'Runaway' kick-starts with a strum before wandering into a cowboy ballad of Shannon walking along wondering what went wrong with his relationship as a hail of a mutant piano runs give sound to the rain he's walking in until a shift into a chunky riffed higher gear sees Del wishing she was with him to end his misery as his voice jumps from an apologetic mumble on the intro into a gutsy yell as he wah wah wah wonders why she ever left at all before a squealing Musitron solo flies in from god knows where to call an end to the proceedings. Yes, 'Runaway' has one hell of an opening, one that leaves me as breathless as reading that opening sentence out loud, and after such a densely plotted build up of an introduction it comes almost as a disappointment that the rest of 'Runaway' plays out by recycling what's gone before. But no matter - by then Shannon has already done enough and the repetition of the themes accords well with his 'still wondering' as to why she went away at the end of the song - 'Runaway' has no answers, only questions that Shannon can either front up to or crumble under their weight.
There's something of the future about 'Runaway', an off kilter imagination at work that in many respects is a forbearer of the studio inventiveness that The Beatles, The Beach Boys et al would exploit later this decade with their own move away from the standard verse/chorus/verse song structure and their arbitrary use of unlikely instruments (The Beatles themselves would use a Musitron on their own later recordings) to create pop music. Because though 'Runaway' undoubtedly has one eye on tomorrow, the other never loses sight of the classic pop template that sits at its core and provides the spine that gives it a timeless appeal.
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