REO Speedwagon: Ridin' the Storm Out (1973)

Where we left off:

REO Speedwagon made their second album, R.E.O./T.W.O. with new lead singer Kevin Cronin. The album failed to crack the Billboard Top 200.

*

Despite their lack of commercial success, REO were building a reputation as an ace live band, and were able to draw big crowds in their native midwest. They also became known as a reliable opening act for bands that were selling a lot more records than them.

Perhaps that's why Epic continued to stick with REO, and allowed them to make a third record, and they even got a "hot" producer. By 1973, Bill Halverson had made his name engineering albums for the Beach Boys, Cream, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Bill Withers. They also got some big name support, getting Joe Walsh to play slide guitar on three songs.

But all was not well. Cronin quit the band just as the album was nearly completed. In fact, it was so close to done that the cover photo shoot had already been completed. Cronin now blames a false diagnosis from a doctor that told him to stop singing or risk vocal cord surgery. Other members point to rising tensions over the group's musical direction as being a factor in his departure. 

The band promptly brought in another Illinois-based singer, Michael Bryan Murphy. Since the late 1960s, Murphy had written, sung, and played keys for bands the 13th Precinct (from Sterling) and the One-Eyed Jacks (from Champaign). Murphy redid Cronin's lead vocals, including on songs Cronin himself had written, and was pasted in over Cronin on the album cover (that's him in the chair in the yellow shirt). The resulting record, Ridin' the Storm Out, was released in December 1973.

Murphy's voice has a sort of throaty quality the band seemed to look for in a singer, but his delivery is more in line with blue-eyed soul than the honky-tonk sensibilities of both Terry Luttrell and Kevin Cronin. As a result, the album sounds radically different than the first two.     

The title track and opener, written by Richrath, serves as a good introduction to this new version of REO. The song has a tight structure, with a clear verse chorus verse - instrumental bridge - verse chorus and a wild solo to fade out on. It was written about the band getting stuck in a snowstorm in Boulder Colorado at a bar called Tulagi's.                                                                                                                                            Richrath's "Whiskey Night" uses Murphy's R & B edge (and a trio of backup gospel singers) to get a little funky and soulful. Over Walsh's slide guitar and prominent organ from Neal Doughty, Murphy details a hangover. His cure? "Come on guitar, you've got to save me / And get me back to feelin' like I should."

"Find My Fortune" is also by Richrath, which makes it ironic that guitar is not the prominent instrument, giving way instead to bass and organ. He also delivers the lead vocals himself, with a voice sounds just a bit like Mick Jagger's. Lyrically, it's a spiritual sequel to "Music Man" and "How the Story Goes" from R.E.O. / T.W.O. in that it addresses the decision to follow rock star aspirations. The chorus goes:

A restless nature fed my crazy dreams
So I packed my bags in a big limousine
laughed at the people who were laughin' at me
Laughed and said I'm gonna be what I be
And I'm gone, gone away to find my fortune

Cronin's two songs are also representative of the leaner, more song-oriented REO. The standout is the catchy side two opener,"Movin'," which is essentially a love letter to California. The band recorded the album in Los Angeles (staying in a mansion once owned by actress/writer/burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee; that's where the cover photo was taken), and Cronin was clearly infatuated with this new environment: "I've only been here a week, but I've been enlightened / to a whole new way of life / And it makes me feel just like movin'" There's a bit of cleverness in that the word movin' could mean either dancing or relocating, but the fact that Cronin and the rest of the band did resettle out west adds an extra layer.

Cronin's other song - "It's Everywhere" is about searching for love. It's left open and impressionistic as to what kind of love we're talking about, which has the result of making the song feel like a sort of hippy anthem. More interesting is the song's musical structure. It serves very nearly as a blueprint for the future REO sound, with the band's blues rock elements mixed together with a pop sound, the latter most evident on soaring chorus featuring a synth part that sounds like it was borrowed from Supertramp.

Three other songs by Richrath hew more toward the "traditional" REO Speedwagon sound. "Oh Woman" is a boogie woogie tune about being enthralled by a lady ("I'll behave, oh woman, 'cause I'm your slave."). "Son of a Poor Man" features chugging guitar and lyrics about a hometown girl leaving for the big city. And "Start a New Life" is a piano-driven ballad that serves as a kiss-off to a former friend, labeled in the song as a "debater" and "pretender." It's hard not to wonder if it was written about Terry Luttrell, and to notice that it could also apply to Cronin in retrospect.

The band was a bit short on material, and an introduction to the Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young circle through producer Halverson gave them cover song material. Country stomper "Open Up" was a reworked version of a downbeat acoustic song called "Know You Got to Run" that was on 1971's Stephen Stills II. This new version is sped up and fleshed-out with a group-sung chorus.

Uplifting album closer "Without Expression (Don't Be the Man)" may hold the record for song released under the largest number of different titles. The song was co-written by Graham Nash and British singer/songwriter Terry Reid, who released it on his 1968 debut album under the name "Without Expression." The Hollies covered it the same year as "A Man With No Expression." The next year, CSNY did a version they called "Horses Through a Rainstorm."(In 1990, John Mellencamp covered the song under its original title.)

*

Ridin' the Storm Out would be REO's first record to chart, creeping up to number 171 on the Billboard 200. Not a hit by any stretch, but it was evidence of an upward momentum, as improbable as that was for a band whose number of albums equaled their number of lead singers. 

Burning Question

How did REO know Joe Walsh?
One of the bands whom REO opened for was Barnstorm, Joe Walsh's post James Gang group. The bands shared a manager in Irving Azoff, and of course that connection would eventually lead to Walsh joining the Eagles. Azoff's stable would also include Dan Fogelberg, Steely Dan, Jimmy Buffett, and Boz Scaggs, and this would in many ways help subsidize REO Speedwagon in their lean-sales years.