Todd Rundgren—A Wizard, a True Star

Todd Rundgren—A Wizard, a True Star

"To me, it's the beginning of my real career as a musician. Up until then, I was pretty much following the rules of the game. An album was a collection of singles, and singles were all short, accessible songs that usually were about the opposite sex. 'Something/Anything?' was an attempt for me to get a grip on that. By the time I got to the end of that record, I not only had a grip on it, but I was bored with it." —Todd Rundgren, Cleveland.com, 2009

A Wizard, a True Star—Everything begins and ends in nature. The 1971 earthquake in San Fernando, California took 64 lives and caused $553 million in damage. Philadelphia native Todd Rundgren saw fit to move back east and construct Secret Sound Studio, his follow-up to Something/Anything? already in mind. A Wizard, a True Star was not exactly meant to bitterly destroy his reputation, a la Nirvana's In Utero, but it is a deliberate attempt at artistry over the mainstream. "It was a spoof on becoming a show-biz personality," Rundgren stated. "I think I read it in a review somewhere—'a wizard, a true star'—and it just amused me. It wasn't supposed to be serious," he continued, but in 1973 claimed, "I've always tried to make an album that would frustrate critics to the point that they couldn't review it [...] I'm looking for the true fans. This album really puts people to the test as to whether they are really following what I'm into or not. A lot of people were into my music because they were very self-satisfied by what the music represented to them."¹

Side one, titled "The International Feel (in 8)," delivers on this promise. The opening "International Feel" takes off like a rocket ship, proclaiming, "I only want to see if you'll give up on me." Perhaps knowingly, this leads into a watery cover of "Never Never Land" from Peter Pan, giving new context to "Just keep an open mind [...] You'll have a treasure if you stay there." The suite then turns truly bizarre with the psychedelic "Tic Tic Tic, It Wears Off," the proto-punk "You Need Your Head" and "Rock & Roll Pussy," the nonsensical "Dogfight Giggle," the sweet, slinking "You Don't Have to Camp Around," and the chirping "Flamingo."

"Zen Archer" was foreshadowed by "Song of the Viking," but here is fleshed out into a fully-realized epic. "Just Another Onionhead/Da Da Dali" is either a veiled message on selling out, a quaint fantasy, or both, coupled with a Tin Pan Alley send-up. "When the Shit Hits the Fan/Sunset Blvd." is a love letter of sorts to the Los Angeles that Rundgren left behind; ironically he begins the song with the line, "Earthquake in New York City." He then closes the side with the reprise "Le Feel Internacionale," broadcasting, "Utopia is here," a band whose sound is previewed on this album in some respects.

Side two is comprised of more traditional songs, and is thus labeled, "A True Star." "Sometimes I Don't Know What to Feel" is a more vulnerable take on the "feels" he mentioned in the previous suite. "Does Anybody Love You?" contains the curious line, "Love between the ugly is the most beautiful love of all." Rundgren does himself one better than he did on Something/Anything? with the ten minute "Medley: I'm So Proud/Ooh Baby Baby/La La Means I Love You/Cool Jerk." Rundgren raves, "A meal at McDonald's/Nothing fills a man when he's hungry for love" on the demented would-be lovesong "Hungry for Love." The song is baffling—and, of course, that is the name of the game—presented next to the sincere "I Don't Want to Tie You Down." Rundgren said at the time, "For [David] Bowie, the songs are a background for a theatrical presentation rather than a musical one [...] Alice [Cooper] and David really break the illusion at a certain point. It seems to leave the realm of strict theater."² He may have been commenting further on this on "Is It My Name?" when he exclaims, "There is cause and effect/There's a reason I'm so erect," and asks, "My voice goes so high you would think I was gay/But I play my guitar in such a man-cock way/Why don't you love me?/Is it my name?" which may indicate frustration at the inability to succeed at the level of Alice Cooper or David Bowie.

"I've never been able to give up certain things that you have to give up to become a star, such as eliminating the more frayed aspects of my personality and becoming a unified thing and representing one thing as much as David or Alice represent one thing. I've never been able to play it straight. I always end up acting like a kid, blowing it and giggling. I don't take it seriously enough to act like I'm supposed to act. If I had an audience with the Queen, I'd giggle through the whole thing." —Rundgren, Interview Magazine, 1973

Finally, Rundgren plays himself straight and summarizes his message with "Just One Victory," a wondrous call to arms where he comments on his critics ("I've been listening to what's been going down/There's just too much talk and gossip going 'round/You may think that I'm a fool, but I know the answer/Words become a tool, anyone can use them) and proclaims, "The time has come to take the bull by the horns [...] We need just one victory and we're on our way."

Todd Rundgren, as he put it, established a new language with A Wizard, a True Star. It may not have the eminence of his prior work, but it is a dense LP with an abundance of ideas and just as diverse as the sprawling Something/Anything? by which he made his name. It has potential to be a revelation to casual fans, and for the true fans, it is an essential milestone.

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1 2 interviewmagazine.com/music/new-again-todd-rundgren^↩

Todd Rundgren—Liars

Todd Rundgren—Liars

Liars—Never one to compromise, Todd Rundgren always had an inherent proclivity to detours. What set him apart from kindred spirits Frank Zappa and Neil Young was an enduring fondness for radio pop, rendering him a more self-effacing David Bowie than the former two. But again, Rundgren is his own man, and he was also more on the low-concept side of things: he liked to form bands—he liked the abstract of colluding with a band—he put sound before story (or anything, really), and any attempts at thematic cohesion were done for effect, such as the extemporaneous fourth side of Something/Anything? (1972) or the avant-estrangement of A Wizard, a True Star (1973). Given this, Liars appears to be dressed more like a Roger Waters brainchild:

"All of these songs are about a paucity of truth. At first they may seem to be about other things, but that is just a reflection of how much dishonesty we have accepted in our daily lives [...] The fact is, we are terrified of the truth." —Liner notes of Liars

Elucidating meaningfully for a rare moment, Rundgren heralds just his second bona fide concept album after Healing (1981). There was the strange mixed media project No World Order (1993), the amusing bossa nova makeover With a Twist... (1997), and the experimental voice-manipulation of A Cappella (1985), but Liars is most similar to the 1989's Nearly Human. An admirer of genuine passion in art, Rundgren recorded Human with a number of authentic figures in soul music, namely Bobby Womack, and came up with a product that, essentially, is truthful. Whether he intended this faithful music to be a statement or just simple artistic expression is up for debate—probably the latter, if bets are on the table—but Liars pulls no punches: it's a statement.

Aside from the aforementioned passage, Liars is sparsely furnished; the jacket shows Rundgren dressed as the Easter Bunny, who is a notorious lie of sorts; the photo itself a counterfeit candid. The song titles are mostly one word, non-descriptive, very Pearl Jam, with all of it combining to make clear the listener must spin the disc to get any real sense of the music. Liars sounds distant and roomy as the effective overture "Truth" pulses along: "I gotta find the truth/If I lose my mind, well I don't care." "Sweet" is about freeing oneself from societal pressure and being true to oneself set to a glassy, synthetic groove. "Happy Anniversary" is one of the best, most original cuts on the album; Rundgren uses a soft verse/hard chorus approach to explain the lies children are told about the opposite sex and how it forever affects the way they view relationships. More pointed is "Soul Brother," where Rundgren testifies against the rap game and what he sees as a lack of soul compared to the music that influenced him.

"Stood Up" has lyrics more winding and cryptic than the rest; it is more notable for its musical excellence, inflected with almost a Middle Eastern-type folk sound and impressive natural phrasing of its words. "Mammon," of course, is the attack on the profit-seeking side of religion, specifically American Christianity (or perhaps a similar institution), echoing Nietzsche almost verbatim. Then come the twin time-tales "Future," the promise of a better tomorrow that never comes, and "Past," about failing to accept what has changed in one's relationships—they are not as concise as "Pastime Paradise," but like the rest of the songs they are effective mood pieces. "Past" leads into "Wondering," featuring Liars' best hooks, but also some of the least substantial lyrics. "Flaw" is similarly gripping, a song that grows on the listener, layered with ideas about not being able to compromise in a relationship that is mostly perfect; the singer cannot continue with his love interest because their fatal flaw is, of course, untruthfulness.

Rundgren continues to examine the confounding nature of the spiritual, in this case the eponymous "Afterlife," observing that the great beyond seems to have ever-increasing standards of admission and also the idea of whether life after death can really be better than that which is corporeal; "Living" uses this same subject as a metaphor, but turned inward, as he puts the onus on himself as the singer to question whether he's "living a lie" with his unspecified companion. The penultimate "God Said" is the true confessional that eluded Rundgren for much of his career, as he asks why the enlightenment that apparently comes to others has evaded him; daringly, he speaks as God Himself, urging his followers to "get over [themselves]," taunting those who seek to win God's favor, or perhaps accusing himself of the same misguided actions. Liars is then put to rest with the awesome marquee "Liar," a five-minute drum-and-synth attack that is nothing if not potent catharsis.

Todd Rundgren's contemporaries, such as the individualistic Scott Walker, are often described as having a period where they lost themselves; while this does not describe Rundgren, there was a long stretch of time where his experimentation often obscured his basic musicianship. Liars is the point where he achieved the best balance between these aspects. The sprawling, tantric collection is his best in two decades. It seems overlong at a glance, and in fact Rundgren went beyond his usual scope with more than seventy minutes of music, but the songs are layered, the philosophy is complex, and his craft is as admirable as it's ever been.

Todd Rundgren—Something/Anything?

Todd Rundgren—Something/Anything?

Something/Anything?—A double album of pop music is almost a contradiction in terms. In the 1960s, an album was more of a brand than it was a work of art. Record companies teased the public with a 7" single and the promise that if they bought the album, they could expect more of the same. Many acts found that they could not produce enough quality music at one time to fill a long-player, a format which, at least initially, was more commonly used to compile existing recordings, such as that of an musical, live performance, or studio odds and ends. It wasn't until 1955 that multi-track recording was developed and 1957 that the mass production of stereo LPs became viable. That opened the door for technophiles like Todd Rundgren to enter the studio and have more complete control over the specifics that made it onto a record.

By the time Rundgren started recording Something/Anything? in 1971, he could do these things from the comfort of his home. He was afforded this luxury by his previous success as part of the bands Nazz and Runt, the latter of which was so heavily under his leadership that its two LPs (Runt and The Ballad of Todd Rundgren) are retroactively considered Rundgren solo albums. But when the term "solo album" is used, it usually means there were other musicians involved in the recording, if not the songwriting; Something/Anything? is the real deal, with Rundgren playing every instrument and producing the album himself—apart from side four, which was recorded with pick-up bands and features some covers.

Todd Rundgren is not someone who submits to ego concerns, admitting to being "pretty overbearing to deal with"¹ and prefers to mastermind his releases, though he would go back to using session musicians on many later efforts. He also lets his influences be known, as on the first song and premier single "I Saw the Light," echoing the previous year's "It's Too Late"/"I Feel the Earth Move" from Carole King's Tapestry. Recorded by Rundgren in "all of 20 minutes,"² it shows this in its simplicity but somehow transcends this in its humble arrangement, not daring the listener to find fault with it. "It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference" is more nuanced in its chord changes and is a sparkling ballad that also impresses with its irregular vocal patterns. "Wolfman Jack" is an exhilarating tribute to the disc jockey of the same name, which upon its release as a single more than two years later was remixed with Wolfman Jack himself performing the opening lines. "Cold Morning Light" takes it down several notches to a pretty AM radio-flavored pop tune that could have fit alongside "The Ballad (Denny & Jean)." "It Takes Two to Tango (This Is for the Girls)" speaks for itself: a self-empowering seventh-chord anthem: typical musically for Rundgren. Side one—which it should be known the liner notes say is "A bouquet of ear-catching melodies"—closes out with the saccharine, downtempo organ crawl of "Sweeter Memories."

The second side ("This is the cerebral side") has arguably the most experimental material of the four. It is easy to miss the humor of "Intro" on first listen as Rundgren speaks about audible problems that arise during the processing of an album, challenging the listener to "find the sounds on the record." The following "Breathless" makes use of of these noises to create an instrumental jingle backed ironically with a breath track. "The Night the Carousel Burned Down" teeters on the possibility of being a real story ("My first movie score. Unfortunately, there is no movie to go with it."). "Saving Grace" and "Marlene" are more traditional than the rest of the side while the latter was probably most notable as the B-side to "I Saw the Light." "Song of the Viking" is a strange but welcome inclusion that is a faithful shanty possibly with some degree of metaphor. "I Went to the Mirror" closing out the first LP is the most drug-like song here, but also an interesting observation on fixating on smaller details ("In fact the last song is so cerebral it's almost embarrassing.").

"Black Maria" is one of the heavier and more involved songs in the set, with an almost-Led Zeppelin blues-rock sound to it (Side three: "The kid gets heavy."). "One More Day (No Word)" is a gem, styled like a romancero with an excellent arrangement ("... about people with all the time in the world. What a drag"). "Couldn't I Just Tell You" has been rightfully hailed as a power-pop classic, and Rundgren knew it ("The hits just keep on coming."). "Torch Song" is everything it purports to be. "Little Red Lights" is perhaps the least immediately appealing song cut for the album, but it is interesting in its method of construction meant to resemble a car changing gears.

Side four is "A Pop Operetta," "a series of songs with sing along choruses" designed to be spontaneous (if that makes sense). However, "Overture – My Roots: Money (That's What I Want)/Messin' with the Kid)" is actually a pair of 1966 live recordings by pre-Nazz Rundgren groups Money ("Performed by a group of the same name") and Woody's Truck Stop respectively. "Dust in the Wind" is future Utopia member Moogy Klingman's song and a solid one that stands tall with Rundgren's. "Piss Aaron" works despite its strange subject matter: high school students pissing in the halls and puking over egg sandwiches. "Hello It's Me," the most enduring song from Rundgren's catalog, dates back to Nazz when it was recorded as a stripped-down psychedelic tune. Here it's delivered with fuller instrumentation and female backing vocals, giving it new life.

On "Some Folks Is Even Whiter than Me" "the kid waxes jive and breaks into a message song a la New Tempts" and somehow comes out smelling like a rose: Rundgren's studied and earnest delivery offsets his overstepping his boundaries as always. "You Left Me Sore" is made better by the note from the booklet: "The company's new president [...] has convinced the kid to write a public service kind of message song to hip people to the dangers of V.D." A possible candidate for best song in the whole collection is "Slut," featuring Eddie Olmos on backing vocals; though demeaning at first blush, it is a first-rate horned-out rocker that channels the Rolling Stones without borrowing from them.

Something/Anything? is, at the very least, an assemblage of songs that's worth owning on quality alone. It is a rare double album with no bad cuts—some better or more striking than others, but dynamics are a good thing. But it's also a studio triumph, more impressing in its production than many modern records, and a fascinating piece of music history for its quirks. Todd Rundgren made plenty of music at this level or higher before and after, but this is his seminal work.

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1 Liner notes of The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, 1999 CD reissue^↩
2 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/todd-rundgren-nothing-but-the-truth-6165625.html^↩