Published on Nov 21, 1999
Like the Beatles’
Magical Mystery Tour, Fleetwood Mac’s
Tusk or U2’s
Zooropa, Todd Rundgren’s
A Wizard / A True Star is one of those abrupt-left-turn
records that the geniuses of the rock and roll era who get the
commercial recognition they deserve make as long-anticipated
“follow-ups,” challenging their devoted listeners further, and
turning their bandwagon fans away almost as quickly as they latched
on in the first place.
In Rundgren’s case, this perennially-overlooked
songwriter/producer was coming off the lone mainstream success of
his now-30-year career, the 1972 double album
Something / Anything, which harnessed his promising
synthesis of blue-eyed soul and psychedelic experimentation into
some of the most irresistible pure pop ever recorded, among it the
deservedly-smash hits “Hello It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light.” So
what to do for an encore? Well, I wouldn’t have done what he did,
but in 1973 I was a mere toddler, whereas Rundgren was about to
become the odd, unpredictable musical force of the ’70s that still
knows no equal.
The gatefold is an attractive piece of album art in itself,
featuring lyrics and notes in Todd’s informal scrawl. He tells the
owner of the record to “crank up your victrola as loud as it will
go to get the full enjoyment contained in this here LP.” Doing so
undoubtedly caused many to recoil in horror and cry out something
to the effect of “What the devil is he doing?!” in perhaps less
than G-rated language.
The dissonant plane taking off that launches into the leadoff
track “International Feel” immediately signals that this is not
Something / Anything, Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s a
rough, pounding track, that lasts only a couple minutes, and then
segues awkwardly into a version of “Never Never Land” from “Peter
Pan” drenched in vintage analog feedback. Huh?
Side one continues much in this fashion – the songs are mostly
fairly short, there’s hardly a break, and our Wizard jumps all over
the place, from vicious hard rock (“You Need Your Head”) to twisted
faux-showtunes (“Just Another Onionhead / Da Da Dali”) to indulgent
synthesizer-lab noises (“Flamingo,” “Dogfight Giggle”). Only “Zen
Archer” is a full-fledged song, and it’s a sprawling, morbid ballad
about pretty things dying. Side two is more traditional, but nearly
half of it is a medley of rather unnecessary (and extremely
indulgent) tips of the hat to some of Rundgren’s favorite Motown
songs.
But after the initial shock wears off, and after you’ve listened
to
Something / Anything a few more dozen times, you come back
to this album to give it another chance, and like the
aforementioned classic abrupt-left-turn albums, this one grows on
you like the true work of genius it is. How does this happen? Well,
the mish-mash of side one starts to make a little more sense; it’s
in fact Rundgren’s own idea of a musical melting pot, sort of like
the Who’s
The Who Sell Out or Frank Zappa’s
We’re Only In It For The Money in its ability to rope you in
with sheer variety and unpredictability.
The segues are almost as important as the songs themselves – the
wild gurgling of “Dogfight Giggle” cuts to the smooth, jazzy “You
Don’t Have to Camp Around.” The desperate fade out of “Zen Archer”
turns into the comical “Just Another Onionhead.” The syrupy “Never
Never Land” gets interrupted by the syrupy instrumental “Tic Tic
Tic It Wears Off.” And the ear-candy-like seventh and diminished
chords of Rundgren’s earlier work is still here, just in slightly
disguised form.
Side two, though not as ambitious (or as good) as side one,
should not go unnoticed either. The well-crafted Philly soul of
“Sometimes I Don’t Know What To Feel” leads it off. Then “Does
Anybody Love You” sneaks in – it’s one of those cute little songs,
(other examples are “Izzat Love” from 1974’s
Todd and “Onomatopoeia” from 1978’s
Hermit Of Mink Hollow) that Rundgren always throws in the
middle of his albums, songs you imagine he could write in his
sleep, yet still turn out to be wonderfully simple and catchy.
That god-awful Motown medley comes next, but fortunately it gets
redeemed, by the breakneck cry against rejection “Is it My Name?”
which you would swear was punk if it weren’t 1973, and then by the
uplifting “Just One Victory,” which would be a staple of his
concerts for years and the only track from this album to get any
sort of radio play.
This is not the best album with which to initiate new listeners
into the Rundgren canon. But eventually it becomes the sort of
album you need to listen to over and over again, to discover all
the nuances, to know it so well that you can amuse yourself by
playing it back in your head. It remains the perfect compromise
between Rundgren’s accessible pop and his even-further-out-there
experiments on some of his work of the mid-’70s. And while it does
get tedious from time to time, such is the price to pay for
listening to the work of a wizard.