Kevin Cronin is celebrating 50 years of ridin’ the storm out with REO Speedwagon this yr — an anniversary the frontman tells UCR crept up on him.
“That was an anniversary that did not even cross my radar display,” Cronin says. “It did not daybreak on me ’til we performed some exhibits earlier within the yr and that got here up and I used to be like, ‘Wow!’ However, yeah, 50 years in the past now’s after I joined the band. I can not even imagine it. I used to be 20 years outdated. I used to be a child! It is fairly cool.”
Trying again at that auspicious event, Cronin acknowledges {that a} little bit of subterfuge performed an element in his boarding the Speedwagon.
He was in Chicago and within the midst of a transition in the course of the early a part of 1972. “I had a flyer up on the Chicago Guitar Gallery for somewhat enterprise that I began known as the Musicians Referral Service,” Cronin recollects. “Principally I used to be simply on the lookout for some guys to affix my band, ‘trigger we misplaced our guitar participant and our bass participant.” REO guitarist Gary Richrath, who died in 2015, was amongst those that came across the flyer; on the time the group was getting ready to report its second album and seeking to take issues up one other degree.
“[Richrath] known as the Musician’s Referral Service, pondering it was this actual factor when it was simply me in my house on the north aspect of Chicago,” Cronin says. “He advised me he had a band, they’d a recording contract and have been happening to Nashville to make their second album. He was on the lookout for somebody who may sing lead, play rhythm guitar and write songs. And in a nutshell, I advised him that of the huge, a whole bunch of musicians on the Musicians Referral Service roster, I knew the man for him.
“I figured the actual fact it was me would come to gentle sooner or later.”
The 2 met, and Cronin gained over Richrath with two songs — the unique “Music Man” and a canopy of Elton John’s “Vacation Inn” from the earlier yr’s Madman Throughout the Water album. “I assumed I used to be the one one on the planet who even knew that track – and so did Gary,” Cronin remembers. “It is simply unimaginable. Of all of the songs I may have chosen to play that day I selected a track Gary beloved and thought he was the one particular person on the planet who ever heard it. So the mix of ‘Music Man’ and ‘Vacation Inn’ received me the gig, mainly.”
Take heed to REO Speedwagon’s ‘Music Man’
“Music Man” and two different Cronin songs — “Let Me Experience” and “Being Variety (Can Harm Somebody Typically)” — wound up on R.E.O./T.W.O., which the group recorded in Nashville in the course of the summer season of 1972 and launched that December. The album would go on to be licensed gold, however Cronin’s first tenure with the band lasted only a yr; he left throughout classes for 1973’s Ridin’ the Storm Out album over artistic variations however returned lower than three years later in time for the R.E.O. album and the breakthrough Reside: You Get What You Play For. He is been a mainstay ever since, together with cofounder and keyboardist Neal Doughty. (Richrath had left the group in 1989.)
“I am happy with us for our survival over time,” says Cronin. “It is not simple protecting a band collectively. Most bands I do know have damaged up at one time or one other, some completely, and we managed to maintain it collectively even by means of the early ’90s, which have been simply actually troublesome years for all the basic rock bands as a result of these superb bands got here out of the Pacific Northwest — Nirvana, Pearl Jam — and simply blew us out of the sport. Plenty of bands gave up however REO Speedwagon did not. We have been enjoying golf equipment once more. You needed to swallow your satisfaction and simply love what you do. We weren’t prepared to surrender .. .and right here we’re, man, enjoying our music, enjoying nice gigs. I assume that is the payback for 50 years of paying our dues.”
REO Speedwagon have been enjoying “Music Man” and “Like You Do” from the R.E.O./T.W.O. album this yr and plan to proceed when the group hits the street with Styx and Loverboy for a summer season tour that begins Might 31 in Grand Rapids, Mich. Cronin, in the meantime, will relate 50 odd years of REO adventures in a memoir that is been became his literary brokers and is awaiting publication info.
“I am nonetheless engaged on it,” Cronin says. “I am nonetheless making it higher and simply sort of tweaking issues. For all pursuits and functions, it is completed, after over 5 years of labor. I wrote the e-book myself. I did not have a ghostwriter or a helper. My spouse helped somewhat bit, however I’m simply ready to see what occurs subsequent.”
High 100 ’80s Rock Albums
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