REO AS WE KNOW THEM

REO AS WE KNOW THEM

A TOUCHING TALE

Robyn Lisa Burn

“It’s weird. We pulled into town last night, all of us being together again checking into a hotel, and I swear to God it felt like the last year and a half just didn’t exist. We’re right back on the road. It just doesn’t feel like we went home—it’s like you fall right back into that groove,” Kevin Cronin says, still trying to get adjusted into yet another Holiday Inn.

After 15 years of countless one-nighters in venues around the world, hotel rooms must seem like home to these guys— although I don’t think the ritual of trashing rooms and tossing hotel sofas into parking lots cuts it these days. “I remember in 72 we did a gig in Miami and it was like the night before New Year’s Eve. We went down to some CBS party with Black Oak Arkansas and terrorized this penthouse apartment right along the coast. I can picture it like it was yesterday. When I think about it we’ve definitely come a long way since then. There are a lot of people still looking for us, I know that much.”

And in the old days Cronin couldn’t see the band lasting as long as it has. Everybody wanted to be a star and there was only so much room in the spotlight. Fighting and ego trips took their toll on the band, which Kevin expected when “you get a bunch of high energy people together.” But before the guys could delve into self-analysis they first had to establish themselves, which was no easy task for a band from the Midwest. With hopes of becoming “the biggest band in all of Illinois” REO made the club scene rounds. While limo-ing from gig to gig and later graduating to a World War II antique airplane, the band would step off the plane, thank God they were alive and rock that night’s house down.

After going as far as they could, REO set their sights on Los Angeles. Already having released two albums—their selftitled debut and R.E.O./T.W.O., but not getting the attention they felt they deserved, the band piled into a car and headed out west, where legend has it that Cronin wrote “Roll With The Changes” on a paper bag somewhere in New Mexico. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47 “That Ain’t Love” was originally supposed to be a duet with Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander but, after feeling the song out, Cronin felt the duet would be wrong.

Although another chunk of success came with Ridin’ The Storm Out, REO were looking for the whole pie. When three more albums surfaced and shuffled into oblivion without so much as a thank you or goodbye, Cronin got pissed.

“It’s hard for me to remember now, because I don’t like keeping those feelings of frustration inside me. St. Louis was the first major city we broke in—and it was when our albums were in the discount bin in New York after they were released. It was crazy to us. There were times that the records just wouldn’t get any airplay outside of the Midwest and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. You figure these are people, and if people in the Midwest like it why shouldn’t people out West or in the East? Maybe they won’t like it, but at least they should get the chance to hear it. We’re not saying that everybody in New York City is going to love us, but unless the radio stations give us a chance then the people aren’t going to get a chance to accept it or reject it,” Cronin says.

“To this day it’s real frustrating. There are certain radio stations in the country right now that are so tight-assed and closeminded about the whole thing. They won’t play certain songs of ours. Our first single, That Ain’t Love,’ is a song I’m really proud of. And it did well in a lot of places, but certain stations wouldn’t play it because of this, that or the other. We heard things like ‘the record won’t appeal to the urban audience.’ So what’s the ‘urban audience’? What does that mean? Let’s translate that into real English.

“I wouldn’t mind if a radio station played the song a few times and didn’t get the requests for it and then stopped playing it. But when someone says: ‘I’m not going to play this song because our research shows that our audience won’t like the music,’ then I say.. .well, I won’t even say what I say.”

Corporate suit-and-tie guys felt REO would have a better chance if they could just hook up with the right genius producer. The band thought differently.

“We talked CBS into letting us produce our own records, which turned out to be a real big plus for us. Some of the early records had good tunes on ’em, but they came out sounding weird because the producer had a different image of what the record should sound like. So we lucked out, really, because CBS let us produce and ever since then the records have been selling a lot more. So CBS thought we were happening producers when, really, all we do is know our music better than anyone else does.”

Before entering the studio the band knew more about themselves, too, having gone about two years without the tenored pitch of Cronin, who left in 74.

“If you talk to me I’ll tell you that I left. If you talk to the band they'll tell you I was

kicked out, so it depends on who you talk to. I was feeling unappreciated and unhealthy, vocally. It was demanding on me vocally and I didn’t know how to do it. The band would want to play every night and rehearse every day and, on a physical level, my voice couldn’t handle it.

“I went to this quack doctor in Champaign who told me if I kept singing, pretty soon I would find my vocal chords on my tongue and they’d fall out of my head. So he said to stop talking for two months and stop singing for six, and I was so stupid that I believed him and didn’t get a second opinion. With every show we played I felt it was one less show I was going to be able to do in the end. It was crazy.

“As far as unappreciated goes, I was the new kid in the group, but I was also the frontman at the same time. It was schizo, because when I was onstage I was expected to be Mr. Personality and offstage I was a new guy—and no one really paid attention to my ideas. I have strong ideas about what songs should sound like, and arrangements and music in general, so it was frustrating for me. I just got to a point where I said ‘fuck you guys, I don’t need this’—and at the same time they were feeling, well, ‘fuck you, we don’t need you either.’ ”

Cronin went out on his own and did solo shows, which is something he had never done before. The nights of singing, performing and working a crowd built up his confidence, but nothing really happened career-wise. Record companies heard the solo music and all agreed that Cronin needed to put a rock ’n’ roll band together.

“I didn’t know how to do that,” Cronin says. “I started trying, and then Neal (Doughty) called up and said the band was fed up with the singers they had and were

looking for a new singer, and would I mind coming out to California and see how it would work again.

“So I’m sitting there thinking I have to put a rock ’n’ roll band together, and here’s a rock ’n’ roll band already put together. It seemed to me like the best time to give it another try. So we did. And as far as feeling unappreciated, I felt very appreciated when I came back. I also got a couple of second opinions on my voice and both doctors said this guy in Illinois was crazy, there was nothing wrong with my voice.”

It was at that point that the band made a commitment to try and combine the power and intensity of the classic REO Speedwagon with the melodic lyrics and songs that Cronin wrote. Pundits, however, criticized the band as writing for two different audiences.

“That kind of attitude burns me up because I hate when someone from the outside looks in and makes that kind of judgement. I don’t mind if they feel that way, but to write it down as though that’s how it is... that’s taking it a step too far. The goal of the group has always been to find the balance of old REO sound and combine it with melodies and folk rock, which is what I was into. There have always been two forces working on the REO albums. Look at the Beatles, the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, who had everything from ‘Revolution’ to ‘Helter Skelter’ to ‘Michelle.’ ”

After a live album, REO followed with the double-platinum You Can Tune A Piano But You Can’t Tuna Fish, a title already written into the musical history books and inducted into the concept hall of fame. The record, hereafter to be referred to as the Tuna Fish album, didn’t initially excite the fans as Cronin had anticipated.

“After High Infidelity came out, people got turned on to the band and all of a sudden went out and discovered the Tuna Fish album. At the time it was disappointing how the album was being accepted by radio and stuff, but now it’s one of our most popular records. Time healed that wound. You do your best on every album and then, when you finish the record and get away from it for a while and listen to it again, that’s when you can tell for sure how you did.

“Some of the albums I wasn’t really into because my writing wasn’t up to where I expected it to be. A guy would come up to me and say ‘Your Nine Lives album is my favorite album,’ and it’s like, oh really?—I haven’t listened to that album in 10 years. There’s just no accounting for it. An album I might think is weak might be someone else’s favorite.”

With the success of High Infidelity, though, came renewed intra-band pressures.

“After our High Infidelity record, I’m not going to say that I never thought ‘this is all because of me,’ because I’m sure everyone in the band thought the same thing of themselves. It’s OK to feel it, but when you think about it and you still believe it, then you’re going to have trouble. You have to realize that if something happens it’s never because of any one person. It’s a combination of energy that makes something happen.

“It’s just a matter of people not letting their egos dictate what they do. You have to have an ego, but if you let your ego rule then you’re going to be in big trouble. I rpean, when you walk out in front of 20 thousand people onstage in funny-looking clothes and a guitar and you don’t have an ego, you’re in big trouble. You’ve got to feel tough and mean and feel deep down in your soul that you belong up there or you'll be blown off the stage.

“If you walk offstage and still feel that way... If you wake up and expect people to applaud you, you’re in trouble. It happens. It can happen to you if you’re not careful.”

Following High Infidelity (and a tour that helped sell 18 million copies of the album worldwide) came the pressure to meet and beat the album—an unfortunate thing for Cronin on a personal level, as it left him crushed artistically. As Cronin remembers: “I don’t understand how I let it happen to me. It was kind of that situation where people tell you you’re great so much that you start believing it. When we were on tour, everywhere we went it was like: ‘God, you guys are great; God, you guys are great.’ It’s nice that people get excited when they hear the music and it’s good to get the compliments. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just how you perceive those compliments.

“At the time, I took it all seriously and totally believed it and thought that’s how it should be. Ever since I was a kid I figured as soon as the band made that break and had monster success that that would be the answer to all my problems. And when it happened, life was going to be like Nirvana. I was freaked out when it didn’t happen. So then I had to rethink my whole philosophy of life. It’s hard to write songs when you’re thinking of a new philosophy of life.’’

For Good Trouble, Cronin felt he wrote the best songs he could under the circumstances. There were a couple of good tunes on the album, but, to this day, the band still doesn’t play songs off that album in concert.

"There’s nothing on the album we feel like playing live. After Good Trouble I was burnt. I was crisp. I had way too much fun on the Good Trouble tour. After coming off the tour I didn’t want to write. I had nothing to write about. I remember trying to go into the studio and sitting there opening up a notebook, getting my guitar and my pen out and just sitting there. Nothing would happen. It was real stupid.

“After a little of that you can go pretty crazy and weird feelings started creeping into my brain. It was like, OK, this isn’t working. I’m not going to kill myself here. So, I put the guitar in the case, locked it up, closed the notebook, threw the pen in the garbage and had to do something else for a while. It just got to a point where I said I’m not even going to try and write a song because, up until then, I would think no matter where I was—a party, the beach—I had this little voice inside me saying when I got home, I should be writing a song.

“I just decided I don’t want to write a song. I don’t even want to try. All of a sudden I felt this weight lift off me. It’s something I went through, I understand it and I sure as hell won’t let it happen to me again. But the only way you figure those things out is by living through them and not let it happen again.”

The making of Life As We Know It—the successful follow-up to the uplifting Wheels Are Turning—was hard work. The band left no stone unturned, keeping themselves open to everything and “tried stuff we normally wouldn’t have in the past, which is why it took us a year to finish the record. As a result, a lot of stuff we tried sounded like shit and some of it sounded good. You have to try out everything to see what’s the best, so there’s a lot of trial and error in our process, that’s for sure.”

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“Cheap Trick has toured with us for a long time and Robin and I would sing together in hotel rooms after the show. We always tried to get it together on an album but our schedules never made possible.”

On the road with REO this year is an incredible stage and light show. Listening to Cronin go on about it is like watching a kid in a new playground try out all the rides. “We hired the guy who did the Peter Gabriel tour and he designed the stage and lights. And when I walked into rehearsals in Hollywood, the stage was set up and—I swear to God—it looked like it was for some other band. Like, OK, where’s our stage? It’s got secret passage ways under the stage and rooms for people to tune up in. You can cruise through a trap door and pop up somewhere else on stage. It’ll be fun.”

It better be. Right now Cronin’s not sure whether another album and tour will ever follow it up. Could this be the last?

“People used to ask me ‘Well how long do you think you guys will stay together?’ and I automatically would say ‘forever.’ Lately, somedays it feels like forever and somedays I think, shit, this could be the last tour we ever do. You never really know at this point. I definitely put everything I had into the last record and I’m putting everything I have into the tour. When you live each day as if it were your last, you really go balls to the walls, so to speak. That’s how I feel this year.” ®