Initiation is the sixth album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released May 23, 1975 on Bearsville Records. With this album, Rundgren fully embraced the synthesized prog sound he had begun exploring in more depth in his work with his band Utopia. However, unlike Utopia, in which Rundgren had limited himself to playing guitar, much of the synthesizers on Initiation were played and programmed by Rundgren himself.
Content
At over sixty-seven minutes, Initiation is one of the longest commercially-released LPs. Due to a plastic shortage, in order to keep the album on one vinyl LP, Rundgren had to limit and EQ the master so the bass response was rolled off to keep the grooves small enough to cut onto a single disc; he also had to speed up the first half of Side One (Real Man-Eastern Intrigue) and speed up the entirety of Side Two to eliminate 2-3 minutes from each side (5). The album's original inner sleeve included a note which stated: "Technical note: Due to the amount of music on this disc (over one hour), two points must be emphasized. Firstly, if your needle is worn or damaged, it will ruin the disc immediately. Secondly, if the sound does seem not loud enough on your system, try re-recording the music onto tape. By the way, thanks for buying the album."
In The Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopedia of Rock, Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden wrote, "Initiation (1975), despite the pretentious flirtations with half-baked versions of Zen Buddhism and Alice A. Bailey's "A Treatise On Cosmic Fire" that influenced his lyrics and Eastern mystic scores, contained a perceptible undercurrent of his former melodic invention while one could ascertain traces of self-parody and wry humorous debunking of what Rundgren appeared on the other hand to be holding up as valid. At a shade over one hour Initiation is also amongst the longest albums ever made, evidence of his engineering abilities, if not his sense of self-control".[3]
Influence
When asked if Rundgren had influenced his music, with perceived influences of Initiation on Queen Elizabeth and Rite², Julian Cope responded that he and Thighpaulsandra loved "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire", "but we both bemoaned the fact that it was recorded so long before ambient music had been defined that Todd treated it as an ever-evolving, almost prog-rock piece. We both loved huge elements of that piece but found that we never listened to it. So we tried to build that Todd-like transcendence into our own piece of music [with Queen Elizabeth]."[4]
^Logan, Nick; Woffinden, Bob (1979). The Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopedia of Rock (3rd impression ed.). Salamander Books Ltd. p. 202. ISBN0-600-33147-4.
