Records

Elton John & Todd Rundegren

Elton John, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, MCA-2142

Todd Rundgren, Initiation, Bearsville BR 6957

These albums are new efforts by people who come from straight laced pop backgrounds who have attempted to forge personal styles while striving for commercial success. Elton has it, Todd to a lesser extent. Both albums come off a trifle crowded.andstill satisfying.

Captain Fantastic is really lyricist Bernie Taupin's album; Elton has some trouble with the sentiments, as if he was not quite comfortable with Bernie's feelings about success. This is a roots album, not displaying or getting back to them, but telling the story which hadn't been told. "Bitter Fingers" and "Writing" are both about the hands that serve the hit machine. The overall effect is charged with bitter nostalgia. There are no posturings by Elton, as on Caribou and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's rather straight forward and understated, and a bit uneven. There are rockers and tearjerkers, but there's not much in the way of star quality, much like the first album.

Todd Rundgren has a penchant for cramming as much material as possible into his releases. Initiation is sixty-eight minutes long on one disc. The songs are loosely structured; some of them, notable "Eastern Intrigue" and parts of the extended "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire" on side two, are almost aimless. But there are gems too. "Real Man" is an electric number, perfectly produced. "Born to Synthesize" is, surprisingly, not an exercise for ARP, but an a cappella liynin of sorts. And "Fair Warning"with its cheerful admonitions and Edgar Winter's sax and Riek Derringer's guitar sticks to the mind. At times he sounds like Zappa, at times like American Bandstand. But all in all, Initiation is an album of considerable imagination and flair.