{"id":2320,"date":"2023-09-27T11:36:35","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T18:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=2320"},"modified":"2023-09-27T11:36:41","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T18:36:41","slug":"songs-i-like-i-saw-the-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/songs-i-like-i-saw-the-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Songs I Like – I Saw The Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Song: I Saw The Light Artist: Todd Rundgren<\/strong> (Originally published July 19, 2014)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1972 was a memorable year for me, but not in a good way.  In May of that year, my mother died.  I was 14 and devastated, but one of the ways that I found to express my grief was by writing songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I see the song title “I Saw The Light” I’m reminded of the old bluegrass song, but there is actually another song that was a hit for Todd Rundgren<\/strong> in 1972 by the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other night I was in Vancouver watching Ringo and His All Star Band<\/strong>, and had the pleasure of seeing Rundgren perform his song live along with Ringo and members of Toto, Santana<\/strong> and Mr. Mister<\/strong>. Funny thing was that back in 1972, I didn’t know it was Todd Rundgren who wrote it because I didn’t pay as much attention to artists as I did to songs back then.  I do remember the song Hello It’s Me<\/em> being attributed to Rundgren, and he performed that one as well the other night.  But I can’t say that I knew Bang On The Drum, It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference<\/em> and Love Is The Answer<\/em> were Rundgren songs either. They were all on the set list that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Saw The Light<\/em> and Love Is The Answer, <\/em>which came later, definitely had an impact on my early songwriting, especially because of the major and minor seventh chords in each of them.  When I discovered those chords and moved between them on my guitar, I was utterly hooked and ended up writing quite a few songs with those chord combinations.  It wasn’t until the other night, however, that I made that connection and realized those songs came from the same person.  So thanks, Todd, without question you inspired my songwriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The genre of I Saw The Light<\/em> was called “soft rock”, which was how I described my early songwriting.  You don’t see references to that very much these days;  it was a 70’s genre for sure. There was even a Soft Rock Cafe in Kitsilano, a suburb of Vancouver, where I occasionally performed in the late 70’s and early 80’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I’m meeting new guitar students, I inevitably ask them what kind of music they like.  It occurs to me that more often than not, the younger ones have more trouble defining a genre or an artist, and simply go by the song.  That’s probably the truth of it;  songs by themselves stick with us and early on in our lives we don’t pay much attention to anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Saw The Light<\/em>\u00a0is so very 70’s :-). \u00a0Beyond that, I will just let it speak for itself! ~ IJ<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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