One From The Vault: Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star

One look at the cover should tell you what to expect. A technicolor, Daliesque painting of Rundgren’s head surrounded by a psychedelic whirlwind of weird shapes, marbles with eyes and butterflies, the painting is a rush for the senses, at once distinctly of its time and yet imbued with a timeless quality that’s sorely lacking in so much of today’s album artwork. Much the same can be said of the music contained within: A Wizard, A True Star is one of the most incredible records ever made, a complex, sprawling masterpiece which is difficult at first to get your head around, but slowly unravels after each listen. What it all adds up to is a work of great humanity – if not humility – focus alongside indulgence, and an imagination for recording that was aeons ahead of its time almost forty years ago.

Followers of Rundgren’s career prior to A Wizard… couldn’t have been expecting this. His first band, The Nazz, had veered between Beatles fascination and Who amplification, while his first three solo albums displayed his talents as a relatively direct, heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriter – albeit one capable of writing, playing, producing and engineering all of his own material. His previous effort, the critically acclaimed Something/Anything had even featured a couple of hit singles; but although it has stood the test of time to become a bona fide classic in its own right, it’s this follow-up that Todd fans now hail as the real peak of his eclectic back catalogue.

Much like its title, the record is split into two distinct sections, with side A containing most of the weird, experimental songs and side B offering a more straightforward selection, including a startling ten-minute soul medley. For a record that was made during a period of serious drug ‘abuse’ (Rundgren reportedly had a voracious appetite for magic mushrooms) and one that is so schizophrenic in terms of genres – hopping as it does between proto-metal (‘Rock & Roll Pussy’), stadium rock (‘Just One Victory’), piano balladry (‘I Don’t Want To Tie You Down’) and weird, prolonged electronic vocal effects (‘Dogfight Giggle’) – it’s surprisingly cohesive once you realise all the pieces fit together so neatly. It works as a whole in the same way that Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper’s did, with each track lending its own colour to the overall picture.

And what about that previously mentioned soul medley? To these ears it ranks as one of the finest pieces of music ever made, ten minutes of Todd singing Curtis Mayfield’s ‘I’m So Proud’, Smokey Robinson’s ‘Ooh Baby Baby’, The Delfonics’ ‘La La Means I Love You’ & The Capitals’ ‘Cool Jerk’. It may sound like it’s completely out of place on a trippy psych-rock record, but for some wondrous, inexplicable reason it’s not. Rather, it acts as proof of Rundgren’s brilliance with a vocal, as well as showcasing his new band’s subtlety and power in one foul swoop.

The overall ambition on display here is undoubted, but its quirkier sections may dissuade some from giving it a proper chance. For all its merits, A Wizard, A True Star is not an easy first (or even fifth) listen. However, it has influenced more albums in your collection than you might think; everything from the saucer-eyed psych-pop of The Flaming Lips to the outer-space conceptual bombast of Muse, and even the do-it-all-yourself attitude of Prince owes a debt to Rundgren’s bizarre masterpiece. Highly deserving of its moment in the spotlight, it’s an album to fall in love with, it’s rock ‘n’ roll as art, and it’s also out of its fucking mind.