Todd Rundgren has been confounding the expectations of both his hardcore fans and detractors alike since appearing on the national music scene as a member of Nazz in the late 1960s. Nazz's debut album positioned them as UK-influenced hard rockers, but by the second disc the band had morphed into a more piano-based sound, largely due to Rundgren's songwriting.
Rundgren soon launched a solo career with sort of a combination of those two aims -- as "Runt" instead of his own name -- but since then he's experimented with many musical forms and even participated in the semi-reunion album and tours by The New Cars. Perhaps even more argument-inspiring is Rundgren's work as a producer for other bands over the years, a body of albums that includes some huge hit records, some unimpeachable classics, and others which partisans of certain bands consider ill-advised discographical sidetracks.
The Ballad of Todd Rundgren was the second of the Runt albums, and like the first is sort of a band record and something of a Toddstravaganza. For the majority of the album, Tony Sales plays bass, latter-day Remains drummer N.D. Smart holds down the kit, and pretty much everything else is Rundgren, including occasional horn charts and all the vocals. After several spins this week, it strikes me: wow, what a good sounding album, particularly for what was one of Rundgren's first shots in the producer's chair.
The music was recorded in Los Angeles -- engineered by former Electric Prunes singer James Lowe -- and the vocals taped on the opposite coast at manager Albert Grossman's then-new Bearsville Studios. Along with Lowe, another intriguing credit on the gatefold cover is "Inside photographs and design by Ron Mael." Shortly after Ballad's 1971 release, Rundgren would be producing the debut of Mael's band Halfnelson, soon re-branded as Sparks.
Besides all these details, the songs are pretty good, too, of course. Ballad alternates between piano confessionals and rockers, and even takes a sideways stab at C&W with the self-descriptive Old West story-song "Range War." Following up on the Top 20 hit from Runt, "We Gotta Get You a Woman," a pair of piano ballads were released as singles A-sides: "Be Nice to Me" and "A Long Time, a Long Way to Go." Both cracked the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 100. My favorite rocker on the album, "Parole," was the flip of "A Long Time...," and would have made a better top side. But if I could go back and influence what the lead single should have been, I'd pick the lead-off track, "Long Flowing Robe," the most straight-up pop song on the album.
Despite the charting singles, Ballad itself failed to make the Billboard Top 200 album chart, and its availability back in the day is even somewhat of a hazy story. The original LP was a co-release between Grossman's studio counterpart Bearsville Records and Ampex Records; parent company Ampex shuttered its music label about a year later after heavy financial loses in 1971, as Billboard reported. Bearsville moved its distribution to Warner Brothers, and while some discographies list re-releases of both Runt LPs with WB catalog numbers, I've never seen a copy of either of them in that form. The fact that the first disc was heavily pirated through the 1970s would seem to indicate the WB issues were barely -- or perhaps actually never -- released. That album did eventually return to vinyl in the '80s, though, as part of Rhino's Rundgren reissue series.
That brings things to the semi-legendary front cover image: Rundgren, photographed from behind at his piano bench... with a hangman's noose around his neck. It seems a strange cover for an artist who had just had his first hit single, and was on his way to a four decades long (and counting) career in the music business. Or, perhaps, a prescient cover for an artist on his way to four decades (and counting) of dealing with being in the music business. I guess it all depends on one's perspective. (Bearsville/Ampex A 10116, 1971)
