. For a short time I revisited with relish the various contradictory pleasures of Rundgren, who manages to take the kind of overweening technical prowess that can make Steely Dan productions at once so clinically admirable and so hollow and put it together with the heart of a soul man who knows his way around some of the most affecting strategies of songwriting and the mind of the post-adolescent male (strong as ever more than a decade on, talking about him not me, but it applied to me as well) who longs 24/7 for the fantasy of the girlfriend who surpasseth all understanding. Here Rundgren turns formally to gospel textures, backing up some of the tracks with entire choral choirs and letting it unspool for upwards of five or seven minutes apiece. Sometimes that works. The Elvis Costello cover, "Two Little Hitlers," I think mostly does not, though it was nice to see Rundgren finally engaging with the aftermath of 1977. What I like best, what I return to even still, are a few songs—"The Want of a Nail," "Fidelity," and especially "Parallel Lines"—that somehow put me back in the old Wizard way of hearing him, heartfelt, simple, open, lovely declarations of how it feels to be alive and all the poignant experience that it entails. Sometimes I sing along but most often I just sit quietly and listen, happy to reconnect once again with this strange gnomic figure of my youth.

"Hello It's Me" (1973)

21. Todd Rundgren, "Hello It's Me" (Nov. 10, 1973, #5)

When last we heard from Todd Rundgren he was trying hard to cheer up a fellow named Leroy and find him a date, only in the last moment realizing that he should maybe think about taking some of his own advice. So fade to black. Open on: Three years later. Todd at telephone, contemplative. Lifts receiver, dials (this is 1973, see). Holds receiver, listening, tentative. Then: "Hello it's me / I've thought about us for a long, long time / Maybe I think too much but something's wrong / There's something here that doesn't last too long / Maybe I shouldn't think of you as mine." Does that make sense? Nah, not really, but it sure sounds pretty. And we are off on the further adventures of the bashful introvert nice guy out and about looking for a gal. (Set aside that this was hardly the real actual Todd Rundgren, whose girlfriend at the time was Bebe Buell.) Rundgren knew his audience well—guys whose chronic sense of romantic fantasy was matched only by the chronic ineptness of their ever achieving anything commensurate to the fantasy, and he pretty well wrote directly to that, with lovely tunes and nicely overwrought production and words that flashed non-sequentially on poignant elements of the fantasy. I know that "Spend the night if you think I should" out of this song always lit up for me like a big ol' Christmas tree. So did "It's important to me / That you know you are free / 'Cos I never want to make you change for me." Being genuinely sensitive meant having feelings just like that. I fell for it like the proverbial ton of bricks. It works on me still. Look how high I've ranked it.

"We Gotta Get You a Woman" (1970)

53. Runt, "We Gotta Get You a Woman" (Dec. 26, 1970, #20)

Todd Rundgren the blue-eyed soul guy from Philadelphia always had more than the singing to make his way. In fact, his singing may have been among the least of his talents in some estimations; he dallied in the '70s and '80s with new age fusion fantasies and various metal/punk pretensions and won fans in those areas and those arenas too. But back when he was a hitmaker it was the songwriting that mostly did the work, as here with this poignant scenario, two guys talking things over in aw-shucks guys to guys manner about women, mostly a pep talk monologue, one-sided. This whole song is one-sided. Who the hell is Leroy and why should I care about whether he's gotta get a woman? All those questions are answered, most of them in the tones of Rundgren's voice, the way he shifts and sighs as he directs his speech over Leroy's shoulder and directly to us. He manages to make the song as comfy and Sunday afternoon as soft pants out of the dryer, speaking words of wisdom that we immediately recognize: "I tell you now we're going to pull you through / There's only one thing left that we can do / We gotta get you a woman / It's like nothing else to make you feel sure you're alive." Then the turn to the wryly goofy, as the music unexpectedly slows and sweetens: "Talkin' 'bout things ... about that special one / They may be stupid but they sure are fun." And, last but not least, the sudden turn to awkward inhibition as the singer suddenly gulps and sees the picture clear: "And when we're through with you / We'll get me one too." Yeah, you bet they will.

A Wizard, A True Star (1973)

"Zen Archer" From "We Gotta Get You a Woman" to Nearly Human (and maybe beyond, but by then I'd lost interest), Todd Rundgren worked an exhilarating and exasperating ability to mix up achingly beautiful fragments of pop and creditable soul turns with an unfortunate tendency toward prog noodling and rank, pointless mimicry. He's always been a studio wonk, but with talent to burn the flash of melodic and emotional brilliance worked its way even into his album-side workouts with Utopia, making a good deal of his output in the '70s worthwhile. Though there are Something/Anything partisans aplenty, it's an album with which I never connected. I think this is his best, annoying handful of 1:xx throwaways notwithstanding. With sound effects and heavy production everywhere, a 10-minute soul medley, "explicit lyrics" '70s style (the parental warning presumably refers to "Rock and Roll Pussy" and/or "When the Shit Hits the Fans," oh good grief), and any number of coulda woulda shoulda pop smashes ("Sometimes I Don't Know What to Feel," "I Don't Want to Tie You Down," "You Don't Have to Camp Around," "Just One Victory"), it's rarely less than perfectly winning.

More information in comments.