It was singer Kevin Cronin’s melodic sensibility that transformed REO Speedwagon into one of America’s biggest bands in the 1980s. And it was Cronin’s songs that gave the band their two US No.1 hits – the quintessential power ballads Keep On Loving You and Can’t Fight This Feeling.
In an interview with Classic Rock in 2010, Cronin described his career as “a wild ride” – and its starting point was when he saw The Beatles on TV in 1964.
Born and raised in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Cronin was 13 years old when the Fab Four appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
“I’d been taking guitar lessons for a couple of years and I didn’t really know why,” Cronin recalled. “Then I saw The Beatles and it all made sense.
“Of course I saw how the young girls reacted to them. And from that point I needed music like I needed air. There was no other choice for me.”
When the young Kevin Cronin first tried writing a song, he was influenced more by The Beach Boys than The Beatles.
“It was called My Little XKE – written about a Jaguar car,” he said. “I was kind of influenced by the Beach Boys, writing about cars.
“But my first real song was Little World Of Make Believe. It was never recorded or anything, but when I think back on it, it had some decent chord changes and it had a story. It was pretty cohesive for a 14 year-old!”
His other early influences included Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape and The Byrds.
“I liked folk-rock,” he said. “After I heard The Byrds and Mr. Tambourine Man, I had to play a Rickenbacker 12-string. I loved that jangly sound and the vocal harmony thing.”
In 1972, after working in various local Chicago bands, Cronin was approached by Gary Richrath, REO Speedwagon’s guitarist.
“The first time I met Gary, we just jammed on acoustic guitars,” he said. “It was right after Elton John’s Madman Across The Water was released, and there was a song on it, Holiday Inn, that I used to sing it in folk clubs in Chicago.
“I played that song and Gary freaked out – he thought he was the only person who knew that song. That’s how we connected.”
Cronin said of the early REO: “They were riff-oriented, a hard rock band, like Deep Purple. The first time I saw them play live was at a little roller rink in Joliet, Illinois, and I was blown away by their energy.
“They already had one album, and I didn’t really see how my songs were going to fit into their approach. REO had this power and I didn’t want to mess with that. They had their thing and I had my own thing.”
Nevertheless, Cronin was persuaded to join the band – only to get fired after one album!
He was given the boot after experiencing difficulty while recording his vocals for the band’s third album Ridin’ The Storm Out.
As he explained: “I was not used to singing with the sheer volume that REO played at – the giant stacks of Marshalls behind me. So I blew my voice out.
"I went to a doctor and he told me I shouldn’t sing for three weeks. I was afraid to tell the band. I felt for sure they would kick me out. So I just started trying to sing as little as possible at rehearsals.
“I was freaking out because I feared I would lose my voice permanently. But the guys thought I was being a prima donna.
“As a singer, when your voice is failing you, it puts you in a bad place. So when they fired me it was more of a relief than anything else. I was ready to go.”
The band quickly brought in a new singer, Mike Murphy, who recorded new vocals for Ridin’ The Storm Out.
Cronin, meanwhile, toured as a solo act. “I thought I was gonna become the next Dan Fogelberg!” he said. “I opened for the Eagles. I could carry an audience of 3000 by myself. But I wasn’t meant to be a solo artist.”
In 1976, after two more albums, REO parted company with Mike Murphy and invited Cronin to rejoin the band. He didn’t hesitate to say yes.
“When I got the call I was ready to go,” he said. “My solo career hadn’t set any world records. We realised we needed each other at right around the same moment.”
The next album – titled simply R.E.O. – bombed, peaking at No.159 on the US Billboard chart. But after that disappointment, a breakthrough came in 1978 with a top 30 album bizarrely titled You Can Tune A Piano But You Can’t Tuna Fish.
That title was Cronin’s idea.
He recalled: “We were at a party in our hometown, Champaign, Illinois. There were all kinds of nefarious activities going on. And when I woke up the next day, somehow that phrase – You Can Tune A Piano But You Can’t Tuna Fish – was in my mind.
"No one is sure who uttered the phrase first, but I was the guy that said, ‘That’s a pretty cool title for the album.’ Everybody thought I was crazy. But Joe Walsh had called his record The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get. So the stage was set for wacky album titles.”
You Can Tune A Piano But You Can’t Tuna Fish featured two tracks that would become REO standards – Roll With The Changes and Time For Me To Fly.
This was also the album on which the band’s definitive line-up was completed by the arrival of bassist Bruce Hall alongside Cronin, Gary Richrath, keyboard player Neal Doughty and drummer Alan Gratzer.
The following album Nine Lives included another REO anthem, Back On The Road Again, which was written and sung by Bruce Hall.
As Cronin explained: “Bruce used to sing Back On The Road Again with his own band in Champaign. So when he brought the song to REO, it was a no-brainer that he would sing it.
"Bruce was a Champaign guy and I wanted to get him in the band from the day I met him in 1972, when we bonded at a party, singing Beatles songs.”
It was in 1980 that REO Speedwagon hit the jackpot with the album Hi Infidelity.
“I don’t know that anyone could have foreseen what was gonna happen with that record,” Cronin said. “I guess the stars were lined up.
“We’d toured so much that all of our relationships at home were kind of shredding, and that bonded us as a band. Everything else was falling apart around us, so the band became our primary relationship.
“And as you’re writing songs, you’re trying to make sense of it all. There’s a lot of emotion running through you, and we were all caught up in that energy.”
That emotional energy was the inspiration for the No.1 single Keep On Loving You and the No.5 hit Take It On The Run, the latter written by Gary Richrath.
“Gary didn’t think that much of that song,” Cronin said, “but I heard something in it.
“Originally it was called Don’t Let Me Down. I said, ‘I think The Beatles already did a song called that!’
“But the chorus started with “Take it on the run…” I said, ‘There’s your title!’
“And of course, that song had one of the greatest opening lines in rock history: “Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another you been messin’ around…” I wish I’d written that!
"Take It On The Run and Keep On Loving You were pretty much the same story but from different perspectives.”
In February 1981, Hi Infidelity hit No.1 in the US.
“We were in the midst of a four-night stand at the International Amphitheater in Chicago,” Cronin recalled. “To see our album at number one was mindboggling.
“We ordered a bunch of Dom Perignon and just yelled like schoolboys. It was awesome! The days of touring in a Chevrolet station wagon were still fresh in our minds.”
Keep On Loving You knocked Dolly Parton’s 9 To 5 off the top of the US chart.
“After all those years of working at it, it was amazing to hear your song on the radio all the time,” Cronin said. “It was everything that I’d ever hoped for as a songwriter. But it was also the first song where I really exposed my life and my relationship to a certain degree. Maybe too much…”
1981 was a banner year for AOR (Adult Oriented Rock), with four all-time classic albums hitting number one in the US – Hi Infidelity, Foreigner 4, Escape by Journey and Paradise Theater by Styx.
As Cronin told Classic Rock. “It’s true – there were a lot of bands making melodic hard rock, and we felt a kinship with them. All these bands were unique in their own way, but there was a similarity in the music that was undeniable. And Lou Gramm [ex-Foreigner singer] has one of the greatest rock voices in history.”
In 1985, REO had their second No.1 single with Can’t Fight This Feeling. But by the end of that decade the band’s popularity was waning.
“We we weren’t having the same kind of success that we had in the early ’80s,” Cronin admitted, “and that freaked some of us out. You expect that every record is gonna sell ten million copies. And when the sales start going down, that takes its toll.”
The REO Speedwagon story does not have a happy ending.
When the band performed a one-off show in Champaign on 14 June 2025 – 10 years after Gary Richrath passed away – Kevin Cronin was not present alongside Neal Doughty, Bruce Hall and Alan Gratzer.
Due to a scheduling conflict, the singer was out on tour with his Kevin Cronin Band.
Cronin said he felt “disturbed and hurt” at missing out on that event.
But at the age of 73, Cronin continues to perform those classic hits.
As he said back in 2010: “Music is an ever-evolving art form. Every night when I sing those songs, I feel like I find another part of it. I still feel like I’m trying to get that ultimate performance of Can’t Fight This Feeling.”
And just as The Beatles inspired him, so he hoped that REO Speedwagon’s songs would, in his words, “inspire people to never give up, to stay vibrant and to keep your dreams alive”.
He concluded: “From the beginning, our mantra was in those songs: Ridin’ the Storm Out, Keep Pushin’, Roll With the Changes. We’ve talked that talk and walked that walk.
“That, I think, is what I’m most proud of.”
