Retro Speedwagon

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(or....how all this shit got started)

"All my life people have been tryin to tell me who I am, but I don't listen;

can't you see I'll always be a music man?"

----Kevin Cronin

Click on Mote to launch my interview with him!

Dear Alan

Dear Gary

kim's first REO pic kim 8th grade pic

LEFT: The first picture of REO I ever saw, from their 1981 album, Hi Infidelity. RIGHT: Me in 1981.

Band photo, L-R: Alan Gratzer (drums), Bruce Hall (bass guitar), Kevin Cronin (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Gary Richrath (lead guitar), Neal Doughty (keyboards).

I discovered the joys of all things Speedwagon in the summer of 1981, while visiting my aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania with my family. While shopping at a local mall, I went into a record store and bought a copy of a brand new, 45 RPM record by a group I'd never heard of before: REO SPEEDWAGON.

For those of you who came of age in the 90's, vinyl records were the equivalent of a larger, bulkier CD, and if the grooves got scratched, there was no way to fix them, like you can with CD's, so you learned to be realllllllly careful with your records. They came in three flavors: 45 RPM, which was two songs (one on each side), and 33 1/3 RPM (anywhere between 10 and 13 songs), and 72 RPM (usually old people's music). RPM stood for "revolutions per minute". We played our 33 1/3 records at 45 speed, and laughed our asses off because it sounded like the singer inhaled helium. Then you could spin your records counterclockwise while they were on the turntable and listen for the subliminal devil messages that anal retentive grown ups insisted were there. I never heard any, but it sure made for an offbeat, rainy day past time.

Anyhoo, the REO record I bought was called Don't Let Him Go. Intrigued by the cute, albeit nameless, guys on the record sleeve, I invested my worldly wealth of $2.00 toward this intriguing item, and schlepped it back to my aunt's house for a listen. Yes, kids, single records only cost two bucks back then, and you could buy the whole album for less than ten! *sigh*

Even before the vocals started, DLHG caught my attention with its long, sustained, vibrato lead guitar note, followed by heart stopping primal drum beats. By the time I heard the singing, I knew I was in for a real treat. The singer's voice fit the music like a glove, and there was something so different about it. It was strong and confident, yet it made me feel very safe inside, which was something that didn't happen very often back then. I'd mostly been listening to country music (favorite artist: Ronnie Milsap), with occasional forays into adult contemporary/Top 40, but none of that music made me feel like REO did.

As I replayed my new record over and over and over, I carefully studied the band's picture on the jacket, trying to see if I could match that amazing voice with the picture of its owner. They were all pretty good looking, but I was captivated by the tall, skinny guy wearing a white jacket. He had the biggest nose---and hair---I'd ever seen in my life. His eyes were deep and intense, like he was thinking about something really important. I sensed that he was very emotional, like me.

It wasn't until we went to West Virginia to visit my other aunt, uncle, and miscellaneous relatives that I bought the Hi Infidelity album. The H.I. record had a much larger version of that same band photo on the album sleeve, and even better, the band members were identified by name. The cutie's name was Kevin Cronin. That's all I needed to know.

The second album I bought while in W. Va. was H.I.'s predecessor, Nine Lives. Not only did it have a catchy feline theme on the cover, but Kevin had this really slinky, barely there, cat-like outfit on, so I was sold. I spent many happy hours in my cousin Lori's bedroom, playing Nine Lives over and over and over on her desktop-sized turntable. My absolute favorite was a song called Meet Me On The Mountain (and still is to this day!).

kev '81 eye candy

22 years later, this picture STILL melts me!

After my album collection began to take shape, the next phase in my REO deflowering was the accumulation of band member information and visual media (i.e., dreamy photos, or "eye candy"). Young, hungry rock & roll fans are the quintessential hunter gatherers when it comes to their favorite artists, and in the Jurassic age before the internet, our most plentiful hunting ground was fan magazines such as Creem, Tiger Beat, Sixteen, and Hit Parader.

My best buddy Hope also got bitten by the REO bug at the same time as me. Her favorite band member was bassist Bruce Hall, although we certainly did not limit our swooning to our respective favorites. Teenage girls, when confronted with such hunky specimens of masculinity, don't know how to draw those lines in the sand! Hope used to say, "If the guys in REO lived across the sea, oh what a good swimmer Kim would be." :O

Every month, we cruised the magazine racks at local grocery stores & drug stores for the latest, coolest, must-have issues. There weren't that many stores that sold magazines in our town, so we hit all of them on a loop, because one store probably had stuff that the others didn't, and God forbid you should get caught in a downward spiral of ignorance while all your buddies were in the know. It was how we earned prestige in our peer group. It made us feel studly, and important. We weren't terribly discriminating consumers, though. We assumed that, if it was in print, and had cool pictures to back it up, it was true.

After acquiring our knowledge, we lined our bedroom walls will assorted REO eye candy, and talked about da boyz. Any common ground between them and us was gleefully celebrated with the same enthusiasm as somebody telling us we could skip school for a week and not get in trouble. I remember reading about Kevin's dog, Lion Puppy, and his Mercedes 350 SL. My first two thoughts were, (A) I had dogs too!! YAY!!, and (B) resolved to buy a Mercedes when I was old enough to drive. Hope had relatives in Indiana, and the magazines said that Neal was from Indiana. DOUBLE YAY!! She wrote me a letter during a visit there, and after she identified where she was at, she added, at the end of the sentence, "(Neal)". He is actually from East St. Louis, Illinoise, but nobody is allowed to tell Hope! Shhhhhh!!

In between fan magazines, we listened to our favorite REO songs and sang along with them while doing that pretend rock star on stage thing, using a hair brush as a microphone ('Fess up, K.C....you did the same thing when you were a kid, right??? Right!!) We wrote fan letters to the band, and got a form letter in response: a single sheet of white, shiny paper, folded into thirds, with the Hi Infidelity picture on one side, and on the other side, a letter from the band, in teal letters, with each of their signatures along the bottom margin. On the front side, next to the address label, was a small version of the REO wing logo. Wellllll.....that was about the closest thing to Nirvana! Naturally, we taught ourselves to write their names like they did.

Next came the fan fiction. I was the one with the writing ability, so I composed tomes about Hope & I going on wild, crazy adventures with the band members, plugging in the miscellaneous factoids we had gleaned from our diligent fan magazine research, not to mention the liner notes of all our records. My tomes couldn't have been very salacious; I was only thirteen years old! In fact, I considered the use of the word "shit" in the song Tough Guys (Hi Infidelity) to be the epitome of forbidden, off-limits adult pleasure. I was beside myself with delight ! Of course, that was light years before I myself acquired a potty mouth....but I digress.

In one memorable story, the band members had booked a concert in my hometown, and they wanted to spend all their free time before and after the show with me. Taking my cues from what I learned in my fan magazines, I depicted them as mischievous, slightly hyperactive, and having very short attention spans. Let me tell you, they wore me out!! Hehehehe!! Finally, in desperation, I gave them all chores to do around the house, to keep them out of my hair. During one scene, after his chores were done, Kevin went out jogging, and when he returned, he was sooooo excited about finding Cronin Avenue, which is a real street about ten minutes from my house.

cronin avenue

Hey Kev! This is your picture from the cover of Good Trouble. Notice anything different? :O)

My description of them being restless and prone to getting in trouble was not that far off base. In a 1987 radio interview that I have on tape, K.C. talks about their most legendary episode of mischief. They were on the road in the mid-70's, and they were bored with being cooped up in their hotel rooms, so they dragged all the furniture from their rooms into the hotel parking lot, somebody else brought food and wine, and they started having an impromptu picnic.

Pretty soon, this soiree attracted attention from passersby, who showed up en masse to join the party. At some point in the evening, the cops were called, and, just in the nick of time, the band's pilot John "The Flying Tuna" Durkin arrived in his helicopter and whisked them out of liability's way. In this interview, Kevin actually replicates the sound of the helicopter blades with his mouth. It's too cute! Hehehehehe.

MTV either hadn't been launched yet, or was so new that it didn't have any REO videos in rotation yet, so we were pretty much limited to our records and fan mags for scratching the itch. Then we stumbled upon the greatest treasure of all: REO's very first concert documentary, Live Infidelity, taped during a gig at McNichol Arena in Denver, Colorado, on the Hi Infidelity tour. Finally, we could see our rock & roll heroes moving, dancing, sweating, talking, and walking!! It was as if all our dreamy pinup photos had magically sprung to life!

REO hit parader 82 Kev hit parader '82

Eye candy circa 1982 (from Hit Parader magazine)

We couldn't watch Live Infidelity enough, especially the backstage footage in the dressing room. When the band members opened their individual drawers in the road case, we rewound those frames over and over and over, straining to get a glimpse of Personal Band Member Artifacts (the equivalent of the holy grail to a rock fan). Remarks made by each band member were quoted frequently in our every day conversations.

The closing sequence was our favorite. With the theme music from Disney's Electrical Light Parade playing in the background, we watched the band members in various stages of recuperation from the physically demanding set. My glass ears almost shattered when Kevin sheepishly confessed to "fucking up the lyrics" (I think to Time For Me To Fly). The only people I'd ever heard use THAT word were my two older brothers, and ONLY when Mom & Dad weren't within earshot!! Hubba hubba hubba...wubba wubba wubba!!

My next Retro acquisitions after that were A Decade of Rock & Roll: 1970-1980, Good Trouble, and the band's official poster from the Nine Lives tour. It had each band member's picture across the top, with the REO wing logo underneath, and a wide shot of the band performing onstage. Initially, the poster held court, intact, on my bedroom wall. And then, one afternoon, I got too close to a pair of scissors, and...well....you can see for yourself what happened next. Hehehehehe. I detailed out the picture of drummer Alan Gratzer, too, but he was misplaced years ago. Sorry, Gratz, but I haven't exactly been mourning the loss. It's a Croninhead thang. :OP

K.C.: (wink)

I have been blessed to make a real-life connection with three of the band members in the Retro lineup. Their impact on my life continues to deepen with the passage of time. As for Alan and Gary, they will always have their own places in my heart, and I can build bridges with them through this web site, even if we never get the opportunity to meet face to face . However, I can't deny how happy and fulfilled I would be if we did.

Thanks for sharing these fond memories with me, and I'll see you soon!

-----Kimmers :O)

kim kev hob '97