'A Wizard, A True Star' - my all-time favourite album

I love this record. For me, it's the greatest album ever made.

I bought Todd Rundgren's 'A Wizard, A True Star' in 1974 - it was the record that awakened my sense of musical wonder. Although it is over 45 years old, it still sounds, as the author Barney Hoskyns puts it: "more bravely futuristic than any ostensibly cutting-edge electro-pop being made in the 21st Century." 

A Wizard, A True Star was a single album that had more musical ideas on it than many artists could muster in a whole career. It ranges across a variety of styles, reflecting a precocious talent channelling everything from The Beatles and Laura Nyro to glam rock, classic soul and Jimi Hendrix.

I came to know Todd Rundgren via the single I Saw The Light, which was a radio play hit in the UK, with its catchy piano melody and George Harrison-like guitar solo.

I decided I wanted to investigate further. I can remember standing looking up at the albums on display in the record shop. I don't remember what the price difference was, but I couldn’t afford Something / Anything, the album that contained 'I Saw The Light',  because it was a double. His follow-up album was also on sale and I was attracted to its kaleidoscopic cover.

Having broken through in the singer songwriter style with 'Hello It's Me'
and 'I Saw The Light', Todd confounded his new audience with his next record

So I bought that instead. It’s fair to say the record blew my mind.

From the opening fuzz tones of ‘International Feel’, it was clear that 'A Wizard, A True Star' wasn't going to sound anything like 'I Saw The Light'.  This was exciting though; I had something none of my friends had. My musical universe was about to expand.

That first side has 12 tracks on it; it's like watching a fast action cartoon. Todd's influences are all over the shop but if you can keep up with the stylistic shifts and the slightly crazed delivery, it's a wild ride. I was 15 at the time, a suburban kid eager for just this kind of adventure. If a record can be life changing, this was it.

The mood and style of side two is in marked contrast; Todd takes a more measured approach, with the middle of the side devoted to his soul medley.

Rolling Stone magazine's review considered the soul medley to be "the highlight of the record, in which Todd plays tribute to the Impressions, the Miracles, the Delphonics and the Capitols. 

"The first three selections, 'I'm So Proud', 'Ooh Baby Baby' and 'La La Means I Love You', feature Rundgren's plaintive singing that conveys a feeling of a kid vocalizing along with the originals late at night, fantasising about crooning to his dream girl," said the review. "The lovely synthesizer and harpsichord arrangements reveal Todd's respect for Stevie Wonder's recent recordings."

Unlike side one, where the tracks come thick and fast, on side two each track is a given the chance to soar. The songs still seque into each other, but do so beautifully, particularly towards the end, as the fuzz guitar of ‘Hungry for Love’ tails off to the solo piano of ‘I Don’t Want To Tie You Down’ which in turn echoes away into the guitar frenzy of ‘Is It My Name’.

The album ends with the majestic ‘Just One Victory’, the national anthem of Utopia as Todd called it.

It's a trip - in less than an hour you've heard a whole world of music. Because he had crammed so much on the record, Todd urged the listener to crank up their stereo to get the full effect. In fact he suggested people tape the record and then crank it up, to avoid having the stylus jump off the vinyl. 

The inside gatefold

First issues of the vinyl LP in the US were dye-cut, giving the record sleeve an odd shape, and psychedelic images on both sides of the gatefold cover. I have an early US pressing and I have to say the sound is superior to my UK copy. There's a lot more detail audible and you really get a sense of how amazing the mix is considering the amount of instrumentation and studio effects there are on a lot of the tracks.

The original album package also included a ‘band aid’ poem written by Todd’s friend Patti Smith, as well as a postcard encouraging purchasers to send their name to be included on a poster, which was given away with Todd's next album.

John Siomos, Ralph Shuckett, John Siegler and Moogy Klingman
the core band members, at Secret Sound recording AWATS

Rundgren has always made it clear this album was not a solo performance, like much of Something/Anything where he played all the instruments on three sides of the album. 'Wizard' was recorded at Secret Sound, a small  studio created in a loft apartment in New York that was rented by keyboard player Mark 'Moogy' Klingman.

Secret Sound was really Todd's creation, said Moogy. He did all the wiring and the equipment installation himself. "That studio was really put together with band aids and bubble gum. It just barely held together.”

A Wizard, A True Star was one of the very first things they recorded at Secret Sound. In Paul Myers' book about Todd's recording sessions in the 1970s, Moogy recalls, "One day Todd said ‘Okay I’m gonna start recording'. He was in the room by himself and he laid down the bass part to “International Feel” and then he started adding on to it. I said wow he’s making some really weird noisy sounds. 

"Then he was overdubbing and it started to sound like something and he said 'OK Moogy, I want you to bring your band in and we're gonna do the track. One of the first tracks we did was 'Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye' but he’d changed it to 'Da Da Dali'.

"We spent the next month or so recording A Wizard, A True Star with Todd as the sole engineer. We didn’t even have an assistant to just watch the levels and bring things down a bit. But that’s how he liked to work. He was a solo guy, he was a hermit nerd.”

The list of session musicians on AWATS includes the Brecker Brothers, Rick Derringer and David Sanborn. Moogy was responsible for bringing in all the musicians. The contribution of drummer John Siomos (who later played on Frampton Comes Alive) is also important, providing the solid groove and highly distinctive snare and tom-tom fills for much of the album’s more soulful and rocked-out moments.

Patti Smith's beat prose inspired review of 'A Wizard, A True Star' for Creem Magazine in April 1973, described the album as "Rock and roll for the skull. A very noble concept. Past present and tomorrow in one glance. Understanding through musical sensation. Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation."

inner sleeve side one

inner sleeve side two

By the time he came to record 'A Wizard, A True Star', Todd had tasted success with the hit singles 'Hello It’s Me' and 'I Saw The Light'. But he set the template for the rest of his career, by not giving the fans or the record company more of the same. 

On this swing to the left, Todd said: "I threw out all the rules of record making and decided I would try to imprint the chaos in my head onto a record without trying to clean it up for everyone else's benefit. The result was a complete loss of about half of my audience. This became the model for my life after that."

 

He went on to make other classic records, confounding expectations at every turn, which his fans learned to tolerate, or not. For me personally, I still listen to his other albums, skipping the odd jarring, self-indulgent  track. There have been times when he has unfuriated me in a live situation - ignoring his considerable body of work to play an extended version of 'Peter Gunn' on the 'Liars' tour, for example. It's never been easy being a TR fan, and he is unapologetic about that. A Wizard, A True Star, though, is the high point of a prolific musical journey.

The following links include some rare footage from the 1970s and some more recent clips, including some good quality film of the performance of AWATS 10 years ago.

1974 low-fi film of Todd and the AWATS band, playing material from the album including Just One Victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8gpABtL7sk&fbclid=IwAR26QUOjPxSzryBZTl8vp2-UWuWySGey7aOIljBDUmSSSRVyCNZpCs2-DbY

Here's video of Todd appearing on the Daryl's House show, singing Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel

And here, as part of the 2009 AWATS shows, he performs I Don't Want To Tie You Down