REO Speedwagon · Artists & Legends
REO Speedwagon did not arrive overnight.
REO Speedwagon did not arrive overnight. For years, they were a hard-working Midwestern band, playing bars and colleges, building an audience one show at a time, and learning how to make a room full of strangers sing along. When the breakthrough finally came, it did not feel like luck. It felt like the reward for a decade of persistence, and the songs that carried them to the top still sound like a band that earned every chorus.
The band formed in Champaign, Illinois, in 1967, when Neal Doughty, a keyboard player, and Alan Gratzer, a drummer, both students at the University of Illinois, began playing together. The name came from the REO Speed Wagon, a truck built by the REO Motor Car Company, a name Doughty had learned in a transportation history class. It was an unlikely name for a rock band, but it stuck, and it suited them: sturdy, American, and built to travel.
In the early years, the lineup changed, but the core idea did not. REO Speedwagon became known as a live band first and a recording band second. Their early albums — R.E.O. Speedwagon in 1971, R.E.O./T.W.O. in 1972, and Ridin’ the Storm Out in 1973 — showed a band rooted in hard rock and blues, with strong playing and a growing sense of melody. Kevin Cronin joined as lead singer, left, and then returned in 1976, a return that proved decisive. With Cronin back, along with guitarist Gary Richrath, bassist Gregg Philbin, Doughty, and Gratzer, the band found the voice and the chemistry that would define its classic years.
The late 1970s were a period of steady growth. You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish, released in 1978, gave them “Time for Me to Fly” and “Roll with the Changes,” songs that became concert staples and radio favorites. Nine Lives, released in 1979, kept the momentum going. Then came Hi Infidelity, released in 1980, an album that changed everything. It was polished, melodic, and packed with hits, and it became one of the best-selling rock albums of its era. “Keep On Loving You,” written by Cronin, reached number one in the United States, and “Take It on the Run,” written by Richrath, became another major hit. Suddenly, the bar band from Champaign was one of the biggest bands in the country.
What made Hi Infidelity work was its balance. Richrath’s guitar gave the band its rock edge, while Cronin’s voice and songwriting gave it its heart. The songs were about love, loyalty, and perseverance — themes that connected with a huge audience — but they were delivered with the energy of a band that had spent years playing live. The album did not sound like a studio creation. It sounded like a band playing together, loudly and joyfully, in a room full of people.
The band followed that success with Good Trouble in 1982 and Wheels Are Turnin’ in 1984. The latter gave them “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” a ballad written by Cronin that reached number one in the United States and became one of their signature songs. It was a different kind of hit from “Keep On Loving You”: softer, more romantic, and built on a melody that seemed to rise inevitably toward its chorus. Together, those two ballads defined REO Speedwagon for a generation of listeners, even though the band’s concerts remained full of hard-driving rock songs.
Like all long-lived bands, REO Speedwagon faced changes. Lineups shifted over the years, with Richrath leaving in 1989 and other members coming and going, but Cronin and Doughty remained central figures, and the band kept touring. Their live shows became celebrations of a catalog that spanned decades, with audiences singing every word to songs they had first heard as teenagers. The band also became known for its generosity on stage, often sharing bills with other classic rock acts and treating concerts as reunions rather than competitions.
In later years, REO Speedwagon continued to record and tour, releasing albums such as Find Your Own Way Home in 2007, and they remained a fixture on the summer concert circuit. Their story is, in many ways, the story of American arena rock at its most sincere: no gimmicks, no irony, just strong songs played with conviction. Cronin’s voice, still clear and earnest after decades, became a familiar sound for listeners who associated it with first loves, long drives, and the feeling of being young and certain that music could make everything all right.
After Gary Richrath left, REO carried on with a reshaped lineup. Dave Amato joined on guitar in 1989, and Bryan Hitt took over on drums the same year. The group released The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog and a Chicken in 1990, then Building the Bridge in 1996, before a longer gap ahead of Find Your Own Way Home in 2007. Those albums did not chase the chart heights of the early 1980s, but they kept the band writing and recording, and gave concert audiences new songs beside the familiar hits.
In later years the road became the band’s home ground. REO toured often, sharing bills with fellow classic-rock acts such as Styx, and in 2017 the two bands released the joint live album Live at the Moondance Jam. In 2022 the band marked fifty years since its first album with a concert in its home state, and in 2024 it announced it would stop touring after that year. The farewell run closed a long chapter, but it left the group’s reputation resting where it had always lived: on stage, before a crowd singing along.
What endures about REO Speedwagon is not just the hits, though the hits are formidable. It is the sense of a band that never forgot where it came from. They started in a college town, playing for students who wanted to dance and sing. They ended up playing arenas, but they never stopped playing like a band that wanted the audience to join in. That spirit — hard work, melody, and heart — is why their songs still fill rooms, and why a new generation keeps discovering them, one chorus at a time.