TODD RUNDGREN
All Music and Lyrics by Todd Rundgren
except "Overture-My Roots: Money (That's What I Want)/Messin' With The Kid" composed by Janie Bradford, Berry Gordy Jr.
"Dust In The Wind" composed by Moogy Klingman
Produced by Todd Rundgren
Released February 1972
I had no intention of writing a new feature celebrating Todd Rundgren so soon but inspiration...or better yet...a wave of nostalgia overtook me.
As of the week of August 26th, the student body of the University Of Wisconsin-Madison began to move back onto campus. The sights of those new and returning students, plus the signage all over campus directing them and their families to the location of their residence halls, instantly took me back to the point when I was performing the exact same feat when I was 18 years old 26 years ago. Dear readers and listeners, I have always been a person who has remained extremely inter-connected with the cycle of the school year and because of that, I go through this same wave of nostalgia at the beginning and end of each and every school year. The year 1987 holds a reverential significance to me because it was the year when life changed so completely that it all felt to be a bit of a rebirth and Todd Rundgren's "Something/Anything?" was a crucial element of my personal soundtrack.
"Something/Anything?," Todd Rundgren's third solo album and pop cultural breakthrough in the early part of 1972, was an album I discovered in the early part of 1987, when I was just about to graduate from high school. During that summer, I spent a somewhat solitary and increasingly introverted period crawling into myself, submerging myself in music and writing and mentally preparing myself for leaving home to begin my Freshman year of college at the University Of Wisconsin-Madison. Todd Rundgren was an artist, at that time, I knew absolutely nothing about but his name had crept into music articles, reviews and interviews from time to time and they always carried a certain aura of mystery as well as a supreme sense of reverence. That this Rundgren person was someone so formidable, so unusual, so special, that the mere audio waves of radio could not even begin to contain or even comprehend someone like him. One piece of the Todd Rundgren puzzle that fascinated me tremendously was that Rundgren had been celebrated for being a musician who typically played and sang every single note on his albums all by his lonesome. This factoid seriously piqued my interest because as I was about to leave the uncomfortable confines of high school, with all of its misconceived perceptions and series of public faces utilized for self-preservation and secluding massive insecurities, I was at a stage where I really wanted to try and find out exactly who I was away from this particular life situation and group of people I had known since childhood. A musical artist who made albums all by himself seemed to represent a certain intense, and almost magical, individuality that was attractive and inspiring to me--especially at that time, I was only really aware that Prince was such a musician, and he seemed like he landed on Earth from Jupiter! So, I slowly began to hunt and peck to see what I could find.
The first Rundgren related album I ever purchased was actually not one of his solo albums but one performed with his band Utopia, entitled "Adventures In Utopia" (released December 27, 1979). Based upon a great Orwellian themed music video I had seen and thoroughly enjoyed, I purchased a second Utopia album entitled "Oblivion" (released January 1984).
As Rundgren's wry self penned liner notes proclaimed, "Something/Anything?" began with "A bouquet of ear catching melodies," as the track "I Saw The Light" opened the musical doors to the double album triumphantly. If you are not familiar at all with the music of Todd Rundgren (as I am certain most of you are not), this song is one of the songs that YOU...WILL...KNOW! It is a timeless gem of pop song bliss that you have heard someplace, somewhere. You may even know all of the words and the melody and have never had the foggiest idea of who the artist ever was. When those first notes chimed through my speakers, I recognized the song instantly, and though to myself, "THIS is Todd Rundgren?!" It was a song I had long thought to have been performed by Carole King, as it was warm, sincere, classic songwriting at its finest. The actual effect of the song was something that I can only describe as "primal" as it was a song that I have known for my entire life. It is a song that has always been with me in some way. A part of my deepest sub-consciousness. And when I hear it to this day, I see a swirl of colors of light browns and golden hues that suggest my sweetest, earliest memories. It is as if I knew that song in the womb, even though I was born a few years before it entered the world! In regards to this song, according to Rundgren himself in the liner notes, "If there's a single on this album, this is it, so I put it first like at Motown." Indeed, so ahead of the curve in its perceptiveness and how correct as this song has stood the test of time so valiantly. Now, knowing whom I was listening to, I began to think that this album might be the perfect listening experience in my opening courses in "Todd Rundgren 101."
Well...not quite.
I listened to the entire double album and once it was completed, and even after being gobsmacked for a second time when his eternal classic "Hello, It's Me" appeared deep within Side Four, I exited my "Something/Anything?" experience a little less than impressed. With a very lengthy internal "eye roll," I thought to myself, "Man...this album was a little too 70s...It's too mellow!" And with that, I shelved it.
But then, a day or so later, I plucked it out to try it again. I listened, still unimpressed, to all four sides and returned to my original impression. But then, the next day, I listened to it again. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And before I knew it, and especially by the end of the summer when I was packing up to leave my Chicago home for Madison, WI., I realized that I had been listening to Todd Rundgren's "Something/Anything?" almost every single day...and how deeply in love with it I had grown.
While "Something/Anything?" had grown on me so organically and wonderfully that it had informed the few other Rundgren related releases that I had previously purchased and was confused b, this album was the one I cherished the most and was also the one that began to fuel my pursuit of more Rundgren/Utopia releases afterwards. I poured myself into that album so completely and became so infatuated with Todd Rundgren's musical vision that he soon became a hero to me. As I was beginning to think about what my world view actually was, I would hear another Todd Rundgren song and discover that he was articulating things in the exact way that I would do it, if only I knew how. The music spoke to me and through me and once I cracked the code to "Something/Anything?," an entirely new musical universe was opened to me.
First of all, "Something/Anything?" certainly did promote Todd Rundgren as a musical pioneer and an individualist unlike most. Sides One, Two and Three of the album contain songs all written, produced, arranged, sung and performed completely and only by the man himself...and he was only 24 years old at the time. By contrast, Side Four was recorded live in the studio with Rundgren and friends, with no studio overdubs whatsoever. Returning to Side One and what follows "I Saw The Light," Rundgren delivers the earnestly beautiful slow jam "It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference" and then follows that with "Wolfman Jack," a jive talkin' slab of R&B with sassy harmony backing vocals and punchy horn section (again played entirely by Rundgren).
After listening to this album for the past 26 years of my life, I feel that this album really begins with the fourth song "Cold Morning Light." For all of the musical diversity that runs throughout all four sides of the album, one aspect of "Something/Anything?" that has meant so tremendously to me has been Todd Rundgren's role as a heart on sleeve romantic. His love songs stand head and shoulders above most of the GAJILLIONS of love songs I have heard throughout my life because Todd Rundgren's ballads seem to be written and felt from the inside out as they are not only so perceptively observed bu they always seem to under stand exactly what love it all about. When I was 18 and had experienced a variety of romantic woes and disappointments and one crushingly painful episode of heartbreak, Rundgren's songs on this album just got the mental and emotional state down to the bone. "Cold Morning Light," from the lyrics ("The wound you left is healing and then...it stars itching and I scratch it open again."), to the tempo, the instrumentation, the singing and overall performance, just understood heartache in a way that I had not quite heard it before. Even his lack of musical proficiency on certain instruments (notably the drums), only enhanced the melancholy mood and sentiment of the song. And then, the song seamlessly slides into the keyboard driven jewel "It Takes Two To Tango (This Is For The Girls)," which itself is later followed by the likes of the sweeping "Marlene" (whose opening moments just sound like someone's breath being taken away by the sight of a beautiful girl), the power pop diamond "Couldn't I Just Tell You" and the more than appropriately named "Torch Song."
But "Something/Anything?" is not all ballads. Todd Rundgren the guitar hero emerges powerfully on heavier rock workouts like "Black Maria" (my college roommate said that it reminded him a little bit of Pink Floyd's "Breathe" although Rundgren's tune arrived a full year earlier) and the muscle car joyride "Little Red Lights." Yet, the album also contained several selections that would foreshadow Rundgren's musical journeyman spirit, his ahead of the curve experimentation and at times, impish tendencies (much of which is found on Side Four's studio chatter), which often proves to be very infectious. There is the Gilbert and Sullivan styled ditty ("Song Of The Viking"), a brief instrumental foray into synthesizers ("Breathless"), musical dirty jokes ("Piss Aaron," "You Left Me Sore," "Slut"), soft psychedelia ("I Went To The Mirror"), a striking, haunting story song ("The Night The Carousel Burnt Down") and "Saving Grace," what may be one of Rundgren's earliest entries into Utopian territory with his self-described "Theme song for a generation" which also simultaneously works as a song of individualistic self-affirmation ("I know the time is gonna come when I will mean something to someone. Until that day, I'm hanging on..."). And still, there's even more...
One of the very BEST and most audacious moments on the entire double album is when the music stops completely and Todd Rundgren addresses the listener and asks us to indulge him by playing an audio game of finding all of the possible mistakes contained throughout the record. Of course, this is something you cannot do with a cassette, CD or digital file, which just makes the exchange even that much more audacious and funny. Once you put all of the album's pieces together, you are able to hear just how much fun this album was to make as well as to listen to.
Todd Rundgren's "Something/Anything?" is pop masterpiece, the kind of which has really never been duplicated and even Rundgren himself has never revisited due to his musically exploratory spirit, and even in 2013, this album remains modern and nostalgic. Remember, Rundgren was just 24 years old at the time and I firmly believe that if you have not heard this album before, you will be won over by his his sense of wonderment, exploration and sheer abandon with the joy of creation and discovery.
As for me, and in addition to everything I have written, "Something/Anything?" is an album that is just meant for quiet, solitary, lonely, lost August afternoons where life itself is endlessly vast and filled with a sense of possibility. Every single time I put this album on, I am magically transported as that open road of my past re-appears so vividly in the windows of my mind, while new roads and visions of possibility reveal themselves as well.
And to think, all of this from watching college students move back into the city to travel their own new roads of possibilities.
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