I Saw the Light

Rundgren wrote, produced, sang and played every instrument on it in late 1971. He said the music and words took about twenty minutes, part of a run of songs he turned out at great speed on the stimulants he was taking, and he dismissed the rhymes as moon and June stuff. Songfacts says it grew from the same high-school romance as Hello It's Me, and that its very ease pushed him to change the way he wrote. He meant it as the album's hit and put it first, following the Motown habit of opening an album with the single. Bearsville released it in March 1972 with Marlene on the B-side, and it reached No. 16 on the Hot 100 and No. 36 in the UK.

Live

With 815 performances on setlist.fm it is the song he has played most, from the Troubadour in West Hollywood in April 1972 to the 2026 Damned If I Do tour. On the 1972 BBC In Concert session he sang it over a pre-recorded backing track, and on Back to the Bars it closes a Philly-soul medley with Hall & Oates. He re-recorded it for With a Twist... (1997) and with the New Cars. The New Seekers, Terry Hall, Hal Ketchum and Yo La Tengo are among those who have covered it, and it was performed on A Very Murray Christmas (2015). The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version in Rhino's remaster.