A Wizard, a True Star

Rundgren made it at Secret Sound, the Manhattan studio he built with the keyboardist Moogy Klingman, and engineered it alone. On some tracks he played everything, on others he used Moogy and the Rhythm Kingz, a band of Klingman, the drummer John Siomos, the keyboardist Ralph Schuckett and the bassist John Siegler. He planned it as a "flight plan" in which the tracks run into one another, beginning in a chaotic mood and ending with a medley of favorite soul songs. Side one is titled The International Feel (In 8) and side two A True Star. Side two holds a medley of songs by the Impressions, the Miracles, the Delfonics and the Capitols.

At 55:56 it was one of the longest single-disc LPs to date, and a note on the inner sleeve told listeners to turn up the volume because the grooves had to be narrow. He refused to issue singles so the songs would be heard in the context of the LP. It reached No. 86 in the US and missed the UK chart. Later he said it cost him about half of his audience, and that Trent Reznor and other artists cited it as an influence. Patti Smith wrote in Creem that it was "Rock and roll for the skull". Rolling Stone's James Isaacs found it his "most experimental, and annoying, effort to date", and Mojo's editors called it "his finest hour". Utopia was formed to tour it, but the tour began in April 1973 and was cancelled after a couple of weeks. The cover is a painting by Arthur Wood in a die-cut sleeve, with a Patti Smith poem on a Band-Aid facsimile. In 2009 Rundgren toured the album in full for the first time.