Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon recently addressed a fan’s comment about his songwriting partnership with late guitarist Gary Richrath. He responded to claims made during a conversation shared on Facebook.
The response came after Cronin shared a detailed story about writing the hit song “Keep on Loving You” and his creative process with Richrath.
“REO Speedwagon gets a rap for that we somehow manufactured the power ballad. And, and of course, we wanted our record to get played on the radio. Who doesn’t? But Keep on Loving You, I woke up in the middle of the night, kind of felt my way down the hallway of my little house in Woodman Hills, sat at my little Wurlitzer red plastic piano that Gary Loaiza had owned, and played that little piano part of Keep on Loving You and wrote those verses,” Cronin said.
He continued describing the creative moment when the song came together.
“And I don’t know where it came from. You know, it just happened. And there’s a certain type of song that’s an REO Speedwagon song and some songs are not REO Speedwagon songs. And I would contend that if a member of REO Speedwagon writes a song… So I’m sitting there playing this, all of a sudden, and I didn’t have a chorus, and I’m just playing along, and it’s kind of dark. And then this chorus came to me, and it’s like this hopeful chorus,” he explained.
Cronin then detailed Richrath’s involvement in the song’s development.
“And Richrath, I don’t know, I don’t exactly know what was in his head, but at some point, he got up, plugged in his Les Paul with a curly cord directly into a Marshall, which is how we used to play. Sometimes he had a wah-wah pedal, that was it. And he started playing along with me. Or he might have just been trying to drown me out so I would stop playing this stupid slow song,” Cronin recalled.
“But at one point, we kind of hit on something. And I’ll never forget, I struck the piano and I looked at him, and we looked at each other, and it was like, we kind of knew that something. Something had, some brain cells had, something had sparked. And it was like, oh, this is what we’ve been trying to do for the last four years,” he added.
When a fan commented that “Gary Richrath didn’t like any of your songs,” Cronin directly addressed the claim.
“That is not an accurate statement … Gary and I worked together closely, and unless both of us liked a song, and Alan, Neal, and Bruce liked it and were into playing it, the song didn’t make the album,” Cronin responded.
Cronin’s defense of his creative partnership with Richrath highlights the complex dynamics that shaped REO Speedwagon’s evolution from a hard rock band to mainstream success.
Yardbarker reported that before REO became a pop band, it was a full-fledged rock outfit during the 1970s. Richrath served as the key “rocker” driving that sound. This musical foundation established by Richrath became crucial to the band’s identity, even as they transitioned toward more commercially accessible material.
The creative tension between Cronin’s songwriting approach and Richrath’s rock sensibilities actually proved beneficial for the band’s development. Richrath’s guitar work provided the musical backbone that allowed Cronin’s more melodic compositions to maintain their edge and authenticity.
The collaborative process Cronin described reflects the democratic approach REO Speedwagon took to their music. The requirement that all band members approve a song before it made it to an album ensured that each track represented the collective vision of the group rather than individual preferences.
This partnership between Cronin and Richrath ultimately produced some of REO Speedwagon’s most enduring hits. It demonstrated that their creative relationship was built on mutual respect and shared musical goals rather than the discord suggested by the fan’s comment.
