This was originally recorded by Todd Rundgren's late 1960s band , and included on their 1968 debut album. This dirge-like version with lead vocals by Stewkey Antoni received little attention, and made just #66 in the US. The Nazz broke up in 1969, and were fondly remembered after the fact. "It turns out now that The Nazz was everybody's favorite undiscovered group," Rundgren said in 1972, the year he released his third solo album Something/Anything?, which contained a new version of this song that eventually caught on and established Rundgren as a solo artist.
Remarkably, it was the first song Rundgren ever wrote. In his teens, Todd was an avid listener to music but it was only when he put The Nazz together at the age of 19 that the young musician realized that now he was fronting a band, and he'd better start penning some material. He attributes the sophistication and success of this song to the vast amount of listening he'd done by the time he wrote it. This song, and many others Rundgren wrote at the time, was inspired by a high school relationship that didn't work out. He graduated in 1966, wrote the song about a year later, and recorded the original Nazz version in 1968, so that relationship was still fresh in his mind. He realized, however, that he didn't want to keep revisiting this heartbreak, so he made a conscious effort to avoid that theme in his post-Something/Anything? output. "There's more than just relationships to write about," he said when speaking at Red Bull Music Academy. "There's your whole inner life to draw on."
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