Initiation (Todd Rundgren album)
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, most 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." The titles and concept are taken directly from Alice A. Bailey's book "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire". 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]." Track listing. All tracks are written by Todd Rundgren. Side one Side two Personnel. "Real Man” (Recorded at Secret Sound Studio) "Born to Synthesize” (Recorded at Bearsville Sound Studio) "The Death of Rock and Roll" (Recorded at Mediasound Studio) "Eastern Intrigue” (Recorded at Secret Sound Studio) "Initiation” (Recorded at Mediasound Studio) "Fair Warning” (Recorded at Mediasound Studio ) "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire" (Recorded at Secret Sound and Bearsville Sound Studios) Production Charts. Album "Real Man" References. 5. Richard Robinson - Crawdaddy Magazine - July 1975 "Todd was born to synthesize"