They called Todd Rundgren “The Male Carole King.” “They” were rock critics, and while Tapestry, Blue, What’s Going On, Judee Sill and Something/Anything? last forever, they come from a cultural moment that doesn’t always age as well. When Rolling Stone reviewed Blue, they included an illo connecting Joni Mitchell with everyone she was supposedly sleeping with. It was a diagram with kisses and it was called “Old Lady of the Year.” Much of it wasn’t true, and the parts that were true—so what? Why is it anybody’s business? When you write immortal songs about intimacy, drawing a petty and gossipy cartoon in response speaks for itself. The war between the sacred and the profane continues. Joni didn’t talk to Rolling Stone for eight years. One night, she threw a drink in Jann Wenner’s face, then wrote a song about it.
No one at Rolling Stone cared about who Todd was sleeping with, and I didn’t either, though that song about Laura Nyro had me wondering. I had Something/Anything? on vinyl when I was 16, and would often arrive early for orchestra class just to play “I Saw the Light” with a girl who knew how to sing it. When you hear Todd talk, he sounds like a tough, gruff guy with a deep voice. When you hear him sing, he sounds delicate. Both of them are real. He’s had to be aggressive to do his thing. If you are produced by him and have ideas of your own about songs you wrote, watch out. He even attacked John Lennon when he didn’t approve of his behavior. And yet he’s sensitive, and he can see the light in the eyes of his beloved. “I Saw the Light” is loaded with hook after hook. It doesn’t let up, and it sounds like the light he’s singing about. True Todd fans will speak of the virtues of Wizard, a True Star, of his synth odysseys in the 80s, but Something/Anything? scratches a particular itch for me. Todd on Midnight Special singing “Hello, It’s Me” with those butterfly eyelashes—that’s the Todd I’m talking about. Maybe it’s because I’m still a phone person, a 70s person, and this song is about establishing intimacy with a word that was invented for the telephone. He’s calling to talk to his lover to try to figure out where their relationship is going. They’re trying to figure out a way to love their lovin’ and love their freedom, but then it’s not really working, hence the call.