I hoped that Todd Rundgren was going to be one of my guys. I absolutely loved I Saw the Light from the first time I heard it, years before I knew who’d made it or what else he’d done, so eventually I purchased Something/Anything? thinking it was going to be the place to get started on Todd properly, confident that he was going to become one of my very favourite songwriters.
Unfortunately, Something/Anything? wasn’t the front-to-back Laura Nyro/Carole King tribute I hoped it’d be. Something/Anything? is a bit of a mess, and if you go into it looking for a double album of 20 or so songs like I Saw the Light – the early girl group sound filtered through The Beatles (Rundgren’s slide playing is pure George Harrison) – you’ll be disppointed. It hops all over the place, from bizarre Gilbert & Sullivan spoofs to ill-advised cock rock.
So I never found it an album I could fall in love with in its entirety. But we’re talking about Todd Rundgren, and Rundgren is some species of genius, even if its not a consistent species. So as well as I Saw the Light, Something/Anything? gives us Sweeter Memories, Marlene, Torch Song, Hello It’s Me and, more than anything else, It Wouldn’t Have Made any Difference, a song so beautiful and aching in its sadness it goes a long way beyond melancholy, stopping short of desolate and ending up in striking a note that’s comforting. It’s a warm kind of sadness, regretful but not bitter, illuminated by some of the most gorgeous chord changes this side of Laura Nyro herself (those unexpected changes under the line “But those days are through” absolutely make the song).
Rundgren famously recorded the bulk of Something/Anything? on his own, playing all the instruments on sides 1 to 3 himself. His resourcefulness is impressive, and goodness knows he can sing, play guitar and write as well as anyone in pop music, but some of the songs suffer for not having been placed in the hands of really capable players; Couldn’t I Just Tell You, for example, is ill served by its author in its Something/Anything? incarnation, with its numerous feel and tempo changes utterly defeating Rundgren-the-drummer.
It Wouldn’t Have Made any Difference hits that sweet spot, common to so much successful lo-fi/one-man-band records, where the tension between the quality of the writing and the just-slightly-amateurish execution of it is charming and endearing. It makes you invest more in the song’s feelings and emotions somehow. It Wouldn’t Have Made any Difference just wouldn’t be the same if without its slightly unsteady rhythm track (drums centre, congas and tambourine on the left, chimes and other percussion on the right). The charm is how it plays against the lush backing vocals (again, all Rundgren) and Todd’s effortless lead vocal. Rundgren really was an exceptional singer in his youth.
It’s a shame that the rest of Something/Anything? doesn’t really match up to its first two songs, but when those songs are I Saw the Light and It Wouldn’t Have Made any Difference, to expect it to would be asking for the damn near impossible.
Todd Rundgren, 1973
Todd’s not the only guy who’s ever done the one-man-band thing:
songs from so deep 