Patti Smith on the Todd Rundgren track that eclipsed ‘Hey Jude’
Patti Smith has never cowered to what anyone else wanted her to be. When she first got into the music industry, she knew that her craft had the power to change the world on its axis if necessary, and as long as she had her poetry in her head, she was going to make sure that she left the world in a better place than where she found it. She was always in tune with the other visionaries of rock and roll, and when she heard Todd Rundgren, she thought he had created a song that could rival The Beatles’ best work.
For any modest fan of rock music, that’s already a bold stance for anyone to make. The Fab Four have had so much praise built around their brand that there may as well be a bubble around them, so anyone willing to go toe-to-toe with them will need a lot of qualifiers before they even start playing.
It’s not like Todd Rundgren wasn’t up to the challenge. Sure, he may have been on the progressive side of music throughout his career, but his version of prog seemed to pick up on where The Beatles left off. As opposed to making songs that sounded like exercises, albums like Runt felt as if the adventurous side of Sgt Pepper was extended for another album.
Since Smith was still a modest album reviewer for Rolling Stone at the time, she still knew amazing music when she heard it. The Beatles may have only broken up a few months before, but she thought that the song ‘Chain Letter’ was a good enough song to rise above their biggest hits.
In her review of Runt, Smith said that ‘Chain Letter’ was the idea that ‘Hey Jude’ had only suggested, writing, “The lyrics have his typical left-handed optimism, and just when they get jaded, the track opens up; and multiplies, as ‘Hey Jude’ did. But ‘Chain Letter’ has more balls and goes through several changes, while ‘Hey Jude’ never went past spirited repetition”.
While half of the appeal of ‘Hey Jude’ is that grandiose sing-along that even your grandmother knows, ‘Chain Letter’ is a more nuanced take on that idea. There are still some constant melodies that run throughout the final section, but Rundgren adds more instruments every single time, almost creating an orchestra out of a rock band setting a la Brian Wilson.
The rest of The Beatles may not have been looking to make another epic like that, but Rundgren did end up rubbing elbows with some of them. After being one of the dominant forces in 1970s rock, Rundgren eventually hit another career highlight while playing in Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, putting tracks like ‘I Saw the Light’ in the set right alongside ‘Boys’ and ‘Octopus Garden’.
That idea of repetition has also been a constant in Smith’s career. Although she might freely admit that she’s not looking to hit the sonic levels of Rundgren, the way she snarls the hook to ‘Gloria’ practically sounds like bullets flying out of her mouth. Her attention to poetry has also relied on that ever-expanding idea of ‘Chain Letter’, like the ending of the album Easter where she reads these poetic lines to turn the song into a spiritual exorcism.
Smith was still on the cusp of becoming a rock and roll icon, but ‘Chain Letter’ may have helped her see the power of what the genre could do. The Velvet Underground may have spoken for the feral side of rock and roll, but Todd Rundgren was an example of how you can make something offbeat with a musical mindset.