Todd Rundgren’s Last Ride as a Pop Star

Todd

Todd Rundgren

1974

Few artists have tested the faith of his or her fans like Todd Rundgren.  I mean here’s a guy who scores two big hits in 1972 with “I Saw the Light” and  “Hello It’s Me” and then decides to release two of the most consistently experimental and uncommercial albums of his career with A Wizard, A True Star and Todd.  This isn’t the way it usually works.  Bob Dylan jumps to mind, having done something similar on a larger scale, but to a lesser extent with Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait.  The difference is that Dylan didn’t want fame at the time, whereas Todd simply didn’t want to get pigeonholed so early in his career.  He didn’t deliberately alienate his audience.  He began a career long journey of musical experiments and invited his audience into the lab.  Mission accomplished because from that point forward Rundgren became possibly the best known obscure artist in rock.    Everybody knows a handful of his songs, but only a handful of dedicated fans know more than a few.

Count me amongst the latter.  Listening to many of Todd Rundgren’s albums from start to finish, especially those released in the early to mid 70’s,  does take fortitude, but there was always an upside.  Rundgren took chances.  When you ripped the plastic off a Todd Rundgren record from that era, pulled the vinyl from the sleeve, put the disk on your turntable and dropped the needle….you never knew what to expect.

Todd was one of the most wildly uneven and fascinating albums of Rundgren’s early career.  Rundgren was admittedly using marijuana, Ritalin and other “recreational” drugs at the time, but for pragmatic purposes.  He didn’t smoke weed to get high, he toked to escape creative dead ends.  Ritalin, on the other hand, gave Rundgren the energy and inspiration to work day and night, but did little to reign in any ADD tendencies.

Stylistically, this record is all over the place.  “A Dream Goes on Forever,” “Useless Begging” and “Izzat Love” deliver the gorgeous, melodic pop Rundgren fans wanted.   A peace-offering to the masses, he nevertheless refused to let Bearsville release “Izzat Love” as a single, threatening to never record again if they did.  “Everybody’s Going to Heaven/King Kong Reggae,” and “Heavy Metal Kids,” were progressive metal epics combining primitive riffs with complex, shifting, time signatures, double tracked guitar solos, and synthesizer effects.

Anchoring the whole thing were two lengthy blue-eyed soul classics that would become staples of Todd’s live shows.  “Don’t You Ever Learn” begins with a childlike piano figure and gradually transforms into an early version of the soul-infused progressive rock Rundgren would explore more fully in his later albums with Utopia.  Like some of Brian Wilson’s songs on Pet Sounds,  Todd seems to be simultaneously explaining his need to grow and chastising fans who want to hold him back, when he sings,

“It’s time to take a turn.
You think this life is something strange
You’re ready for another change
But don’t you ever learn?”

“The Last Ride” uses the analogy of a long drive that’s reaching its end to describe a relationship.  When he sings, “I had it made and I could coast. But I turned away love when I  needed it most,” you know he could be talking about a lover or his audience.  Once more, Rundgren seems to be describing his fans when the song reaches its climax.  Todd sings “And they can’t cry cause they seen it comin. It’s time to take them home,” and launches into one of the most soaring, emotional guitar solos to ever emerge from human hands.  Was this goodbye harder for Todd than he would lead you to believe?

In 2010 Todd recruited some high-profile musicians to learn and perform the Todd and Healing albums in their entirety (curiously leaving off “In and Out of the Chakras We Go”).  The band included long-time musical partner, bassist Kasim Sultan (Utopia), drummer Prairie Prince (Tubes), and keyboardist Greg Hawkes (The Cars).  I was fortunate enough to attend the Glenside, PA performance (now available on both DVD and CD through Toddstore.com) of this brief, six city tour.  As is often the case, seeing the music performed live helped me approach the record with a new perspective.  Todd struggles to hit a few notes on “Useless Begging” , and his guitar is horribly out of tune on the Hendrix-insprired “Number 1 Lowest Common Denominator.”  But the live setting, in the company of a small but passionate audience of super fans, helped me gain access to the charms of  Todd’s most experimental tracks.   When you realize that the vocal track to “Spark of Life” isn’t played on a synthesizer, it is hummed by Todd and transformed by effects to sound like a synth, it suddenly starts to sound like a song, as opposed to studio trickery and filler.  It becomes more human.

Interestingly, the evening’s most remarkable moment came after the show was over.  Backed by a local high school choir, the final song of the night, Sons of 1984,  was reaching it’s exhilarating conclusion.  The band, the choir and the audience were all smiling, clapping and singing along with Todd’s inspirational chorus:

Worlds of Tomorrow
Life Without Sorrow
Take it Because it’s Yours
Sons of 1984

It was the experience of being part of something greater.  It was like going to church.  It was a reminder that “Everyone is Going to Heaven.”  The curtain finally dropped but the band continued to play behind it and we all kept singing and clapping to the beat.   Eventually the band and choir muted their voices and instruments until they were no longer audible, but we all continued to smile and sing…because it felt so damn awesome to be there, to be singing those words, and to be together.  We didn’t know each other, but we didn’t want it to end and we didn’t want to leave.  It went on for what seemed like 10 or 15 minutes, but I wasn’t timing it.  I didn’t care.  I’m not sure we would have stopped at all if the lights hadn’t come up.

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