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| Eh, close enough. |
The Biggest Surprise: That the band that made this video/song spent a decade partying itself into rehab (with one tragic exception).
The Most Famous Line-Up: Too many to count, honestly, but here's the short list: Neal Doughty (piano/keys); Alan Gratzer (drums); Kevin Cronin (vox/rhythm guitar); Gary Richrath (lead guitar); Bruce Hall (bass/backing vocals).
What You Need to Know
It all started in the electrical engineering program at the University of Illinois, when Doughty met Gratzer and spent an afternoon jamming in their dorm basement. That happened in 1966; a decade-plus would pass before the REO Speedwagon managed a stable line-up. For example, Cronin - that's the lead singer you're picturing with them now, yes - played on their second album, R.E.O. T.W.O., but left during production of the third over proverbial creative differences. He wouldn’t return for three albums and four years, and a guy named Greg X. Volz still had to pass on the job before he got it (he decided to stick with Jesus). (Alternately, most band members agreed an inevitable coming-to-senses made it happen on Behind the Music.) Cronin was actually the band’s second vocalist: a guy named Terry Luttrell (later in Starcastle) handled vocals on REO’s very different sounding debut album, while another singer, Michael Bryan Murphy, sang on the three very different albums in between Cronin’s first and second stints with the band (well, I've only heard the one, honestly). Members would come in and out of the line-up at just about every instrument until 1977, with one key exception - Richrath drove 100 miles from Peoria determined to join the band (“I’m going to be a part of that band whether they like it or not”). He came on board as lead guitarist in 1970 and, despite the churn, the band built a strong regional following by playing – and partying - like a rock band. With that reputation and a stable line-up, the band talked Epic Records into a live album, Live: You Get What You Play For (1977; I still haven’t listened to it). They moved to LA and went national, but the departure of one of the members they left in the Midwest (Gregg Philbin, who was replaced by Hall), foreshadowed a couple trends:
“Depending upon which band member is expressing an opinion, it was either because Philbin was disenchanted with the new corporate-structure REO where Cronin and Richrath got bigger slices of the pie instead of the equal credit they once shared as a ‘garage band,’ or he was asked to leave over his lifestyle issues affecting the music quality.”
The Most Famous Line-Up: Too many to count, honestly, but here's the short list: Neal Doughty (piano/keys); Alan Gratzer (drums); Kevin Cronin (vox/rhythm guitar); Gary Richrath (lead guitar); Bruce Hall (bass/backing vocals).
What You Need to Know
It all started in the electrical engineering program at the University of Illinois, when Doughty met Gratzer and spent an afternoon jamming in their dorm basement. That happened in 1966; a decade-plus would pass before the REO Speedwagon managed a stable line-up. For example, Cronin - that's the lead singer you're picturing with them now, yes - played on their second album, R.E.O. T.W.O., but left during production of the third over proverbial creative differences. He wouldn’t return for three albums and four years, and a guy named Greg X. Volz still had to pass on the job before he got it (he decided to stick with Jesus). (Alternately, most band members agreed an inevitable coming-to-senses made it happen on Behind the Music.) Cronin was actually the band’s second vocalist: a guy named Terry Luttrell (later in Starcastle) handled vocals on REO’s very different sounding debut album, while another singer, Michael Bryan Murphy, sang on the three very different albums in between Cronin’s first and second stints with the band (well, I've only heard the one, honestly). Members would come in and out of the line-up at just about every instrument until 1977, with one key exception - Richrath drove 100 miles from Peoria determined to join the band (“I’m going to be a part of that band whether they like it or not”). He came on board as lead guitarist in 1970 and, despite the churn, the band built a strong regional following by playing – and partying - like a rock band. With that reputation and a stable line-up, the band talked Epic Records into a live album, Live: You Get What You Play For (1977; I still haven’t listened to it). They moved to LA and went national, but the departure of one of the members they left in the Midwest (Gregg Philbin, who was replaced by Hall), foreshadowed a couple trends:
“Depending upon which band member is expressing an opinion, it was either because Philbin was disenchanted with the new corporate-structure REO where Cronin and Richrath got bigger slices of the pie instead of the equal credit they once shared as a ‘garage band,’ or he was asked to leave over his lifestyle issues affecting the music quality.”
Behind the Music gives a lot of space to the band’s partying (paraphrasing Cronin: “the party became more important than the show sometimes”), because it later developed into a crisis – one that drove a wedge between Richrath and Cronin, the creative partnership behind REO’s sound. Over the next few albums, they fused Richrath’s straight rock guitar onto Cronin's folk-rock songwriting to (literally) amplify it. The formula came together on 1978’s You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish (ach, fuck that title), which sold two million albums on the hits “Roll with the Changes” and “Time for Me to Fly.” They broke into The Bigs two years and two albums later with 1980s Hi Infidelity (so named according to Cronin, “because everybody was high and there was a lot of infidelity going around” – i.e., drugs and infidelity). On the back of dueling hits by Cronin (“Keep on Loving You” and “Don’t Let Him Go”) and Richrath (“Take It on the Run” and the strange little throw-back, “In Your Letter”), the album charted like a boss and became the best-selling album nation-wide in 1981. Underneath the success, the hard living caught up with band, starting with a drug-fueled meltdown by Doughty. With that as the catalyst, they headed for rehab one by one – Richrath expected because he loved the lifestyle too much to give it up. (He would eventually bottom out, and later leave the REO to go solo. Richrath survived all that, or maybe most of it, but still passed in 2015.)
My Favorite Anecdote
Uh, just got it. I just watched the video for "Keep on Loving You," which has Cronin on a psychiatrist's coach talking about getting inspiration from an imaginary woman he fell in love with to write the song, but that doesn't jibe with the (better) story he sold Behind the Music or the lyrics, really. It's really about his fear about his marriage dying...so, I have questions.
Why They Made the Island
No one will look at REO Speedwagon and see the greatest band of all time. Between the nasally pitch in his voice, the aggressive annunciation (there should be a rule against the man singing the word “able”), and the way he looks like he might lock up the next he inhales, Cronin probably chases away half the people who hear them all by himself. They do have, however, have a large, half-accidentally varied catalog, one featuring at least three different styles, and options matter to a man on a desert island. I’ll go beyond that, though, and argue that they have the most original, organic sound of the five bands I tortured myself with these last five weeks. What Cronin and Richrath mashed together operates in a space between borrowing and innovation, and they wound up doing something a little different and a little more forward than the others. It's not all great, obviously: I'm not even on the damn island yet, and I'm skip half the songs on every album (with I’d call High Infidelity an exception at 2-3 songs). But, even with that much fat cut out, that leaves over a dozen albums and a tidy collection of songs that run between "doesn't suck" and "good." I also have this thing where I try to hear the REO Speedwagon I just read about into the music, the one that tore from town to town "willing to play every night," and wondered what they looked like at their best…maybe with Luttrell or Murphy on vocals…just to see what would happen.
Other Featured Songs: I usually slip in more notes on the songs into the narrative (ooops!), but, to list them in order of release (which matters, due to the thing with phases), I took “Gypsy Woman’s Passion,” “157 Riverside Avenue” (named for the first studio where they recorded), “Sophisticated Lady,” and the jarringly mournful (in context), “Five Men Were Killed Today,” from their piano-led, jam-band 1971 debut. I threw on “Flash Tan Queen” from T.W.O. just to represent (it’s a pretty forgettable album), but Ridin’ the Storm Out tickled my roots rock bone with the title track, “Whisky Night,” the 70s-drenched “Movin’,” and…maybe I included it out of spite, because “Find My Fortune” is just bad. I pulled the band’s first reedy stab at the famous sound, “Keep Pushin’,” from R.E.O., the album that returned Cronin to the fold, as well as a weird little instrumental called “Flying Turkey Trot.” I covered a lot of Hi Infidelity above, but added “Tough Guys” (also, not good) and “Someone Tonight,” which sounds like what I expected to hear more of during this project. That leaves only the three songs I added from You Can Tune a…just, no, I'm not typing the rest, fuck that. Anyway, those are “Runnin’ Blind” (a rocker), “Lucky for You” (call it pre-peak-REO) and “Say You Love Me or Say Goodnight” (um, a rocker).
Most REO Speedwagon Song: Oof! It’d have to be something from an in-between state…yeah, I’m gonna go with “Roll With the Changes,” and sorry for that “able/table” couplet in the first verse.
Sources
Wikipedia
Behind the Music
My Favorite Anecdote
Uh, just got it. I just watched the video for "Keep on Loving You," which has Cronin on a psychiatrist's coach talking about getting inspiration from an imaginary woman he fell in love with to write the song, but that doesn't jibe with the (better) story he sold Behind the Music or the lyrics, really. It's really about his fear about his marriage dying...so, I have questions.
Why They Made the Island
No one will look at REO Speedwagon and see the greatest band of all time. Between the nasally pitch in his voice, the aggressive annunciation (there should be a rule against the man singing the word “able”), and the way he looks like he might lock up the next he inhales, Cronin probably chases away half the people who hear them all by himself. They do have, however, have a large, half-accidentally varied catalog, one featuring at least three different styles, and options matter to a man on a desert island. I’ll go beyond that, though, and argue that they have the most original, organic sound of the five bands I tortured myself with these last five weeks. What Cronin and Richrath mashed together operates in a space between borrowing and innovation, and they wound up doing something a little different and a little more forward than the others. It's not all great, obviously: I'm not even on the damn island yet, and I'm skip half the songs on every album (with I’d call High Infidelity an exception at 2-3 songs). But, even with that much fat cut out, that leaves over a dozen albums and a tidy collection of songs that run between "doesn't suck" and "good." I also have this thing where I try to hear the REO Speedwagon I just read about into the music, the one that tore from town to town "willing to play every night," and wondered what they looked like at their best…maybe with Luttrell or Murphy on vocals…just to see what would happen.
Other Featured Songs: I usually slip in more notes on the songs into the narrative (ooops!), but, to list them in order of release (which matters, due to the thing with phases), I took “Gypsy Woman’s Passion,” “157 Riverside Avenue” (named for the first studio where they recorded), “Sophisticated Lady,” and the jarringly mournful (in context), “Five Men Were Killed Today,” from their piano-led, jam-band 1971 debut. I threw on “Flash Tan Queen” from T.W.O. just to represent (it’s a pretty forgettable album), but Ridin’ the Storm Out tickled my roots rock bone with the title track, “Whisky Night,” the 70s-drenched “Movin’,” and…maybe I included it out of spite, because “Find My Fortune” is just bad. I pulled the band’s first reedy stab at the famous sound, “Keep Pushin’,” from R.E.O., the album that returned Cronin to the fold, as well as a weird little instrumental called “Flying Turkey Trot.” I covered a lot of Hi Infidelity above, but added “Tough Guys” (also, not good) and “Someone Tonight,” which sounds like what I expected to hear more of during this project. That leaves only the three songs I added from You Can Tune a…just, no, I'm not typing the rest, fuck that. Anyway, those are “Runnin’ Blind” (a rocker), “Lucky for You” (call it pre-peak-REO) and “Say You Love Me or Say Goodnight” (um, a rocker).
Most REO Speedwagon Song: Oof! It’d have to be something from an in-between state…yeah, I’m gonna go with “Roll With the Changes,” and sorry for that “able/table” couplet in the first verse.
Sources
Wikipedia
Behind the Music
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