Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftsets podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Kevin Cronin of Rio Speedwagon. Kevin, you're
Speaker 1: in a hotel room. Where are you, Bob? I am
Speaker 1: in the you know, here's what we do on show days,
Speaker 1: when it's just a day room. We'll stay at the
Speaker 1: you know, Hilton Townsend family in right and just for
Speaker 1: a day room. And then on our days off we splurge.
Speaker 1: So we are in the lovely Ritz Carlton and Georgetown today,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite places. And why is
Speaker 1: it so great?
Speaker 2: Well, the area is great. You can from here, I can,
Speaker 2: and I do this every time. I can't help myself.
Speaker 2: I walk into d C. And actually the when we
Speaker 2: stayed here in I think February of twenty twenty, like
Speaker 2: soon after the you know, the June, the July, pardon me,
Speaker 2: the January sixth insurrection. So I walked from here down
Speaker 2: to the White House. And then I walked the path
Speaker 2: that the that those people walked from the from the
Speaker 2: reflection Pond, you know, down to the Capitol. And it's
Speaker 2: it's a long walk. It's about a it's a good
Speaker 2: half an hour. So what what it made me realize
Speaker 2: is those people had plenty of time to go, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, what am I doing here? I mean they
Speaker 2: had half an hour to contemplate what they were about
Speaker 2: to do. So but yeah, when we're here, I'll do
Speaker 2: it again. You know, today I'll walk to the White House.
Speaker 2: Else I'll you know, see the Washington Monument. I just
Speaker 2: can't get enough of it. I I love seeing the
Speaker 2: government buildings like the you know, the the Department of State,
Speaker 2: you know, the Treasury Building. It's just I don't know,
Speaker 2: I just I can't get enough of it. I just
Speaker 2: feel uh patriotic, and I feel like, you know, with
Speaker 2: all these symbols of America, you know, it's time to
Speaker 2: get back to the America. That not getting back to
Speaker 2: that other America, but just getting back to normalcy in America.
Speaker 2: And I'm I'm I'm hopeful that that the steps that
Speaker 2: are being taken now will uh will get us there
Speaker 2: and get us back to where we can have a
Speaker 2: healthy discourse between you know, the conservative point of view
Speaker 2: and the liberal point of view. And because I like that,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what America is all about. It's you know,
Speaker 2: we we talk things over and we we listen to
Speaker 2: the other side, and they listen to us and we
Speaker 2: come to conclusions that are better than if we hadn't
Speaker 2: listened to one another. So anyway, that's where I am.
Speaker 1: Okay, So just to be clear, that's February of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. But moving on, moving on. You know, you're
Speaker 1: what they used to refer to as a Heartland rock act.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that came with that is
Speaker 1: you have an audience that today we would say is
Speaker 1: both blue and red. Do you intentionally shy away from
Speaker 1: making political statements that might appeal to one or the other?
Speaker 1: Is that something that goes through your brain?
Speaker 2: You know what? I You know, we have a song
Speaker 2: that we put back in the set list after the pandemic.
Speaker 2: It's a song called Building the Bridge, and it was
Speaker 2: never a hit. It was on a record that we made,
Speaker 2: the only record we made off of Epic Records, and
Speaker 2: it was never really released, but it's it's one of
Speaker 2: my one of the songs I'm the most proud of
Speaker 2: that that we play and it it uh It says
Speaker 2: we're building the bridge, one small stone at a time,
Speaker 2: with a lot of love and some help from above,
Speaker 2: from your heart to mine and there's another part. There's
Speaker 2: another lyric where it says, uh, looking for the common
Speaker 2: ground and every human heart. So it's all about, you know,
Speaker 2: people coming together and people accepting one another, and people
Speaker 2: kind of listening to one another. And it's it was
Speaker 2: actually we actually sent the demo to somehow it miraculously
Speaker 2: got into the White House and and Bill Clinton heard it,
Speaker 2: and it became his re election campaign, building the bridge
Speaker 2: to the twenty first century. And I ended up doing
Speaker 2: some uh campaign events with him. But to answer your question,
Speaker 2: which I didn't do, uh, I I don't. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't shy away from making statements. But I also
Speaker 2: am cognizant of the fact that, uh, that this country
Speaker 2: is so divided right now that I mean I I
Speaker 2: made a statement a few years back when they uh,
Speaker 2: when the whole when when the big trip was, you know, bathrooms,
Speaker 2: who could use which bathrooms? You know, should trans people
Speaker 2: use the bathroom of their birth gender or And you
Speaker 2: know my thing was man if if a if a person,
Speaker 2: you know, a male, a born male, walks into the
Speaker 2: men's room and looks like a woman. To me, that's
Speaker 2: that's more of a of a distraction than if that
Speaker 2: person walked into the women's room, you know. So it's
Speaker 2: like I think people can kind of have an idea
Speaker 2: of which bathroom would be the most comfortable for them. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, I reacted to the governor of North Carolina.
Speaker 2: And what happened was Bruce Springsteen canceled his show in Greenville,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, to protest the governor passing a law against
Speaker 2: against trans people being able to use the bathroom of
Speaker 2: their choice. And we had a show. We were on
Speaker 2: tour with def Leppard at the time, and they chose
Speaker 2: to play the gig. And so I was sitting there going, well,
Speaker 2: wait a second. If you know, Bruce is in a
Speaker 2: position to cancel his show in protest, so if if
Speaker 2: we play our show, then that almost could be construed
Speaker 2: it is tacit uh, you know, agreement. And so I
Speaker 2: felt like I had to make a comment to to
Speaker 2: to give Bruce props for for what he did and
Speaker 2: also explain that everyone's not in that position that you know,
Speaker 2: we're gonna we're gonna play the show. But I support
Speaker 2: Bruce's position, you know, about the bathroom situation. And I
Speaker 2: got hate mail. I mean, you know, you know, you
Speaker 2: know how it is if you look at the comments
Speaker 2: on your feed, and I'm sure you get them every
Speaker 2: day because you're you're not one who shies away from
Speaker 2: from expressing your opinions.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back one chapter. You're on the road now,
Speaker 1: it looks from the outside without studying it, you're on
Speaker 1: the road every year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. We've since. You know, I joined the
Speaker 2: band in seventy two, and other than the pandemic, we yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we toured. We might have taken a year
Speaker 2: off in uh in nineteen eighty three. That was just uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we had to kind of recalibrate at that time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're you know, the thing is, we've got
Speaker 2: a touring family. You know, we've got our crew. Guys
Speaker 2: have been with us forever, and you know, it's a
Speaker 2: it's a large uh, it's a large organization. And you know,
Speaker 2: in order to keep everybody working and keep everybody together,
Speaker 2: you know, we you know, sometimes we'll go out and
Speaker 2: do a tour, like just to pay the crew, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, just so so you know, we realized that
Speaker 2: you know, the band gets all the gets all the glory,
Speaker 2: but without a great crew that sets it up and
Speaker 2: deals with everything every day. I mean, our crew is
Speaker 2: an amazing group. So yeah, we we pretty much tour
Speaker 2: every year.
Speaker 1: And are you into it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm actually I'm actually more into it right
Speaker 2: now than I have been in years. We you know,
Speaker 2: our original keyboard player, Neil Dowdy, after fifty five years
Speaker 2: on the road, decided that it was time for him
Speaker 2: to start enjoying the fruits of his of his labor,
Speaker 2: so he he retired back in back last December and
Speaker 2: he's living comfortably up in Minneapolis. We love him, we
Speaker 2: support him, we're happy for him, but we had to
Speaker 2: replace him. So when you bring a new person into
Speaker 2: a band, it it just well obviously you have to
Speaker 2: work them into all the catalog songs, and so it
Speaker 2: makes everyone take another look at what we've been you know,
Speaker 2: what you've been playing for the past fifty years, you know,
Speaker 2: And and you know I'm always tinkering with the arrangements
Speaker 2: at sound check. I mean, I drive the guys crazy.
Speaker 2: There's you know, I always want to My feeling is
Speaker 2: that songs are never really completely written. You know, the
Speaker 2: record comes out when you just wrote the song, so
Speaker 2: you barely even know it yourself. So over the years,
Speaker 2: you you have a chance to just you know, finish it,
Speaker 2: and so I'm never satisfied, so I'm always working on
Speaker 2: things like that. But I also started working with a
Speaker 2: vocal coach during the pandemic and it has changed my life, Bob.
Speaker 2: I enjoy performing so much better now because I actually,
Speaker 2: for finally, after fifty years, kind of know what I'm
Speaker 2: doing as a singer. So it's a so, you know,
Speaker 2: between that and and the the infusion of new energy
Speaker 2: from from Derek Hill and the keyboard player that joined
Speaker 2: us just got everybody. We're working on our vocal arrangements more.
Speaker 2: We're just really yeah, we're just improving as a band.
Speaker 1: So what motivated you to get vocal help?
Speaker 2: What did you.
Speaker 1: Learn and was that done via zoom?
Speaker 2: Well? Yes, as a matter of fact, my son Shane,
Speaker 2: he and his twin brother Josh have a band called
Speaker 2: Sir Please, and they were both just graduated from college
Speaker 2: and Shane was a vocal music major and about during
Speaker 2: his sophomore year he was like, Dad, you got to
Speaker 2: work with my professor Jeffrey Allen. He'll change your life.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, right, you know, I'm seven, I'm
Speaker 2: sixty nine years old and he's going to change my life.
Speaker 2: And every few months, you know, I would see Shaney like, Dad,
Speaker 2: have you called Jeffrey? And I'm like, no, I haven't.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just thinking I can't drive all the
Speaker 2: way into LA for a vocal lesson, you know, every week.
Speaker 2: Then I saw Shane during the pandemic, singing into his
Speaker 2: laptop and I'm like, all right, well there goes the
Speaker 2: long commute excuse, you know. But here's what happened, Bob,
Speaker 2: And this was I love telling this story because as
Speaker 2: a parent, you are always telling your kids things that
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily understand, that they don't necessarily agree with,
Speaker 2: but you tell them I love you, I have your
Speaker 2: best interests at heart, and even if you don't understand this,
Speaker 2: at least give it a listen, give it a try.
Speaker 2: And then here I am. Now my son is saying
Speaker 2: that to me. So and it's my opportunity to show
Speaker 2: him the same kind of respect as I was hoping
Speaker 2: for him to show me. And he did a number
Speaker 2: of times. And so I started working with Jeffrey via
Speaker 2: zoom and I will tell you that it's been two
Speaker 2: and a half years, and this past weekend, I had
Speaker 2: a breakthrough and and all this for the past four
Speaker 2: shows we've done have been the best vocal performances of
Speaker 2: my career. And all of a sudden, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like if you're taking golf lessons and you know, nothing
Speaker 2: makes sense for a while, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you smack a ball and you hear that pop off
Speaker 2: the club. And so all these all these lessons, and
Speaker 2: I've been taking at least two or three lessons a
Speaker 2: week with Jeffrey, and it something just clicked, and I
Speaker 2: just like, I can't wait for the next show, just
Speaker 2: because I'm having so much fun. So you know, I
Speaker 2: don't like being away from home, I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 2: But for those you know, two hours that I'm on
Speaker 2: stage I'm doing I'm having more fun than ever.
Speaker 1: So you say, driving into LA, So where do you live?
Speaker 1: I live in a thousand oaks, Okay, So for those
Speaker 1: people don't know, LA is a morphous like a giant suburb.
Speaker 1: So it's still kind of part of LA. But because
Speaker 1: of the because of the traffic, et cetera, it would
Speaker 1: take forever to get to where you might be going.
Speaker 1: And since you mentioned your kids, how many times you've
Speaker 1: been married, and how many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: Well, I was married, I've been married twice. I have
Speaker 2: a son, Paris from my first marriage and a step son,
Speaker 2: Chris from that marriage. And then I met We got
Speaker 2: divorced in eighty seven. And in eighty nine I met
Speaker 2: a young music publisher from Geff and Music. Actually she
Speaker 2: Our office was right upstairs from hers, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: John Barrick and Tom Consolo were up there cranking cranking
Speaker 2: out the latest composition by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg,
Speaker 2: who were managed out of our office. And here comes
Speaker 2: this pretty young music publisher upstairs saying, guys, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to listen to demos downstairs. Can you turn the music
Speaker 2: down a little bit? And one thing led to another,
Speaker 2: and now she's my wife. And so I met Lisa
Speaker 2: back in eighty nine. We got married in ninety two,
Speaker 2: and we have three children, Holly and who is twenty six,
Speaker 2: and the twins Josh and Shane, twenty three.
Speaker 1: And being a working musician, how do you sustain a relationship.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been in the game a long time,
Speaker 1: You've seen everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have, you know, and it's it's it's a
Speaker 2: challenge and and you know, at Lisa and I've been
Speaker 2: together now for thirty four years, and you know, we've
Speaker 2: we we figured it out and and it wasn't easy.
Speaker 2: We we went through some rough patches and but you know,
Speaker 2: love carried us through and uh and now we're we're
Speaker 2: in a we're in a great place. And I'm I'm
Speaker 2: so I feel so fortunate because a lot of marriages
Speaker 2: do bite the dust because of because of touring. And
Speaker 2: you know, there's just so much temptation on the road,
Speaker 2: and you know, so much opportunity for uh, for bad behavior,
Speaker 2: and you know, you just got to get to a
Speaker 2: point where you can, uh, you know, exert self control
Speaker 2: and uh discipline yourself and you know, yeah, so you know,
Speaker 2: I'm i'm out here in the road that you know,
Speaker 2: we also changed our touring modus operandi or whatever the
Speaker 2: word is. You're an attorney, what wait, what is motus operandia?
Speaker 1: That works? That works?
Speaker 2: As that works? Okay? Good U. But uh so we
Speaker 2: try not to be out on the road for you know,
Speaker 2: we try to do a weekend, the weekend between the
Speaker 2: middle weekend, the weekend between and the third weekend, so
Speaker 2: we're it's a little less than three weeks, and then
Speaker 2: we take a couple of weeks, at least a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks off after that. Sometimes we just go out
Speaker 2: for ten days. You know, we just don't go out
Speaker 2: for you know, six months of touring, because that that
Speaker 2: just you that's you can't sustain relationship if you're away
Speaker 2: that long. It just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So, once again, since you've been on the road so
Speaker 1: many times, to what degree did Temptation get to you?
Speaker 1: Both in terms of sex, drugs, rock and roll?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of the above, you know, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: especially when you're coming up and you're you're you're playing
Speaker 2: the bars and you're starting to get a little bit
Speaker 2: of a you know, maybe your first or second record
Speaker 2: comes out, you've got you know, uh, you know, a
Speaker 2: local kind of following, and uh, you know, you're young
Speaker 2: and you're single, and and uh you know it's uh
Speaker 2: so that's so that's just kind of good, clean fun
Speaker 2: and hopefully you get that out of your system. And uh,
Speaker 2: but then you know, a band like us who started
Speaker 2: out as a bar band and then suddenly just you know,
Speaker 2: kind of hit the jackpot, and then you know, now
Speaker 2: Temptation is really everywhere, and you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm uh, I don't regret necessarily. Well, I regret some
Speaker 2: of the things I did, but mostly I uh, well
Speaker 2: you know it cost me my first marriage, I'll put
Speaker 2: it that way. So you know it's uh, I got
Speaker 2: it out of my system, is all I can tell you.
Speaker 2: And and I'm you know, I'm I'm, I'm a I'm
Speaker 2: a true blue husband out here and and I'm happier
Speaker 2: than ever.
Speaker 1: Okay, just going a little bit deeper.
Speaker 2: What's it? You know?
Speaker 1: I say, tell the story all the time because it
Speaker 1: really stuck with me. A friend of mine was the
Speaker 1: agent for Oprah who was playing Arenas. This is after
Speaker 1: she retired, and you will everyone would ask, well, why
Speaker 1: does Oprah need to go on the road. She's got
Speaker 1: all the money, as David Letterman needs to say, there's
Speaker 1: nowhere else she can get that hit. You get on stage,
Speaker 1: you get that love, et cetera. So what's it like
Speaker 1: and you meet people in the audience, whether it be
Speaker 1: friends want to be friends, whether it be women who
Speaker 1: are interested in you. What's it like being on stage?
Speaker 1: Do these people really want to know you? They just
Speaker 1: want to touch fame? What's the experience.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I can tell you that that that
Speaker 2: for me. Uh, you know, especially as a songwriter. You know,
Speaker 2: I I remember every song I've written. I remember where
Speaker 2: I was. I remember you know, that that holy moment
Speaker 2: of inspiration where there was nothing and then all all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, there was something and and uh and
Speaker 2: so you know when I when I'm on stage and
Speaker 2: I sing those songs, uh, it's it's it's just an
Speaker 2: amazing experience, says because I know that song from when
Speaker 2: it was nothing and now I walk out and I
Speaker 2: play the opening chords and everybody stands up. You know,
Speaker 2: I sing the song, everybody's singing it back to me.
Speaker 2: It's a it's an amazing experience. It's uh, it's something
Speaker 2: that's that unless you're standing there at that lead vocal
Speaker 2: mic stage center. Uh, it's impossible to understand as far
Speaker 2: as what the audience is expecting of me. I think
Speaker 2: I think every audience member probably would answer that question differently. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, we do present uh you know, I mean
Speaker 2: there are bands who you know, like Kiss or something
Speaker 2: like that, who who totally present a character on stage
Speaker 2: and that's their thing, and you know, no one does
Speaker 2: it better than them. For for us, you know, we're
Speaker 2: more the Midwest boys next door, and you know that's
Speaker 2: kind of our image, but it's kind of who we
Speaker 2: are too. So you know, when I'm up there on stage, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm an exaggerated version of myself, but there's a lot
Speaker 2: of my real kind of self up there too, And
Speaker 2: so I think people probably feel like they people in
Speaker 2: the audience probably feel like they know me better than
Speaker 2: they do because you know, uh, you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: I'm not showing the necessarily the the the brutes and
Speaker 2: not the bruises, but you know, uh uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm presenting the best possible version of myself up there,
Speaker 2: and and I want to. I want to. I want
Speaker 2: to inspire other people in the crowd too to be
Speaker 2: their best self. You know, we've all got our problems,
Speaker 2: We've all got our faults, we've all got the issues
Speaker 2: that we're working on in our relationships and in our
Speaker 2: in our own personalities. But you know, so uh yeah,
Speaker 2: so you know, I I go out there and yeah,
Speaker 2: do I do? I do people think that that's who
Speaker 2: I really am and that my wife is so lucky
Speaker 2: to have me as her husban been. I think they do.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you talk to Lisa, you know
Speaker 2: she would tell you the other side of the story.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, my theory is that every every
Speaker 2: good trait has the flip side of the coin, the
Speaker 2: opposite of that good trait. And so it's all of
Speaker 2: our jobs too, you know, to understand that that opposite trait.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, I call it the flip side
Speaker 2: trait and uh, you know you gotta you gotta know
Speaker 2: how to harness that and uh and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: life is all about changing and uh and learning and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm still a work in progress.
Speaker 1: Okay. Now, people were not on this side of the
Speaker 1: footlights don't understand what a grind it is. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have what are called find to five jobs.
Speaker 1: They come home, maybe they get high, watch TV.
Speaker 2: They do it again.
Speaker 1: But there's an incredible adrenaline hit in performing and it
Speaker 1: takes hours to come down, and certainly the longer the
Speaker 1: day the sun comes up, it's hard. And therefore a
Speaker 1: lot of people cope with drugs. Now people say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's about experimentation. A lot of times just coping. Did
Speaker 1: you have that period in your road or you're more
Speaker 1: of a Midwestern guy.
Speaker 2: No, No, I definitely, I definitely had that period. I'm
Speaker 2: I'm very fortunate Bob that that for whatever reason, you know,
Speaker 2: the the drugs that I did, they never they never
Speaker 2: got me. They never they never took control of me.
Speaker 2: And you know, and I tell my kids that, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't know, but by the time you know whether
Speaker 2: drugs are going to get a hold of you, they've
Speaker 2: got a hold of you. And now you've got an
Speaker 2: addiction issue to deal with, you know. And somehow I
Speaker 2: think that I always kind of had a fear. I've
Speaker 2: always had a fear of addiction. So I've I've you know,
Speaker 2: I've just managed to limit my intake. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: but uh, drugs were definitely a coping method. You know.
Speaker 2: Meeting girls was a coping method. You know, it just
Speaker 2: it just was a way to to to to cope
Speaker 2: with the loneliness and uh and you know, the combination
Speaker 2: of of of of willing girls and drugs was it
Speaker 2: was just a way of life. Uh and and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't even realize how weird it was
Speaker 2: until I kind of you know, I I actually, I
Speaker 2: will tell you, and I'm not ashamed to say it.
Speaker 2: I went to rehab and it wasn't for drugs, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't for alcohol. It was for or just I
Speaker 2: you know, I needed to to straighten out my head
Speaker 2: and and uh and it really helped. I spent I
Speaker 2: spent a month at Sierra Tucson, and it was it
Speaker 2: was a life changer for me. It uh uh you know,
Speaker 2: uh and and I would uh you know, I'm so
Speaker 2: happy that that it that that it ended up that
Speaker 2: way because it really really helped me. And you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not sober, you know. I I respect
Speaker 2: people that that are, but you know, I you know,
Speaker 2: I like to have you know, I like wine, and
Speaker 2: I'll be honest with you and and uh you know,
Speaker 2: and I like weed once in a while. So so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the hardest part of being on the road is is
Speaker 2: coping with the the time that you're alone. And and
Speaker 2: so I think that not being alone was was a
Speaker 2: big part of of what are. Not being able to
Speaker 2: be alone was what got me into a lot of situations,
Speaker 2: you know. And uh, but I'm I'm okay being alone now.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm writing a book. I've been writing a book
Speaker 2: for six and a half years. Now and and that
Speaker 2: kind of you know. So so I'm when when I'm alone,
Speaker 2: I just you know, I've worked on the book. I
Speaker 2: tinker with it and uh you know, I've got a
Speaker 2: little practice guitar with me, and uh you know, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm more okay with with with being alone than ever,
Speaker 2: So that helps.
Speaker 1: Okay, going to rehab, most people are not eager to go,
Speaker 1: usually the environing people where I said, well maybe you
Speaker 1: should do this. How long ago did you go, what
Speaker 1: motivated you to go? And what was the experienced? Like
Speaker 1: you know, we said it was life changing? You know
Speaker 1: what about it? What did you actually learn there?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man? I I you know I used to to
Speaker 2: cope by Uh well I learned at a young age too,
Speaker 2: you know, if what if I was misbehaving, Uh you know,
Speaker 2: my parents method of discipline was go up to your
Speaker 2: room and don't come back until you have a smile
Speaker 2: on your face. So I learned that. Okay, so no
Speaker 2: matter what I'm feeling, I should come down with a
Speaker 2: smile on my face. And I took that into adulthood.
Speaker 2: Uh and so I just you know, Hey, the my
Speaker 2: most famous song ever is called Can't Fight This Feeling? Uh,
Speaker 2: and and uh. You know I always had just feelings
Speaker 2: that I would just stuff, and you know, you stuff
Speaker 2: the feelings down and and but but feelings are like water.
Speaker 2: They have to find their way out. It doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Anyone who thinks that if you just wait long enough,
Speaker 2: the feeling of you know, of anger, of unfulfillment of
Speaker 2: or whatever it happens to be, it's it doesn't go away.
Speaker 2: It finds its way out in you know, passive aggressive
Speaker 2: behavior in code dependency. I mean, I didn't know what
Speaker 2: code dependency was. And the second day that I was
Speaker 2: at Sierra Tucson, they had they sent you you get
Speaker 2: a you get a schedule every morning, and that they
Speaker 2: sent me to a codependence anonymous meeting. I'm like, what, what,
Speaker 2: What's this? What am I doing? But I went there
Speaker 2: and I walked into the room and there was about
Speaker 2: twenty five people in in chairs around a circle. And
Speaker 2: the group leader stood up and I guess this is
Speaker 2: what happens at the beginning of every meeting. She read
Speaker 2: all she read like twenty five personality traits that are
Speaker 2: indicative of codependency. Right, And I'm sitting there and not
Speaker 2: knowing what I'm doing. There I'm like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I'm like check, check check. I mean, it was like
Speaker 2: all it was, it was a description of me, you know,
Speaker 2: and I always thought that that was just me and
Speaker 2: that I had this crazy part of me that I
Speaker 2: didn't understand that I was trying to hide. And suddenly
Speaker 2: I'm in a room of thirty people who all share
Speaker 2: that same whatever personality defect will fault to whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it. And I just at that moment,
Speaker 2: I had this feeling like, wow, I'm not alone. Other
Speaker 2: people feel these things, and that just that was It
Speaker 2: just made me feel like this relief, like I could exhale.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, I spent the next month just
Speaker 2: you know, get into it and seeing you know, some
Speaker 2: alternative coping methods and uh so, you know, and when
Speaker 2: you're when you're in rehabits, it's just this weird thing
Speaker 2: that first of all, everybody is nobody's any and no,
Speaker 2: there's no celebrities, you know, even though there were celebrities there,
Speaker 2: but everybody's just on the same level and everyone's free
Speaker 2: to talk and you can, uh you know, you don't
Speaker 2: have to hide things, you don't have to be you
Speaker 2: don't have to be anything except who you are in
Speaker 2: that moment, and uh, and it felt really good to me,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of brought some of that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The hard part is when you leave rehab that now
Speaker 2: you've got to come in back into the real world
Speaker 2: and see if those same coping methods work. And uh,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it was. It was a great experience. And
Speaker 2: you know, there were people there who were trying to
Speaker 2: uh stop drinking, stop using drugs, uh, stop smoking. There
Speaker 2: was an eating disorder. A lot of people were in
Speaker 2: the eating disorder tract, and but all of us were
Speaker 2: together in the you know, in the common areas, and
Speaker 2: you just met people and people were free, and people
Speaker 2: were just talking about their their stuff, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I I came out of there a lot more open
Speaker 2: I think as a as a person and and and
Speaker 2: a lot less. I don't tolerate dishonesty in myself. I
Speaker 2: don't uh you know, I don't hold things in because
Speaker 2: I know what will happen if I do. And uh
Speaker 2: uh and uh and I understand the difference between uh
Speaker 2: friendship and codependency. So I learned a lot of things
Speaker 2: in there, and and uh, you know, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 2: I'm really happy that I went. When I went in,
Speaker 2: I was just like, what am I doing this for?
Speaker 2: I'm not you know, I'm not addicted to anything. But
Speaker 2: sure enough, when I got there, I realized, Wow, codependency
Speaker 2: who knew and changed my life?
Speaker 1: In how long ago? And what was the motivation to
Speaker 1: actually go in?
Speaker 2: Uh? It was about ten years ago? And uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the motivation to go in was just that I had
Speaker 2: set myself up, you know, at a young age to
Speaker 2: think that if I could just become successful and my
Speaker 2: music to you know, if I could just have hit
Speaker 2: songs and people would would be able to see, you know,
Speaker 2: my what I'm capable of doing, and and and I
Speaker 2: could share these these songs with I just had it
Speaker 2: set up that that would be that would solve all
Speaker 2: my problems, you know, and and and that motivated me
Speaker 2: for years. And you know, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one comes along and we've got the biggest
Speaker 2: album of the year, where the most popular band in
Speaker 2: the world. There was nobody more more successful in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one than Ario Speedwagon. And guess what, Rather than
Speaker 2: solve my problems, it it magnified them. Began. It also
Speaker 2: a new problem showed up, which is, oh, being successful
Speaker 2: isn't going to solve all my problems? So what is uh?
Speaker 2: And so it finally got to the point in right
Speaker 2: right around two thousand and twenty ten where I still
Speaker 2: was just I just didn't feel right and and and
Speaker 2: I and uh and and you know, success wasn't wasn't
Speaker 2: filling the hole. And uh so, uh, you know, my
Speaker 2: wife and I talked it over and and uh we
Speaker 2: decided that, uh that I needed to to you know,
Speaker 2: go in there and get some help. And I think it,
Speaker 2: Uh it went a long way to uh to strengthen
Speaker 2: my marriage for sure, my relationship with my children, uh,
Speaker 2: my all my relationships, you know, and you know some
Speaker 2: relationships uh uh you know kind of didn't work anymore
Speaker 2: because they were based on on you know, codependency or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know. So yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1: That's uh okay. So you talked about getting out. You're
Speaker 1: in this environment. Everybody's equal, You're surrounded by people. You
Speaker 1: referenced loneliness earlier, and you talked and I give you
Speaker 1: credit because most people have no idea how difficult it is.
Speaker 1: You know, I read about people they went to rehab
Speaker 1: for a week and then they go back on the road.
Speaker 1: That you know, I don't know how they can do that.
Speaker 1: So in terms of maintaining did you go to see
Speaker 1: a therapist? Were you on your own? What's been happening
Speaker 1: in these last ten years to keep you steady?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, you know, I was in therapy, you know,
Speaker 2: for on and off, you know, during the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 2: and uh, and I had some really I worked with
Speaker 2: some really good people and uh and after heire Tucson,
Speaker 2: I stayed in therapy for a while. I actually haven't
Speaker 2: been in therapy for for the for about I don't know,
Speaker 2: three or four years now, which is kind of strange. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's uh, it's the that's the longest time since the
Speaker 2: eighties for me. But uh, you know, so yeah, so
Speaker 2: uh I think that uh for some reason, I'm just
Speaker 2: a little I'm just not quite as uncomfortable being by
Speaker 2: myself as I used to be. And so uh, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the hardest part of of being on tour,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Neil used to always say, you know, I do the
Speaker 2: shows for free. I get paid to get there. Uh,
Speaker 2: and I think that's a pretty common uh thread, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh you know, and and you know, the the
Speaker 2: years of partying that that that was that was really
Speaker 2: a way of coping. And let's face it, if you're
Speaker 2: in a rock band and you got hit records, it
Speaker 2: gives you a license to uh you know, for debauchery
Speaker 2: and and uh uh and it's a but it's a
Speaker 2: fake license. And you know people people use sex and
Speaker 2: drugs to get close to the band because they want
Speaker 2: to be because they want to you know, people want
Speaker 2: to understand it. It's like, what's it like to being
Speaker 2: a big time rock band? You know? And uh so yeah,
Speaker 2: you know these days, you know, our our audiences are
Speaker 2: I mean, we played this Monday and Tuesday. Who who
Speaker 2: who goes to a rock show on a Monday or
Speaker 2: a Tuesday? When we had we had two sold out
Speaker 2: shows in Augusta, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina. People were
Speaker 2: on their feet, uh for the singing along, just having
Speaker 2: a great time. And you know, and that's enough for me.
Speaker 2: That that that love is enough for me. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm not looking for for extra curricular love. I
Speaker 2: I got I got love at home. Uh, I got
Speaker 2: an honest relationship with my wife and my kids and
Speaker 2: and not. I'll tell you one of the you know,
Speaker 2: if you want to know, one of the one of
Speaker 2: the greatest things that that about rehab is is I
Speaker 2: came out of there, Uh, like I said, with zero
Speaker 2: tolerance for bullshit and and the fact that I could,
Speaker 2: uh that I could just since I'm not hiding anything,
Speaker 2: since I'm not, you know, engaged in any behavior that
Speaker 2: I'm ashamed of. Uh, it's just it's like a it's
Speaker 2: like a weight off my shoulders. It's like I can
Speaker 2: be totally honest all the time. I'm not hiding anything,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's just a it's a real freeing feeling.
Speaker 2: And it's just made me closer to everyone in my life,
Speaker 2: from my wife, to my friends, to my kids.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: It just just feels good to be done with the
Speaker 2: what what I used to call the road guy home
Speaker 2: guy syndrome. You know, you can only be one guy,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're if you're being two guys, it's
Speaker 2: it doesn't work, you know, because you're always you're always
Speaker 2: hiding guy too when when when your guy won? And uh,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a miserable way to live
Speaker 2: I'll be honest with you. So now I'm it's it's
Speaker 2: all guy one and and I'm proud to say it,
Speaker 2: and I'm at peace with it. Okay.
Speaker 1: You talked about Augusta, Georgia and this rousing crowd. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: who comes to see Ario Speedwagon. Is it fans from
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties? Is it people who are younger?
Speaker 1: Is it very young people? And with that, it's one
Speaker 1: thing when you're headlining. You talked about being out with
Speaker 1: def Leppard. You've been on a number of package tours.
Speaker 1: What's it like when you play one of those gigs
Speaker 1: where the people in the audience might not have bought
Speaker 1: a ticket specifically to see you.
Speaker 2: You know, I take that as a it's a challenge,
Speaker 2: It's it's an adventure because it's a it's an opportunity
Speaker 2: to play for people, like you say, who didn't exactly
Speaker 2: buy the ticket to see you, So you have an
Speaker 2: opportunity to to spend you know, seventy five minutes with them,
Speaker 2: playing you know, your best songs and and and putting
Speaker 2: on you know, a seventy five minute show man. It's
Speaker 2: just compact. It's just like powerful, It's it never lets
Speaker 2: up and uh. And I think we've won over a
Speaker 2: lot of fans through the package tours that we've done. Uh.
Speaker 2: But when you know, when you but these shows, like
Speaker 2: I say, in Augusta and Charleston, just for an example,
Speaker 2: they were I think, you know, maybe four thousand seeds
Speaker 2: and I think Charleston was a little bit smaller. And
Speaker 2: then you walk out on stage and it's like, wait,
Speaker 2: everybody here bought a ticket to see us, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh and so it's like it's it's it's like
Speaker 2: hanging out with old friends, you know. And uh So, Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, Bob, I'll be honest with you, I like
Speaker 2: to play. I just like I just love doing it.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm doing a gig in I did one
Speaker 2: uh in Vegas a couple of months ago. My friend
Speaker 2: Kenny Aronoff, the great, the great drummer, Kenny r. They're
Speaker 2: one of the great drummers of all time. He he
Speaker 2: he is involved in this uh, this band. It's a
Speaker 2: long story. I won't go into it, but I ended up.
Speaker 2: Uh so I did this one show with them. They
Speaker 2: they've got a solid band and then they bring in
Speaker 2: uh this thing in Vegas, Billy Gibbons Vince Gill, Steven
Speaker 2: Stills and myself and each of us do four or
Speaker 2: five of our songs with this great band. And it's
Speaker 2: Jim Orsay, the guy who owns the Indianapolis Colts, has
Speaker 2: this amazing collection of memorabilia, and so he does these
Speaker 2: free shows. So I'm doing another one in Boss And
Speaker 2: in that show in Vegas, I got to sing a
Speaker 2: duet and almost cut my hair. This was a few
Speaker 2: weeks after David's passing. With Stephen Stills, who is I mean,
Speaker 2: anybody who reads my book, if I ever finish it,
Speaker 2: will will see my just my lifelong reverence and respect
Speaker 2: and admiration for Stephen Stills. He's just He's my hero,
Speaker 2: is all I can tell you. And so to be
Speaker 2: able to just to sing almost cut my hair with
Speaker 2: Stephen was just I was like I had to pinch myself.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it was actually happening.
Speaker 1: Okay, so at this point in time, and of course
Speaker 1: everything's a little screwed up because of the pandemic, But
Speaker 1: before then and after then, reo speed right yourself. How
Speaker 1: many dates a year do you work?
Speaker 2: We do? You know? Uh, somewhere probably around eighty five
Speaker 2: ish you know, if we're doing a big package tour,
Speaker 2: sometimes you have to play a little more because the
Speaker 2: you're carrying, you know, all the extra trucks and buses
Speaker 2: and you know, tech crew guys and everything. But uh
Speaker 2: but you know, I, you know, my wife and I
Speaker 2: kind of made a deal that I wouldn't be on
Speaker 2: the road more than I'm home. Uh and and uh
Speaker 2: and so we try to keep it, you know. Uh,
Speaker 2: we try to keep that. We do. We've been consistent
Speaker 2: with that for a long time now. So, but but
Speaker 2: we also like to spread it out over the whole year,
Speaker 2: so that so we keep the crew and and and
Speaker 2: uh so we keep the organism. We kind of keep
Speaker 2: the store opens as we say.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so we can make it happen, you know,
Speaker 2: with you know, a eighty five shows a year. Everybody
Speaker 2: does great, you know, we can, we can pay the crew,
Speaker 2: everybody's everybody's happy, and we're not away from home too
Speaker 2: extremely much. So it's been working out well. Okay.
Speaker 1: In terms of transportation, in the sixties, bands went in
Speaker 1: station wagons. Then they win and win a bagos. Then
Speaker 1: the real goal was to fly commercial, which got you
Speaker 1: there faster, but eats up a lot of time. Then
Speaker 1: we have the era. Well I want to be big
Speaker 1: enough to have our own jet, and of course superstars
Speaker 1: at this point. You know, what people don't realize is
Speaker 1: they'll base themselves in one location and they'll fly out
Speaker 1: to different locations. But those are people who you know,
Speaker 1: were you know, there's a very thin layer of the axe.
Speaker 1: And yet there are household names who were traveling by bus.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of people who don't understand
Speaker 1: that the bus is the period because you get off
Speaker 1: the road and there it is. You don't have to wait,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go anywhere. So how do you
Speaker 1: guys do it? And what's your experience been over history?
Speaker 2: Oh man, Well, you know the Ario has a rich
Speaker 2: history of aviation related high jinks and near missus and
Speaker 2: uh uh it's it's uh we we we started chartering
Speaker 2: a plane long before we could afford it. And uh
Speaker 2: and our mutual friend, uh Irving as off of course
Speaker 2: who was uh we were his first management client, as
Speaker 2: you know, and uh and so so Irving made a
Speaker 2: deal for for an airplane and and I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: and I didn't ask. I'm like, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: ask any questions, I don't know how we're affording this,
Speaker 2: but uh but but hey, we're on an airplane, and
Speaker 2: uh so, uh uh that ended up being that we'll
Speaker 2: put it this way. The in about three years after
Speaker 2: we uh left that airplane in an on an airstrip
Speaker 2: in Arkansas, the plane had lost its brakes and and
Speaker 2: our and our pilot had a gun one of the
Speaker 2: engines put the other engine in reverse and and put
Speaker 2: it into a forced tailspin. And of course I always
Speaker 2: used to like to sit in the rear portion of
Speaker 2: the plane. And on that particular day, we had a
Speaker 2: rolling stone reported by the name of John Swinson on
Speaker 2: the plane with us, and John and I got the
Speaker 2: right of our lights. The plane did did three full
Speaker 2: uh full spins on the in the in the grass.
Speaker 2: But uh so. Years later, I'm in a hotel actually
Speaker 2: here in Washington, d C. And some people knocked on
Speaker 2: my door. I don't know how they found my room,
Speaker 2: but there was a group outside. I looked at the people,
Speaker 2: and someone's holding up the book looked like an Encyclopedia
Speaker 2: school yearbook size book, and it said Department of Our
Speaker 2: Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms nineteen eighty two yearbook,
Speaker 2: and so I'm like, what's this? So I opened the door.
Speaker 2: They had opened to a page of a point of
Speaker 2: view from behind a squad car with agent atf agent's
Speaker 2: guns drawn aimed at in the distance, an airplane with
Speaker 2: the Areo speedwagon logo paines on the side. So, long
Speaker 2: story a little shorter. On our days off on the road,
Speaker 2: our plane was being used to do all kinds of
Speaker 2: things that we were not aware of, and so we
Speaker 2: we were the We were basically a cover for much
Speaker 2: illegal activity. So that's how we afforded the plane. I
Speaker 2: guess we didn't partake in any of the illegalities, but
Speaker 2: are we were a cover for it? I guess.
Speaker 1: Okay, So at this point in time, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like you go, as you said, go on the
Speaker 1: road for sixty days straight, although sometimes you do a
Speaker 1: package tour. So are you traveling by bus to these gigs?
Speaker 1: Are you flying in and flying back to la? How
Speaker 1: does it work?
Speaker 2: Now? We fly into a to a major hub that
Speaker 2: the tour buses meet us there and and honestly, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, my friend Sammy Hagar's got a beautiful airplane
Speaker 2: and he always and that's just his thing, and he's
Speaker 2: in a position to be able to afford it, and
Speaker 2: and it's great, but the problem is you spend your
Speaker 2: whole day driving to the airport getting on the airplane,
Speaker 2: you know. So the beauty of tour buses, which is
Speaker 2: how we travel, is, you know, the gig's over, you
Speaker 2: get on the bus, watch a little TV. You know,
Speaker 2: there's cables, there's satellite TV and the bus. Then you
Speaker 2: go into your bunk, you know, read a little bit,
Speaker 2: listen to a Bob Lefts it's podcast, and and uh
Speaker 2: and uh and you uh and you get to sleep
Speaker 2: and then when you wake up, you're in the next
Speaker 2: city and you can do things you can you know,
Speaker 2: go to the gym, take a walk, you know. I
Speaker 2: always like to walk around whatever city we're playing on
Speaker 2: the afternoon before the show. I just kind of soak
Speaker 2: up some of the vibe of what's going on in
Speaker 2: that city. And uh. And then you know, I bring
Speaker 2: that with me on stage and I just feel a
Speaker 2: little bit closer to the audience that way. So I'm
Speaker 2: I'm cool traveling by by tour bus. But I do
Speaker 2: like the nights that we get to sleep in a
Speaker 2: real bed, So I will enjoy my evening tonight.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we started that earlier. You talked about a
Speaker 1: day room and then you talked about being in this
Speaker 1: great hotel. Do you essentially get a hotel every day? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get a hotel every day. Some I mean sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I'm I'm a.
Speaker 2: Late sleeper, and so I by the time I get
Speaker 2: off the bus, I'm in the room for maybe four
Speaker 2: hours and then I got to you know, check out again.
Speaker 2: So so that becomes a little bit of a burn
Speaker 2: because you got to bring out, you know, you got
Speaker 2: to open up all your luggage. I mean, it takes
Speaker 2: me from the time I walk into my hotel room
Speaker 2: until the time it's all set up to my specifications.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a good half hour process. Just like
Speaker 2: you know, put your suitcase here, you put your computers there,
Speaker 2: your toiletries are in the bathroom. You know, I just
Speaker 2: like to make make my environment feel somewhat familiar. But
Speaker 2: on those day room days, yeah, well you know, they're
Speaker 2: three or four hours and then we're off to the gig.
Speaker 2: But then on the days off, you know, we get
Speaker 2: to have a nice day and and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: nice dinner in a restaurant somewhere or whatever. And so
Speaker 2: that that's what that's what today will be.
Speaker 1: And to what degreed? Can you travel freely? Or you recognized?
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 2: Uh I'm I'm recognized on a pretty regular basis, but normally,
Speaker 2: you know, if it's just on the street or you know,
Speaker 2: there's hey, everybody's different, you know, every person has a different, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, way of of approaching you know you and
Speaker 2: and you know as a uh you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: I'm so lucky that I that my music uh affects
Speaker 2: people in such a way that they want to they
Speaker 2: just want to. I don't quite understand it, but that's
Speaker 2: how I felt about Steven Stills. I just I just
Speaker 2: wanted to meet him because I love his music so
Speaker 2: much that that I feel like that's a connection between
Speaker 2: between him and me, even though you know, he didn't
Speaker 2: know who I was. You know, I was, I was
Speaker 2: a kid and uh so, so I I understand that feeling,
Speaker 2: and and so I try to be as as accommodating
Speaker 2: as possible. The things that I don't tolerate is when
Speaker 2: someone is drunk and they and they and now they
Speaker 2: want to come up to me and it's just that
Speaker 2: doesn't work, you know. But if but if if people
Speaker 2: are are and usually people are usually people are really cool,
Speaker 2: just really respectful. Just want to say, you know what, man,
Speaker 2: you know, your your music means a lot to me.
Speaker 2: And and and we played your song at our wedding
Speaker 2: and thanks, you know, and I'm like, you're welcome. That's awesome,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, who doesn't want to hear that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Okay, So to what degree does Rio Speedwagon mean anything
Speaker 1: outside the United States? And to what degree have you
Speaker 1: toured outside the United States?
Speaker 2: Well, we you know, well I will tell you this.
Speaker 2: We we did a really made a really dumb decision.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty one, we were offered a huge European tour.
Speaker 2: We had toured the States, you know, sold out stadiums.
Speaker 2: We went to Japan, you know, did multiple nights at
Speaker 2: Budu Khan and toured the country. And by late nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, that was when the European leg of the
Speaker 2: tour was supposed to happen, and we just didn't do it.
Speaker 2: And it was looking back that that was a dumb thing,
Speaker 2: because you know what I've come to understand about uh,
Speaker 2: European music fans an. You know, this is a generalization,
Speaker 2: of course, but that if you if American bands come
Speaker 2: there when they're at their peak and tour, those bands
Speaker 2: can come back to Europe forever and and people will.
Speaker 2: People are loyal, the fans in your European fans are
Speaker 2: just loyal. If you don't come there at your peak,
Speaker 2: and now you're not at your peak anymore, and now
Speaker 2: you want to go over to Europe and play, it's
Speaker 2: a it's a it's a tougher hill to climb, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you. But but but but we you know, we
Speaker 2: you know, luckily, we we did go back there after
Speaker 2: the wheels are turning tour. We toured Europe and so
Speaker 2: you know, we go back there every few years. We've
Speaker 2: you know, we've been to Japan a few times. We
Speaker 2: did a little tour of New Zealand right before the
Speaker 2: pandemic with Huey Lewis and Melissa Etheridge. We just played
Speaker 2: a few festivals in New Zealand and it was awesome.
Speaker 2: I mean it was just a great experience. And uh so, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I like to see new places. You know,
Speaker 2: we're we're we're tossing around an Australian tour, which we've
Speaker 2: never done. So but there's also something nice about being
Speaker 2: home too, you know, being not having to show a
Speaker 2: passport and and just knowing that there's a little safety
Speaker 2: and you know, I feel more connected to home, you know,
Speaker 2: and and for me it's really important to feel connected
Speaker 2: to home. Lisa bought me up a little a little
Speaker 2: pendant right before I left, and and it's uh and
Speaker 2: I love it. It's just a little shame. Well, I
Speaker 2: guess people can't see it, but there's an anchor at
Speaker 2: the end of it, and it's like, and I never
Speaker 2: tell well, this is my New Zealand. The thing that
Speaker 2: I wear constantly given to us by a maori u,
Speaker 2: a spiritual guy. I don't know. I guess it was
Speaker 2: a priest, a Maui priest. And then this little anchor,
Speaker 2: and so it's like, that's my anchor. You know, home
Speaker 2: is my anchor.
Speaker 1: Okay, since you've been on the road for decades, what's
Speaker 1: the best hotel you were ever at? What's not? If
Speaker 1: I said you we get to go to one, what
Speaker 1: would that be?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what. This one right here would
Speaker 2: be high on my list for sure. The you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's the Townsend in Birmingham, Michigan, outside of Detroit.
Speaker 2: That's in a great spot. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 2: like a someplace. Oh man, I can't there's there. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not thinking of like one. If you asked me
Speaker 2: for a venue, you know, I would, you know, it's like.
Speaker 1: Okay, agree, that's that's interesting to switch it to a venue.
Speaker 1: If I if I say there are three venues you
Speaker 1: can play, what are those?
Speaker 2: Well, the first one is Red Rocks without even without
Speaker 2: even having to think twice, Red Rocks is just just
Speaker 2: from uh well, first of all, I have a picture
Speaker 2: of it. It's one of my first memories of life
Speaker 2: of my mom and I. My dad took the picture
Speaker 2: up at the top of the you know, with with
Speaker 2: the Amphitheater of Red Rocks in the in the background,
Speaker 2: when I was two and a half years old. And
Speaker 2: you know who who would have thunk that that my
Speaker 2: history with Red Rocks would be? I think we I
Speaker 2: think we've played there seven times and and uh the
Speaker 2: place has been sold out everyone. And what's great about
Speaker 2: red Rocks is not only the natural amphitheater and the
Speaker 2: beauty of the of the area that you're in, but
Speaker 2: in the dressing room area, there's a they have a
Speaker 2: mural of every everyone that's ever played there, starting in
Speaker 2: I think it opened in the early nineteen hundreds, and
Speaker 2: so you can look at this at this thing and
Speaker 2: it's like a history of music, you know, from from classical,
Speaker 2: you know, through the you know, the big band era
Speaker 2: and the frank Sinatra area, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the British invasion happens and you know could and yeah,
Speaker 2: there was like a Beach Boys Frankie Valley in the
Speaker 2: Four Seasons period. So you can really just document how
Speaker 2: music has changed over the years. It's really it's a
Speaker 2: beautiful venue that that's my favorite. Everybody should at some
Speaker 2: at some point in their life when when your favorite
Speaker 2: band plays Red Rocks, fly to Denver and go see them,
Speaker 2: because to see your favorite band at Red Rocks, that's
Speaker 2: that's a that's a bucket list for everybody.
Speaker 1: I would say, let's go back a chapter. You talk
Speaker 1: about believing that if you had hit records, your life
Speaker 1: would work, which raises the question to what degree were
Speaker 1: you driven. What people don't understand is how impossibly hard
Speaker 1: it is to make it. I mean it's just you know,
Speaker 1: athletes you can kind of say, well they have this
Speaker 1: skill or whatever, whereas in musicians it's not even like
Speaker 1: there's a roadmap. How driven were you to be successful?
Speaker 2: And how successful, well, you know I was. I was
Speaker 2: highly motivated, I would say. And then when I met
Speaker 2: Gary Richrath, the late great Gary Richrath, who, by the way,
Speaker 2: if I if I might, if I might, if I
Speaker 2: made divert for a moment, Gary Richrath belongs in the
Speaker 2: conversation of the great rock guitarists of all time, and
Speaker 2: he's never mentioned in that conversation. And it's I feel
Speaker 2: like it's a it's a uh, it's just not right. Gary. Uh.
Speaker 2: Gary was a stone cold rock star. He the way
Speaker 2: he played the guitar. I mean, I wouldn't call him
Speaker 2: a virtuoso. I'm the guitar. There's no one Anario Speedwagon
Speaker 2: who's a virtuoso. That's not what we do. I'll leave
Speaker 2: that for for for Lucather, you know, and and and
Speaker 2: you know Luke is just you know, one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: But anyway, but Gary, man, if you think back the
Speaker 2: way he held that those less Pauls. He just he
Speaker 2: caressed them, he danced with them. He that he became
Speaker 2: one with that instrument. Uh And and his stage presence
Speaker 2: was so magnetic that he could literally stand on stage
Speaker 2: and with he wasn't a singer, he didn't even have
Speaker 2: a vocal mic. He just stood on stage. We all
Speaker 2: went back to the dressing room and you know, had
Speaker 2: a snack, and he stood out there in front of
Speaker 2: twenty thousand and fifty thousand people and held them transfixed
Speaker 2: for like a ten minute instrumental solo electric guitar with
Speaker 2: a Les paul a coil cord plugged directly into a
Speaker 2: Marshall stack and a wah wah pedal in between, and
Speaker 2: that's it. And this guy, man, he was amazing. But
Speaker 2: when I met him in nineteen seventy two, I found
Speaker 2: someone who was equally as driven as I was, which
Speaker 2: I'd never experienced before. And you know, and together, I
Speaker 2: mean we were you know, we were chalk and cheese
Speaker 2: and so many but but together when you know, when
Speaker 2: when we finally kind of figured it out and it
Speaker 2: didn't last long, it was you know, it was two
Speaker 2: you know, kind of two ships passing in the night
Speaker 2: ish but for those few years between seventy eight and
Speaker 2: you know, eighty two. Man, we were just firing on
Speaker 2: all cylinders. It was just working. And and I'm I'm
Speaker 2: so thankful, so grateful that my life that I just
Speaker 2: it was so lucky. The way I met rich Rath
Speaker 2: was it was just so lucky. It it it came
Speaker 2: from my drive, I will say that. But still, you know,
Speaker 2: having drive is important. You also got to get lucky.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've had so many instances, and you know,
Speaker 2: when you write a book, you kind of relive your
Speaker 2: life life, and you know, you go, you know, when
Speaker 2: something happens, you don't know the you know, the significance
Speaker 2: that it might have. You know, when you're when you
Speaker 2: look at your life in retrospect and I go, there's
Speaker 2: just too many times where I just happen to be
Speaker 2: in the talk about it, in the right place, at
Speaker 2: the right time, and I'm just I'm just so thankful
Speaker 2: for that. I'm just so so grateful for it. And
Speaker 2: you know, then of course you got to be ready
Speaker 2: for the luck when it hits, you know, And I
Speaker 2: guess I got to take credit for that side of it,
Speaker 2: because you know, I'm Bob, I there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people who want to be in rock bands, a lot
Speaker 2: of people who want to be famous, a lot of
Speaker 2: people who you know, want to be a star. And
Speaker 2: then there are those of us who need it. It's
Speaker 2: like it's like survival. It's like, I don't know what
Speaker 2: would have happened to me if, if, if, if, if
Speaker 2: my life hadn't worked out the way it did. I I,
Speaker 2: you know, I have nightmares about, you know, what would
Speaker 2: have happened. And uh so I'm thankful every day every
Speaker 2: time I walk out on stage. I I just have this,
Speaker 2: uh this feeling that I'm going to give this audience
Speaker 2: every freaking ounce of my energy tonight. And and because
Speaker 2: I'm so lucky that people are willing to spend their
Speaker 2: hard earned money to come and and and hear our
Speaker 2: songs and hear us perform them. You know, I never
Speaker 2: take that for granted.
Speaker 1: Rich Rath was in the band, he's unfortunately no longer
Speaker 1: with us, but then he was out of the band.
Speaker 1: What happened there, well, that's you know, that's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of what my book because about. Honestly, that about
Speaker 2: the relationship between Gary and I, because it was it
Speaker 2: was it was definitely Uh, you know, as Ash as
Speaker 2: Keith Richards famously said, a love hate relationship, Uh he
Speaker 2: loves me, I hate him. And you know, and Gary
Speaker 2: and I were we were you know, you hear the
Speaker 2: stories of the lead singer, lead guitar player things, you know,
Speaker 2: from from Tyler and Perry to Page and Plant. And
Speaker 2: not that I'm comparing Gary and I to either of
Speaker 2: those those amazing duos, but inasmuch as we were, we
Speaker 2: loved each other like brothers, and we fought like brothers,
Speaker 2: and we both wanted what was best for the band.
Speaker 2: We just didn't always agree on what that was. But
Speaker 2: like I say, for those for that for that period,
Speaker 2: there those few years where it was just really firing
Speaker 2: on all cylinders. Uh, that was that was something special.
Speaker 2: And I mean, how can I how can I how
Speaker 2: can I say? How can I answer your question in
Speaker 2: a with with without a book? I guess you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at at artists or as lead singer
Speaker 2: guitarist combos, as they're each a piece of sand paper
Speaker 2: and and and there. So there's the there's this friction
Speaker 2: that happens when when they come together, and those sparks
Speaker 2: are something that would not happen without each other, and
Speaker 2: and and uh, you know, my songs definitely needed a
Speaker 2: shot of Rich Rath rock and roll energy, and his
Speaker 2: songs needed a shot of my singer songwriter uh, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of folk singer energy. And at some point, uh,
Speaker 2: the s and paper wasn't the sparks weren't flying anymore,
Speaker 2: and I and I saw it happen, and I I
Speaker 2: tried my best. I probably could have tried harder in retrospect,
Speaker 2: but I finally just got to the point where I
Speaker 2: had a conversation with Gary, who had been my musical
Speaker 2: partner for this was nineteen eighty nine, so since nineteen
Speaker 2: on and off since nineteen seventy two, and I just
Speaker 2: told him that I couldn't do it anymore. And and
Speaker 2: I couldn't you know that there was a there was
Speaker 2: an Rio album on the horizon, and I, you know,
Speaker 2: this is after I had met Stephen Stills and we'd
Speaker 2: written a song together, and I had this side project,
Speaker 2: you know, a ten piece band with horns and background singers,
Speaker 2: you know, called the Strolling Dudes, that that played out
Speaker 2: of trencas and played little bars around l A and
Speaker 2: and but with amazing musicians. I mean Graham Lear on drums,
Speaker 2: Ricky brown On on trumpet, Steve Grove on sacks, got
Speaker 2: guys that, uh, you know that were just just amazing musicians,
Speaker 2: including Bruce Hall, the bass player from Ario. He was
Speaker 2: a member of the Dudes too. Uh. And so then
Speaker 2: the thought I was having so much fun just being
Speaker 2: free and playing you know, different, I wrote different types
Speaker 2: of songs and and I just felt like, uh, and
Speaker 2: then the thought of going back in the studio for
Speaker 2: another Ario Speedwagon record just felt like, oh boy, okay,
Speaker 2: here we go. It just it just I wasn't excited
Speaker 2: about it. I wasn't in spa aired about it, and
Speaker 2: and and part of it was that, you know, the
Speaker 2: partnership between Gary and I just wasn't wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 2: firing on all cylinders, and it was it was actually
Speaker 2: a little bit of a drag. And so that's what happened. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I never thought that that Gary's hiatus Fromario Speedwagon would
Speaker 2: be permanent. I thought it would be like mine, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, I got kicked out of the band in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. Took a couple of years to figure
Speaker 2: out some things that I needed to figure out about
Speaker 2: myself and when I got back in the band, it
Speaker 2: was better than ever. So that's kind of what I
Speaker 2: thought would happen with Gary, but it never did. And
Speaker 2: you know, God, you know, I uh, you know, I
Speaker 2: look back and I go, man, you know, could I
Speaker 2: have tried harder? Could I have What is there more
Speaker 2: that I that I could have done to help the situation?
Speaker 2: And you know, you always look at things that way
Speaker 2: in the rear view mirror. But at the time, Uh,
Speaker 2: I was just I was just out of gas, man,
Speaker 2: I just I just couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 1: And to what degree was he resentful? And to what
Speaker 1: degree did you have any contact for the ensuing decades?
Speaker 1: Ultimately you played a couple of you know times on
Speaker 1: stage with you long after this incident, But was it
Speaker 1: pretty much final and you had no contact? And was
Speaker 1: he pissed off?
Speaker 2: You know, that's a good question, Bob. We we had,
Speaker 2: we had occasional contact, and uh, you know, Gary came
Speaker 2: out to some shows when we played the old Universal
Speaker 2: Amphitheater in LA and just sat in on a couple
Speaker 2: of songs. And you know, the way Ario Speedwagon has
Speaker 2: always worked is that you know, there have been a
Speaker 2: number of people in the band. You know, I'm one
Speaker 2: of three lead singers, you know, and even crew guys,
Speaker 2: and anyone who's ever been in the band is always welcome.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh yeah, well yeah he was. He was
Speaker 2: my guitar tech and you know, nineteen seventy seven. Yeah,
Speaker 2: give him a pass, get him in here, you know.
Speaker 2: So so there was there was that Gary and I
Speaker 2: had a couple of soulful conversations over those years. Uh
Speaker 2: and and they always kind of ended in the same
Speaker 2: way where uh, you know, I would I would just
Speaker 2: try to motivate him and and and inspire him in
Speaker 2: some way. Uh and in it Uh, it just never
Speaker 2: never quite happened. But he was never he never expressed.
Speaker 2: I mean, the last time that I saw him was
Speaker 2: at a benefit show that we did in Illinois for
Speaker 2: for that horrible uh tornado that that came through Washington,
Speaker 2: Illinois and just decimated the town. It was right near
Speaker 2: where Gary grew up, and uh, and he had moved
Speaker 2: back there. He had moved back to Peoria, which I
Speaker 2: thought was gonna be great for him, you know, get
Speaker 2: out of la get out of the shadow of Ario speedwagon,
Speaker 2: you know, come back to the Midwest where everybody loves
Speaker 2: you and knows you. And so he came out to
Speaker 2: to to that show and and we were able to
Speaker 2: we just had a moment and and I didn't sense
Speaker 2: I didn't sense any anger. I sensed I sent some sadness.
Speaker 2: You know. We looked into each other's eyes right before
Speaker 2: we went on stage, and there was a there was
Speaker 2: definitely a certain sadness there. I felt it too, and
Speaker 2: I know he did. And uh, you know, the thing
Speaker 2: is that the band has had such a resurgence over
Speaker 2: the past I don't know, fifteen twenty years that and
Speaker 2: none of this would have happened without Gary. You know,
Speaker 2: he was he was the guy that got Ario Speedwagon signed.
Speaker 2: You know, Irving Irving saw Gary Richrath and and he
Speaker 2: was like he knew Irving knows a star when he
Speaker 2: sees one. And and and so you know, I just
Speaker 2: it's a bummer that Gary is not here, that hasn't
Speaker 2: been here for the past twenty years of the of
Speaker 2: this resurgence of the band. Now, maybe the band wouldn't
Speaker 2: have had a resurgence if Gary was there, But I
Speaker 2: always hoped that getting away from it for a while,
Speaker 2: maybe he'd you know, as I did when I was
Speaker 2: out of the band, bottom out and realized that, you know,
Speaker 2: you want your gig back, you know, That's what happened
Speaker 2: to me. I went and saw him. There was a
Speaker 2: show in West Palm Beach now just happened to be
Speaker 2: in town, and I showed up the dressing room, and
Speaker 2: you know, hadn't seen the guys in a couple of years,
Speaker 2: and it was like old times. And I watched the
Speaker 2: show from the stage right wing. And the guy who
Speaker 2: replaced me, Mike Murphy, champagne guy, extremely talented, like great
Speaker 2: blues and R and B singer played, played a good guitar,
Speaker 2: good piano. But I watched it, man, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: it didn't seem like a Reo speedwagon, you know, with
Speaker 2: Murphy's as good as he is, you know, it was
Speaker 2: just such a stylistic mismatch. And I was like, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, that was my gig and I let it
Speaker 2: slip away, and I want it back, and I'm gonna,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna. I don't know how it's gonna happen, but
Speaker 2: uh it did. And uh so that's what I thought
Speaker 2: would happened with Gary, and it just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: And yeah, okay, tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 1: how you got kicked out and how you got back in.
Speaker 2: I knew when I said kicked out that that you would.
Speaker 1: I never knew you were kicked out. I thought you left.
Speaker 1: But now since you brought it.
Speaker 2: Up, well, you know, yeah, I always kind of described
Speaker 2: it as, uh as that we had the creative differences
Speaker 2: arose during the during the recording of the Ride and
Speaker 2: the Starmut album, uh, which led to me leaving the band.
Speaker 2: That's not false, but uh, but really what happened was,
Speaker 2: you know, I you know, I had always played in
Speaker 2: the bands before Ario Speedwagon that I played in, you know,
Speaker 2: like my band in like high school and early college.
Speaker 2: We we had way more in common with Buffalo Springfield
Speaker 2: than we did with Deep Purple, you know. And so
Speaker 2: when I joined and I was never a lead singer.
Speaker 2: I was always just one of the I you know,
Speaker 2: I'd sing lead on some songs, but we all my
Speaker 2: band always had three singers with three part harmony, and
Speaker 2: so that's what I was used to. So when when, uh,
Speaker 2: when I went out and saw Ario Speedwagon after I
Speaker 2: met Gary, uh, I was like, wow, I got to
Speaker 2: sing every song? How's that going to And they were loud, man,
Speaker 2: these guys played loud. So I ended up having vocal
Speaker 2: problems and uh uh you know, I went to a
Speaker 2: doctor and Champagne kind of on the sly and he
Speaker 2: he diagnosed a nodule on my left vocal cord and
Speaker 2: said that the only way to cure it was to
Speaker 2: not uh not talk for three weeks and not sing
Speaker 2: for six weeks. And here I am, I've been in
Speaker 2: the band for a year that were headed out to
Speaker 2: California to make an album. How how's this going to work?
Speaker 2: And of course, my stupid coping mechanism was to stuff it,
Speaker 2: you know, not tell anybody, uh you know, keep it
Speaker 2: a secret. And and so I started not singing at rehearsals,
Speaker 2: you know, only you know, kind of isolating so I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have to talk. So everyone in the band just
Speaker 2: thought I was being a dick, but really I was
Speaker 2: just trying to save my voice. And but they had
Speaker 2: no idea that I was trying to save my voice
Speaker 2: because I was afraid if I told him that they
Speaker 2: kicked me out of the band. So you know, uh,
Speaker 2: you know that it caught up to me and uh
Speaker 2: and uh uh and so so Murphy came in and
Speaker 2: took over. But yeah, I you know, I can't say
Speaker 2: that it was a mutual decision, but I will say
Speaker 2: that I was in no position to argue the point.
Speaker 2: You know, I knew that I didn't write my best
Speaker 2: songs for the Ride in the Stormont album, and I
Speaker 2: couldn't sing. So how do you how do you keep
Speaker 2: a gig as a lead singer when your vocal cords
Speaker 2: are are compromised? You know?
Speaker 1: So yeah, so what did you do in the ensuing
Speaker 1: two years? And how did you literally get back in.
Speaker 2: Well, for for about for about a year. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: went to Colorado. I lived in up in Evergreen for
Speaker 2: a couple of months, didn't sing at all. And then
Speaker 2: it occurred to me, you know, up in the in
Speaker 2: the fresh air of Evergreen, Colorado, that I had gotten
Speaker 2: one opinion on my vocal cords, and and that caused
Speaker 2: me caused my life to change in a way that
Speaker 2: that was devastating. I'm like, well, maybe I should get
Speaker 2: another opinion, and so I went to went into Denver.
Speaker 2: I made a couple of appointments. When into Denver, saw
Speaker 2: two voice specialists and They're like, I don't know what
Speaker 2: you're talking about. There's you. There's no vocal nods nodules now,
Speaker 2: nor is there any evidence that there ever was. I'm like,
Speaker 2: then this is two different guys. I'm like, oh, great,
Speaker 2: now you tell me right. So, yeah, I went back
Speaker 2: to Chicago, tried to tried for a career as a
Speaker 2: solo artist. I was working with Bill Trout. Do you
Speaker 2: remember Bill Trout? He was the president of Wooden Nickel
Speaker 2: Records in Chicago. Yeah, you know, and Bill was he
Speaker 2: was a character. He was. He was part of the
Speaker 2: company that released the first Beatles album on VJA Records
Speaker 2: out of Chicago, and he parlayed into a deal with
Speaker 2: I think r c A what Wooden Nickel was a
Speaker 2: boutique label in RCA signed Sticks and and then so
Speaker 2: he acted as my attorney and uh, the late great
Speaker 2: Gary Luaiso from the from the American Breed, the other
Speaker 2: guy that sang Bend Me, Shape Me and produced a
Speaker 2: bunch of Sticks Records. I was his first production client
Speaker 2: in his garage in UH in Oaklhom, Illinois. And UH,
Speaker 2: and so we went about the UH tried to get
Speaker 2: me a solo deal and it just it didn't happen,
Speaker 2: and that was devastating because I thought, you know, when
Speaker 2: when I got away from Rio, I was like, this
Speaker 2: is the best thing that ever happened to me. I've
Speaker 2: I'm kind of well known. Now I had a couple
Speaker 2: of songs that did decent on the Rio. Well, now
Speaker 2: I'm going to be able to do what I really
Speaker 2: want to do, which is play you know, folk rock
Speaker 2: in harmony and you know, you know, more of a
Speaker 2: Stephen Stills type character. You know that that was my
Speaker 2: fantasy of myself and it just didn't work. Uh uh
Speaker 2: you know, you know I I uh so that was
Speaker 2: devastating and that sent me definitely into a funk. And
Speaker 2: uh and I spent almost a year just you know,
Speaker 2: going down to Bill Trout's office waiting for the phone
Speaker 2: to ring, uh you know, and uh you know, and
Speaker 2: then going back to my apartment up on the north
Speaker 2: side of I was living alone, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I started isolating and it was just not a good thing.
Speaker 2: And then I, uh I met my first wife and
Speaker 2: and she was she was a musician, and she really
Speaker 2: uh uh just kind of said you you got to
Speaker 2: start working again. You you know, you know that this
Speaker 2: is enough enough already of sitting around, you know, feeling
Speaker 2: sorry for yourself. And so I started singing, Uh, started
Speaker 2: playing solo acoustic gigs around Chicago and really working at it, man,
Speaker 2: And and I learned a lot. I you know, I
Speaker 2: opened for for some some really good The thing about
Speaker 2: being a playing folk clubs is you've got to learn
Speaker 2: how to talk to an audience. You know, it's you
Speaker 2: know it. Playing the songs is important, but getting a
Speaker 2: few laughs in between, and and kind of you know, uh,
Speaker 2: getting the audience, uh invested in a song that they
Speaker 2: have never heard before, so so that they're more willing
Speaker 2: to listen to it just by a little story or
Speaker 2: whatever of how the song was written or what the
Speaker 2: song's about. Uh. And I really learned a lot about that.
Speaker 2: I opened for a bit a man who you remember,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe not too many of your listeners would called
Speaker 2: Mason Prophet. Of course they had a song, yeah two
Speaker 2: hangman and Terry Talbot was a master of work in
Speaker 2: an audience. And I would just sit back and watch
Speaker 2: him do it, man, and just soak it up. And
Speaker 2: so that show in West Palm Beach that I talked
Speaker 2: about where I saw the band Neil Dowdy shared something
Speaker 2: with me in the dressing room. He's like, we just
Speaker 2: got a a what do you call that? When a
Speaker 2: petition that started out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is
Speaker 2: before the Internet or iPhones or anything like that. It
Speaker 2: was actually on paper and there was like I thought,
Speaker 2: I thought he said fifteen thousand names, but that sounds
Speaker 2: that's got to be too many. But it was a
Speaker 2: large number of names who signed a petition for Ario
Speaker 2: Speedwagon to get back to the Rio two lineup, which
Speaker 2: was that that was the album I made with the band.
Speaker 2: And uh So when he told me that, I was like,
Speaker 2: that's interesting. I wonder why he's sharing that with me.
Speaker 2: And uh, a few months later I got the phone
Speaker 2: call and uh and it was kind of perfect timing because, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, my ego was knocked down to size by
Speaker 2: not getting the solo deal, but I learned so much
Speaker 2: from playing as a solo artist, and I brought that
Speaker 2: energy back into the into the band. Uh. And there
Speaker 2: was a and and their egos came down a notch
Speaker 2: because they thought they were gonna be that it didn't
Speaker 2: matter who the singer was, you know, Uh, that they
Speaker 2: were gonna but but that two album did way better
Speaker 2: than the than the album's subsequent albums. That with with
Speaker 2: Murphy singing, it just didn't it as great of a
Speaker 2: musician as he is, It just didn't. It didn't sound
Speaker 2: like Ario Speedwagon at all. And uh so I was
Speaker 2: ready when when the call came, the guys were ready
Speaker 2: and there was a there was a new you know.
Speaker 2: Gary Neal used to joke that they, you know, they
Speaker 2: picked me up out of the gutter and made me
Speaker 2: a star, and there was some truth to it. But
Speaker 2: but when I came back to the band, I knew
Speaker 2: it had to be on equal terms. It had to
Speaker 2: be you know, there there There couldn't be you know,
Speaker 2: there was no more on the new guy. So I
Speaker 2: don't get a say in what happened. You know, I
Speaker 2: needed to be an equal member of the band, and
Speaker 2: uh and I was and and it worked.
Speaker 1: Okay. From the outside, Ario Speedwagon was around forever perceived
Speaker 1: as a regional thing, but on a majorly epic and
Speaker 1: then roll with the changes happened with the can't tuna piano?
Speaker 1: You can tune a piano, we can tuna fish. That
Speaker 1: seemed to be a line of demarcation from the outside,
Speaker 1: what was going on on the inside.
Speaker 2: Well, the the that was the the Tuna album was
Speaker 2: was the first album that was self produced. We we
Speaker 2: had had a number of uh successful well known I
Speaker 2: mean Bill Halverson, Bill Simsic, John Stronik. I mean those
Speaker 2: three producers right there probably are you know between Eagles
Speaker 2: Hotel California and Joe Walsh. So what uh you know
Speaker 2: the first two Crosby, Stills and Nash albums. I mean,
Speaker 2: these guys obviously know what they're doing, but somehow it
Speaker 2: didn't work for us, And so we had Uh I've
Speaker 2: been back in the band for about two years. I
Speaker 2: had written rolled the changes. Time for me to fly
Speaker 2: blazing your own trail again. Gary had sing to me,
Speaker 2: uh say you love me, you r say good night.
Speaker 2: We had we had some We had some pretty We
Speaker 2: had a pretty strong group of songs that we were
Speaker 2: ready to record. And our fear was that if Epic
Speaker 2: assigned a producer to us, that the that that those goods,
Speaker 2: that those songs would get spoiled, and we didn't want
Speaker 2: to take any chances. So so Gary and I march
Speaker 2: into Ronald Luxembourg's office. He was the president of Epic
Speaker 2: at the time and lay down the law that that
Speaker 2: either we produced the next studio album or we refused
Speaker 2: to record. We never even got that far. We were
Speaker 2: sitting in a meeting with Ronald Luxembourg and and John
Speaker 2: Boylan was in the in the meeting, and Aluxembourg is like, hey,
Speaker 2: I think it's a great idea for you two to
Speaker 2: produce this record, but I just want John to be
Speaker 2: in the room with you. And you know, John had
Speaker 2: just come off Boston's debut album. And uh so to me,
Speaker 2: I was like, this is perfect. We're we have the
Speaker 2: freedom to to produce the album how we want to,
Speaker 2: and if we have problems, we got John Boylen's in
Speaker 2: the room with us. So it was really an ideal
Speaker 2: situation in many ways. And uh but yeah, so, uh
Speaker 2: so we were co producing and and I think that
Speaker 2: was the beginning of of Ario Speedwagon changing from you know,
Speaker 2: before I joined the band, they were straight ahead rock band. Man,
Speaker 2: they were just a solid you know. Original singer Terry
Speaker 2: Latreuell was a you know, had the mic stand moves
Speaker 2: and the raspy voice and the and the whole thing,
Speaker 2: you know, and and uh but you know, I knew
Speaker 2: that if if the band was going to survive with
Speaker 2: me in it, it would take some it would be uh,
Speaker 2: some give and take on both. And I think role
Speaker 2: with the Changes was the first the first hint of
Speaker 2: what Ario Speedwagon could become if if there was equal
Speaker 2: parts Gary's guitar power and the power of that rhythm
Speaker 2: section and a respect for me as a songwriter and
Speaker 2: the more melodic uh you know, paying attention to the
Speaker 2: lyrics a little bit more side of things. And that
Speaker 2: was when we first kind of the balance first started
Speaker 2: being found and roll with the changes? Was it.
Speaker 1: Okay? So you have this unbelievable success with high end fidelity,
Speaker 1: which you also referenced earlier. Few questions to amplify the question, Hey,
Speaker 1: seems like you're driven. You want to get to a goal.
Speaker 1: From anybody in the outside that's ringing the bell, there's
Speaker 1: nowhere really higher you can go. How did it affect
Speaker 1: you going forward? You have the moment of success?
Speaker 2: Uh is it? Then? Well?
Speaker 1: How am I going to maintain this?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: How does it affect your mentality going forward to have
Speaker 1: that unbelievable success?
Speaker 2: Well, it was, uh, you know, it was a shocker
Speaker 2: to me because, like I said, I thought that was
Speaker 2: going to be the magic wand that that suddenly that
Speaker 2: that all of my problems were a result of not
Speaker 2: being successful in music and not being recognized as an artist,
Speaker 2: all that, all that good stuff. Uh and what what really, well,
Speaker 2: I'll be honest with you, what really uh kind of
Speaker 2: did me in? Was we we thought sure that Heine
Speaker 2: Fidelity was a shoe in for at least the Best
Speaker 2: Album nomination, if not, if not, you know, a Grammy
Speaker 2: for Best Album or you know, keep on loving you
Speaker 2: long of the Year, you know. We we we had
Speaker 2: pretty high hopes. And when the Grammy nominations came out
Speaker 2: and we were nominated as for Best Rock Performance by
Speaker 2: a Duo or Group, and that was it. And that
Speaker 2: just sent me, uh into a bad place.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And uh it was it was just like the ultimate
Speaker 2: you know that that that recognition, uh huh, that peer recognition,
Speaker 2: recognition that the Grammys represents was something that I had
Speaker 2: been craving since I was a little kid, you know,
Speaker 2: And so all the success in the world was, uh,
Speaker 2: it didn't make any difference because I just that the
Speaker 2: the Grammy snub just it just destroyed me. It was
Speaker 2: just so hard on me, and uh, and so so
Speaker 2: so when the when the band, when there was a
Speaker 2: band meeting in early nineteen eighty two, and uh and
Speaker 2: and everyone wanted to make a new record. I was like,
Speaker 2: make a new record? Are you kidding? First of all,
Speaker 2: High in Fidelity was still on the charts, and and
Speaker 2: and I didn't have I didn't you know, I like
Speaker 2: to have a bunch of songs written before before we
Speaker 2: win the studio. But there was this energy man that
Speaker 2: from you know, we had the high the high profile
Speaker 2: uh business managers. We hired Fleetwood Max business managers because
Speaker 2: we thought, well, you know, this is High in Fidelity
Speaker 2: had rumors like success, so let's let's go with their
Speaker 2: uh the business managers. We had the record label, you know,
Speaker 2: and and everyone else in the band honestly, you know,
Speaker 2: management everybody was like, okay, you know, this is what
Speaker 2: we do. We make a record every year. And I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there and I go, guys, are you out of
Speaker 2: your fricking minds? I don't have any songs. I'm still
Speaker 2: trying to find my balance, you know. After High in Fidelity,
Speaker 2: I just felt like, guys, let's just this is a
Speaker 2: once in a lifetime opportunity whatever, whatever, you do as
Speaker 2: the follow up to High Infidelity is going to be
Speaker 2: immediately played on the radio. It's going to be immediately accepted.
Speaker 2: Unless it doesn't live up to the promise of high
Speaker 2: in Fidelity, then it's going to be derided. And and
Speaker 2: I kind of had a sense of that, and but
Speaker 2: nobody wanted to pay attention that. Everyone was so you know,
Speaker 2: drunk on success that everybody, you know, let's just keep
Speaker 2: feeding the machine. And I'm like, wait, guys, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, that's not how it works for me.
Speaker 1: But I folded.
Speaker 2: I ended up folding like a cheap suit and went
Speaker 2: into the studio and uh made the Good Trouble record
Speaker 2: and uh uh and uh, you know it was it
Speaker 2: wasn't that was the Good Trouble Tour was the the
Speaker 2: the peak of the Ario Speedwagon partying arc. It was,
Speaker 2: you know, it was just it was the first time
Speaker 2: that the you know what, We've always been a band
Speaker 2: that has a good time, but that tour was the
Speaker 2: first time where I saw that the after party was
Speaker 2: becoming the priority and the gig was just a way
Speaker 2: to get to the after party. And I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't like this, but I don't not like it
Speaker 2: enough to stop doing it and so, uh you know,
Speaker 2: so hey there you know are the Ario Speedwagon. Uh,
Speaker 2: career arc is not an arc at all. It's a
Speaker 2: it's a roller coaster, is what it is. And uh,
Speaker 2: that was that was that was a tough period for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, the next album you come back with a monster song.
Speaker 1: Can't fight this feeling. Everybody, and I mean everybody reaches
Speaker 1: the point when they no longer have the peak of
Speaker 1: success they once have. Usually you're putting out records that
Speaker 1: don't for some reason get accepted. Then the sound sort
Speaker 1: of changes. How have you coped with that or how
Speaker 1: did you cope when you were experiencing it?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean uh, uh you see, I always feel
Speaker 2: like like the songs are the everything grows from the songs.
Speaker 2: And if you've uh you know, a good song is
Speaker 2: always a good song. You know, it doesn't ever get
Speaker 2: bad no matter how long it's around. So if you
Speaker 2: got if you got enough songs that that that people
Speaker 2: took into their DNA, uh, then uh you know, that's
Speaker 2: that's what sustains you, even if the records aren't selling
Speaker 2: like like they used to. You know, as long as
Speaker 2: you can continue to perform at a high level and
Speaker 2: and bring it every night, and and bring that energy
Speaker 2: every night. And you got those songs. Uh, then you know,
Speaker 2: I mean that's you know, there's no secret to success.
Speaker 2: That that's what it is and and that's that's what
Speaker 2: we do. And uh, that's enabled us to to continue
Speaker 2: all these years.
Speaker 1: Did you own your own songs? Then your own publishing,
Speaker 1: and do you own them now?
Speaker 2: I did own my publishing then, and it was Trout
Speaker 2: who told me never sell your publishing. And then right
Speaker 2: around nineteen ninety one when Kurt Cobain and his cohorts
Speaker 2: invaded from Seattle and took took over music, which, by
Speaker 2: the way, I thought was awesome because my kids had
Speaker 2: bon Jovi posters on their walls, you know, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: bon Jovi is not that different than Ario Speedwagon. It's
Speaker 2: the kind of the same thing, you know. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: so my kids don't have their own music, you know.
Speaker 2: And and then suddenly, you know, Nirvana came along, and
Speaker 2: boy John bon Jovi came off the wall and Kurt
Speaker 2: Cobain came up overnight, and so it was great for
Speaker 2: my kids. But but if you were a member of
Speaker 2: a classic rock band. It was. It was it was
Speaker 2: pretty bleak. I mean, a lot of bands just broke
Speaker 2: up or stopped to ring. You know. We we continued touring.
Speaker 2: But uh, but but my friend Tom Kelly, who's also
Speaker 2: another Champagne boy, another Irving as Off client or John
Speaker 2: Barrett client. He uh, it was his voice. He was
Speaker 2: a high voice on all the big Rio hits. He
Speaker 2: was a great singer. But then he became he also
Speaker 2: became a great songwrite, a great songwriting team with Billy Steinberg.
Speaker 2: Uh and Tom and Billy made a publishing deal. Uh
Speaker 2: right then in the early nineties. And the way publishing
Speaker 2: deals work is they the publishing company looks back three years.
Speaker 2: They take the past three years, and that becomes the
Speaker 2: value of your of your songs. And I was looking
Speaker 2: at it, and I'm going, well, wait a minute. Every
Speaker 2: you know, Couk, we thought it was all over and
Speaker 2: we we we we really thought that you know that,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a low point. And so I
Speaker 2: figured every year that I didn't make a publishing deal,
Speaker 2: that was one of the years that we sold a
Speaker 2: lot of records, that would wouldn't be one of the
Speaker 2: past three years. You know what I'm saying, so I
Speaker 2: made I got a great offer, and I sold my publishing.
Speaker 2: But the good news is that that was in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two. And I think Don Henley was the guy
Speaker 2: who really spearheaded the energy that has said that thirty
Speaker 2: five years after you sell your publishing, you get it back.
Speaker 2: So that means in a couple of years, I'll be
Speaker 2: getting it back. So that'll be uh, that'll be nice.
Speaker 2: And and of course, you know, there have been some
Speaker 2: pretty lucrative publishing deals made over the past few years.
Speaker 2: You know, had I kept my publishing, put it this way,
Speaker 2: the publishing company that bought my catalog made a great deal.
Speaker 2: I will leave it at that.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear for the uninitiated, they're essentially
Speaker 1: two halves in the publishing dollar. There's the ownership of
Speaker 1: the song and the writer of the song. Did you
Speaker 1: sell one hundred percent or just fifty?
Speaker 2: I sold fifty percent. And they were a Nashville company
Speaker 2: with that that was an old school you know. Bob
Speaker 2: Beckham was the guy.
Speaker 1: Who he.
Speaker 2: Even just an iconic Nashville publisher and I just hit
Speaker 2: it off with him right away. And even though they
Speaker 2: didn't need my permission to exploit the songs. They respected
Speaker 2: me enough that they never that they never put the
Speaker 2: song in a movie that I didn't you know, you
Speaker 2: know that I thought it would be you. I mean
Speaker 2: they there was offers from cigarette companies. It's like, nope,
Speaker 2: you know, sorry, And so I've all I've been lucky
Speaker 2: that they've been respectful. And now my publishing is owned
Speaker 2: by Mark Freed and Mojo Music, who bought that my
Speaker 2: catalog from the original company. And Mark is just a
Speaker 2: wonderful He's a guy that's in it for the right
Speaker 2: reasons because he loves music and he loves songs. And hey,
Speaker 2: he got keep on Love with You in a Shaquille
Speaker 2: O'Neal commercial, So come on, that's it. You know, it
Speaker 2: didn't get any better than that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So needless to say, you've essentially gotten fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the revenue on your songs over these thirty years.
Speaker 1: If you never work, if you didn't tour, would that
Speaker 1: be enough money for you to pay your bills?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that I think that touring
Speaker 2: is a way that that that leads to the value
Speaker 2: of the of the copyrights and the songs. Uh. I
Speaker 2: think I think I think they are two parts of
Speaker 2: the same machine. So, uh, you know, if we stop touring,
Speaker 2: it would be a I think a mistake to think
Speaker 2: that the that the that the income from the from
Speaker 2: the songs would would maintain at the same level. I
Speaker 2: think they kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: Well, let me put it this way. Ed Sheeran goes
Speaker 1: out without a band and play stadiums. You know, there
Speaker 1: aren't twenty trucks, there aren't all these people, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's like being a comedian. Comtian goes on the road
Speaker 1: with a microphone, maybe a road manager, and now comedians
Speaker 1: play arenas. Where's the band? There are multiple members? Okay,
Speaker 1: So in the heyday of Rio Speedwagon, the Steps in
Speaker 1: the eighties, was there enough money or were you just
Speaker 1: like a working guy, middle class guy and this is
Speaker 1: your gig?
Speaker 2: Well I will tell you that that. Uh when how
Speaker 2: can I how can I say the there was what?
Speaker 2: When you're a musician, you always you never turned down
Speaker 2: a gig because because you always think that if you
Speaker 2: turn down a gig, whoever it is that takes that
Speaker 2: gig might take the next gig too. It's just it comes.
Speaker 2: It goes back to being in a high school band.
Speaker 2: So it's uh, it's you know, whether you need the
Speaker 2: money or not, it's just it's just it's baked into
Speaker 2: my DNA that it's it's really hard to to think
Speaker 2: about turning down gigs, you know, and we do turn
Speaker 2: down gigs, but I'm talking about to the point that
Speaker 2: you stop touring for a certain amount of time. Just uh,
Speaker 2: it just seems it's it'll probably happen at some point
Speaker 2: in my life. But you know, as it is, man,
Speaker 2: I'm uh, you know, I can still move pretty well
Speaker 2: and uh and uh and you know, got my vocal coach,
Speaker 2: so uh, you know, so I'm having fun singing. The
Speaker 2: band is great. We've got a great crew. People are Hey,
Speaker 2: we had to sold out James Brown Arena in Augusta,
Speaker 2: Georgia on a Monday night. You know, go figure, you know,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of hard to walk away from something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to the old days, Barrick told me
Speaker 1: a great story that Irving came out here with Dan Voegelberg,
Speaker 1: was here for a year and call up Barreck. Barrick said, Barrick,
Speaker 1: come out, we can take this town.
Speaker 2: I was I thought the original quip because you told
Speaker 2: me that quote when I when I called your radio show,
Speaker 2: and I think what I think what what you said was,
Speaker 2: and it always stuck with me. It's actually in my
Speaker 2: book that that Irving called Barrick and said, grab the
Speaker 2: Rio boys and get out here as soon as you can.
Speaker 2: We're going to own this town. Now, that right, right?
Speaker 1: But let me ask you, was that palpable on your end?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a Chicago boy. You know, I never pictured
Speaker 2: myself living anywhere by Chicago. But when I in the
Speaker 2: time that I was away with the band, from the band,
Speaker 2: they moved to La So if I was going to
Speaker 2: rejoin I was going to have to move to l
Speaker 2: A too. But uh, you know, I'm a Midwest boy
Speaker 2: by uh you know, and uh so I kind of
Speaker 2: got the best of both worlds. I got the Midwest
Speaker 2: upbringing and now and now the southern California lifestyle. So
Speaker 2: you know, I'll take it okay.
Speaker 1: For me, certainly, in the early seasons, Ozark was one
Speaker 1: of the best shows on TV really all the seasons.
Speaker 1: And I'm watching They're opening a riverboat casino and suddenly
Speaker 1: there is Ario Speedwagon. How does that come to be?
Speaker 2: Bob? That's that that's a that's a million dollar question.
Speaker 2: I uh, I don't know what came first, the chicken
Speaker 2: or the egg. I don't know if the idea this
Speaker 2: is this is what I think the you know, the
Speaker 2: show is supposedly based in the Lake of the Ozarks,
Speaker 2: which is in the heart of Missouri. The two biggest
Speaker 2: markets for Ario Speedwagon were Saint Louis and Kansas City.
Speaker 2: We would headline the baseball stadiums in Saint Louis and
Speaker 2: Kansas City and then go out and play the Roxy
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles for five hundred people. So the Ozarks
Speaker 2: were that's the heart of Ario Speedwagon country. So maybe
Speaker 2: the producers were going for authenticity, you know, and because
Speaker 2: because that kind of made sense that that we would
Speaker 2: be the band. But but the also, you know, that
Speaker 2: episode was kind of built around the song Time for
Speaker 2: Me to Fly, So I don't know if that had
Speaker 2: it was you know, like most things in life, it's
Speaker 2: it's not one thing that makes something happen. But I
Speaker 2: will tell you that that I was the only guy
Speaker 2: that had any lines. So when we were on location,
Speaker 2: the writer gave me a little print out of the
Speaker 2: scene and they were just like three mimiographed type pages
Speaker 2: and I had like one line and then I asked
Speaker 2: him to change another line, and they said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: sit say whatever you want. But at the top of
Speaker 2: each page of the script it says Kevin Cronin was here.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, wow, man, these people they just made us,
Speaker 2: they had already made us feel totally at home. Jason
Speaker 2: Bateman got up in the middle of his lunch to
Speaker 2: come over and hang with us, and and I thought, wow,
Speaker 2: that's really They're really they really know how to make
Speaker 2: you feel welcome, you know. So I had no idea.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting with my wife and kids, you know, watch it,
Speaker 2: getting ready for season three to drop and watch it.
Speaker 2: And when the third episode came on and I saw
Speaker 2: the title of the episode, I was like, I was
Speaker 2: I was blown away.
Speaker 1: I mean that was that was.
Speaker 2: Pretty freaking cool for I will say this for about
Speaker 2: five minutes, well maybe less than, you know, optimistically five minutes,
Speaker 2: my kids actually thought I was cool.
Speaker 1: So, okay, Ozark Gigantic Show. You have a prominent part
Speaker 1: in the episode. Do you feel any bump in business
Speaker 1: recognition anything or is it just so that was nice?
Speaker 2: No? No, that I mean Ozark as you said that
Speaker 2: was one of the biggest streaming shows ever. And and
Speaker 2: of course season three dropped right in the beginning of
Speaker 2: the pandemic when when everyone really got in the habit
Speaker 2: of streaming shows, Ozark was the top of the heap. So, uh,
Speaker 2: there was a big I mean Time for Me to Fly,
Speaker 2: which was the song that they featured in the episode,
Speaker 2: shows up as number one catalog song in Billboard from nowhere. Uh,
Speaker 2: there were actually there were actually a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: where I was Uh, I was the top producer of
Speaker 2: the week, the top songwriter of the week. It's like, wait,
Speaker 2: how do you know? So yeah, so we we definitely
Speaker 2: got a little bump and uh we actually you know,
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton had had recorded Time for Me to Fly
Speaker 2: on her White Limousine album turned it into a hoedown.
Speaker 2: It was an awesome record, and so our manager, Tommy Consola,
Speaker 2: got the idea to go back in the studio on
Speaker 2: the strength of the Ozark episode and re record uh,
Speaker 2: Time for Me to Fly. He said, just go in
Speaker 2: and you know, just just do it a different way,
Speaker 2: and so I did. I went in and then he's
Speaker 2: he's friendly with with Dolly's manager, so he sends the
Speaker 2: demo uh to or actually the it wasn't even a
Speaker 2: demo but a rough mix to to Dolly and and
Speaker 2: she hears it and she likes it, and she sings
Speaker 2: a part on the song and turns it into a duet.
Speaker 2: And I will tell you something. And you I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've talked to Dolly and met her. She is, I
Speaker 2: mean what there was no movie score, there was no
Speaker 2: there was nothing. There was no album, there was no
Speaker 2: nothing was just here's the song, you know, do you
Speaker 2: want to sing on it? And she goes in the
Speaker 2: studio and and sings the song with me, and it
Speaker 2: was we still haven't done anything with.
Speaker 1: It, you know.
Speaker 2: So so I talk about a person who does it
Speaker 2: for the right reasons. You know, there was no there
Speaker 2: was no other reason for Dolly to sing that song
Speaker 2: except that she liked it and and she had on
Speaker 2: it before, and you know, and of course that led to, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, to me being asked to participate in Dolly's
Speaker 2: rock album. And so Dolly and I do a d
Speaker 2: wet on that one and keep on loving you on
Speaker 2: her upcoming rock star album. So I just I there's
Speaker 2: not enough good words to say for me about Dolly,
Speaker 2: I just she's she's just the best.
Speaker 1: Okay. So, as you've referenced, Reo Speedwagon is a long
Speaker 1: storied history with members, never mind other elements being up
Speaker 1: and down. At this late date, you are the sole
Speaker 1: surviving member. So is it really your band? And if
Speaker 1: it is, how long has it been your band? And
Speaker 1: to really you make the ultimate decisions?
Speaker 2: Well, you know it's uh to call it my band.
Speaker 2: You know that I don't know that just that kind
Speaker 2: of rubs me in in not the right way because
Speaker 2: uh but but to say that that that I'm the
Speaker 2: leader of the band, yeah, you know, ever since ever
Speaker 2: since the split between Gary and I, uh and and
Speaker 2: and Alan had our original drummer had left the band
Speaker 2: by then, uh you know, I have been the leader
Speaker 2: of the band. And it it took a few years
Speaker 2: and and uh in I'm trying to think of what
Speaker 2: year it was. It was a couple of years after
Speaker 2: Gary left and it was obvious that he wasn't coming back,
Speaker 2: and I thought about, uh, you know, I was working
Speaker 2: on a solo album. Uh and and I thought that
Speaker 2: that Ario Speedwagon had just uh you know, it was
Speaker 2: just it was just over and and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: I was at uh uh. I was at the ASCAP Awards,
Speaker 2: and after the ASCAP Awards, everyone goes to the the
Speaker 2: tiki bar and next door and and my wife introduced
Speaker 2: me to a guy that I never met, a producer
Speaker 2: named Rick Knowles, who Rick at You know, I didn't
Speaker 2: realize it at the time, but he was huge, hugely successful,
Speaker 2: mostly with female artists and so but we were just,
Speaker 2: you know, shooting the breeze and and and I kind
Speaker 2: of told him that, you know that my ties kind
Speaker 2: of loosened my lips a little bit, I guess. And
Speaker 2: I kind of told him I was working on a
Speaker 2: solo album and thinking about, you know, closing down the
Speaker 2: Ario Speedwagon. And he literally stopped me in my tracks,
Speaker 2: looked me right in the eye and said, dude, look
Speaker 2: around this room. There's not one person in this room
Speaker 2: who wouldn't kill to have a vehicle for their music
Speaker 2: like Ario Speedwagon. He's like, if you do that, you
Speaker 2: are out of your freaking mind. And I just met
Speaker 2: the guy, you know what I mean. But it kind
Speaker 2: of it kind of struck me that since Gary had left,
Speaker 2: I really hadn't given it my best shot. I was
Speaker 2: I think there was a part of me that was
Speaker 2: waiting for Gary to come back, and at that moment,
Speaker 2: I realized that he wasn't coming back, and I either
Speaker 2: had to do this, I had to be the sole
Speaker 2: leader of the band and the sole songwriter and et cetera,
Speaker 2: or else it was over and I wasn't about I
Speaker 2: just wasn't ready to let it go without a fight.
Speaker 2: And so at that point, yeah, I definitely took over
Speaker 2: the leadership of the band. And within a couple of years,
Speaker 2: you know, John Barrett came up with the idea of
Speaker 2: of of uh former arena headliners co headlining and having
Speaker 2: two headliners on the show, and and that was a
Speaker 2: way for or bands like ourselves to play the kind
Speaker 2: of buildings in front of the kind of crowds that
Speaker 2: we were used to playing. But you had to share
Speaker 2: the bill with another headliner, which meant you couldn't close
Speaker 2: every show. And that was a tough pill to swallow
Speaker 2: at first, but over the years it's become the paradigm
Speaker 2: and now it's like, oh, yeah, okay, so you guys
Speaker 2: close half the shows. You know, we're in the middle
Speaker 2: slot for half the shows. And at this point, Honestly,
Speaker 2: most of the bands that we work with would rather
Speaker 2: have the middle slot than the closing slot because because
Speaker 2: everyone's in their seats, because because you know, we always
Speaker 2: have a great opener, and no one's leaving early to
Speaker 2: beat traffic, So you're kind of in the sweet spot.
Speaker 2: You know. The good thing about the closing spot is
Speaker 2: that everyone thinks you're the headliner, but you know who cares?
Speaker 1: Okay, can you email me always reference that you're a
Speaker 1: bar band from the Midwest now, needless to say, especially
Speaker 1: when you look at it on paper or on a screen.
Speaker 1: You've had this unbelievable success with Rio Speedwagon, Yet you
Speaker 1: mentioned the Grammys where you thought you were dissed. At
Speaker 1: this point in time, do you still believe you and
Speaker 1: Rio having gotten the respect you deserve or do you
Speaker 1: feel comfortable? And then, of course there's a question of
Speaker 1: the rock and Roll Hall of thing, which is completely changed.
Speaker 1: Never mind, they're inducting acts that are not rock and roll,
Speaker 1: but acts that have petition to get their fans or
Speaker 1: their fans that petition to get the acts in it happened.
Speaker 1: So are you comfortable where Ario is in the landscape,
Speaker 1: and are you comfortable with the respect or you still
Speaker 1: want more recognition and respect.
Speaker 2: Well, I am comfortable. I'm very comfortable with where the
Speaker 2: band is at. And at the same time, I'm still driven.
Speaker 2: I'm not satisfied. So yes, of course, I always want
Speaker 2: to play a bigger gig or or uh you know,
Speaker 2: you know, just a couple of weeks ago, uh, American
Speaker 2: Idol called and wanted me to sing a song with
Speaker 2: one of their contestants, and I'm like, yeah, sure, that'll
Speaker 2: be fun. A lot of people, a lot of people
Speaker 2: will will see me. Who think who might think that
Speaker 2: I'm you know, long gone who knows, you know. But
Speaker 2: but but my uh, my goal is to be the
Speaker 2: Betty White of rock and roll, because Betty White hosted
Speaker 2: Saturday Night Live at the age of ninety and uh
Speaker 2: and did a great job. And so uh you know,
Speaker 2: Tommy Shaw and I laugh often about being being the
Speaker 2: the last two classic rockers standing and uh uh you know,
Speaker 2: I would be happy with that and and and and
Speaker 2: and that is a goal, man. I mean, I I
Speaker 2: still love to play. I I you know, I keep
Speaker 2: myself in decent shape and and I'm always always working
Speaker 2: to get better, always working to get better on the guitar,
Speaker 2: be a better singer, be a better front man. I
Speaker 2: I just always want to improve.
Speaker 1: And uh so.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I'm I'm satisfied, but I still would
Speaker 2: like a little more, you know.
Speaker 1: So you're still driven at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I still am. I still am. I still
Speaker 2: love it and and you know, and in order to
Speaker 2: keep doing it at the level that we are, you
Speaker 2: got to keep getting yourself out there, you know, you
Speaker 2: got to do you know, for me to do American Idol,
Speaker 2: I literally had a walk off stage. We had a charter,
Speaker 2: a jet I had to get. I got on the
Speaker 2: plane at one in the morning, flew to l A.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, Uh they change my my call time
Speaker 2: from eleven am to eight thirty am, which oh I'm
Speaker 2: not thrilled about that at all. Uh. And you know
Speaker 2: I had to sit there all day, you know, do
Speaker 2: a bunch of rehearsals, and then and then do the
Speaker 2: live show and uh but that's you know, that's and
Speaker 2: and then I had to get back on the plane
Speaker 2: and get back on the tour and play a show.
Speaker 2: So uh, you know, it's it's not always as luxurious
Speaker 2: as as people think. But but that's what you got
Speaker 2: to do. You know, you you're you got to you
Speaker 2: gotta keep you got to keep at it, you know,
Speaker 2: otherwise if you're not getting One of the things my
Speaker 2: dad said to me when he was alive that that
Speaker 2: has always stuck with me is you know, if you're
Speaker 2: going to do it, do it right the first time.
Speaker 2: And and so you know, I've always got that's always
Speaker 2: stuck with me. If you if you're going to be
Speaker 2: doing something, do the best you can.
Speaker 1: And you've done great here, Kevin. This has been wonderful.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many loose threads I could ask
Speaker 1: questions about, you know, you're growing up and other details
Speaker 1: we didn't get into, but I think we've you know,
Speaker 1: covered it for now. So I want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking this time to speak with my audience.
Speaker 2: Bob. It's a it's a pleasure. It's uh. I love
Speaker 2: the way we met, which was literally just me driving
Speaker 2: down the street in my car and hearing you come
Speaker 2: on Serious Exam and I'm like, wait a minute, I've
Speaker 2: got the I got the hotline number to Roger Coletti.
Speaker 2: I could actually call in. I think the show. I
Speaker 2: think you were talking about opening acts right, and Ario
Speaker 2: Speedwagon was I think you mentioned us as being one
Speaker 2: of the quintessential seventies opening acts. And I'm like, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, I got the phone number. I'm gonna call
Speaker 2: in because I you know, I got a good vibe
Speaker 2: from you just just on the radio, and so it's
Speaker 2: really a pleasure to be here. And yeah, I could
Speaker 2: talk to you for hours, and I know I kind
Speaker 2: of strayed off your questions and that's a bad habit
Speaker 2: of mine. But hopefully you can forgive me for that,
Speaker 2: and you know, maybe when the book comes out we'll
Speaker 2: talk again.
Speaker 1: Well I believe, and I say this all the time.
Speaker 1: Digression is the spice of life. That's where that's where
Speaker 1: all the details are. And I have to give you
Speaker 1: credit almost always. You brought it back to the original anyway,
Speaker 1: which is how I do it. I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I was in a bad space and I went to
Speaker 1: see the psychiatrist and he said, well, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought you had a problem tracking, which is something
Speaker 1: they do, he says, but you bring it back to
Speaker 1: the original point. I just realized you were on this
Speaker 1: long journey and too many people, you know, they just
Speaker 1: give yes and no answers. Where it's the flavor. I
Speaker 1: think people have really gotten an idea of what it's
Speaker 1: like to be you and be in these experiences. And
Speaker 1: I certainly thank you for being so honest and open.
Speaker 2: Not everybody is, well, well, thank you, Bob. You you
Speaker 2: definitely bring you know I do. I've done a lot
Speaker 2: of interviews and I still do, and some of them
Speaker 2: are more fun than others. And I will say that
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed this time with you, and I look
Speaker 2: forward to doing it again.
Speaker 1: I do too. You've been everything I wanted and more.
Speaker 1: You were totally open, You were fantastic. I literally could
Speaker 1: talk to her a few more hours. I got so
Speaker 1: many questions about growing up, what your father did, what
Speaker 1: your mother did, with the record you listened to, because
Speaker 1: the other thing. Of course, you're my contemporary. I'm a
Speaker 1: couple of years younger, but we are the generation who
Speaker 1: saw the Beatles on TV and everybody got a guitar
Speaker 1: and everything, as opposed to the people born in the forties.
Speaker 2: Right. I mean, I often say that I feel like
Speaker 2: I was born at the exact right moment to do
Speaker 2: what I've ended up doing because I was twelve years old.
Speaker 2: I'm playing guitar. For about two years, nobody played guitar.
Speaker 2: Playing guitar was for sissies, and I used to get
Speaker 2: chased through the streets by dudes. Just I was walking
Speaker 2: along with a guitar case. And when the Beatles came out,
Speaker 2: I didn't even know why I was taking guitar lessons,
Speaker 2: but I just did. And when I saw the Beatles,
Speaker 2: it was like it was everything changed, Everything changed for me,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, the same guys who had
Speaker 2: been chasing me through the streets wanted to kick my
Speaker 2: ass because I had a guitar. Now all the girls
Speaker 2: liked guitar players overnight, and they all wanted to be
Speaker 2: in a band with me. So I went from being
Speaker 2: the you know, the outcast of the neighborhood to suddenly
Speaker 2: the guy who everybody wanted to be in my band
Speaker 2: because I was the only one who knew how to
Speaker 2: play the guitar. So, you know, the Beatles, The Beatles
Speaker 2: were everything for me. And I was twelve years old
Speaker 2: when they hit right, that's right at the moment when
Speaker 2: you're looking for an identity, and I saw them, and
Speaker 2: I saw myself in them. I wanted to be I
Speaker 2: wanted to dress like them. I wanted to I wanted
Speaker 2: to be in a band like them. I wanted to
Speaker 2: have songs like them. And they were just they were
Speaker 2: just a huge inspiration. And man, you know, as you say,
Speaker 2: millions of people were tuned into that Ed Sullivan show
Speaker 2: that night. And you know, I'm just one of the
Speaker 2: lucky few who saw the Beatles and said that's what
Speaker 2: I want to do, and then we're lucky enough that
Speaker 2: it actually happened. I can tell you one last quick
Speaker 2: Beatles story. All right, So when the Beatles first came out,
Speaker 2: we talked about Bill Trout and VJ Records. So VJ
Speaker 2: Records is releasing Beatles songs. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Capitol realizes that they screwed up, so they start releasing
Speaker 2: Beatle records. Well, I'm in Chicago. WLS is the biggest
Speaker 2: radio station in the world. But I also am taking
Speaker 2: guitar lessons, and every lesson I would hang around and
Speaker 2: look at all the sheep muses, and I bought the
Speaker 2: sheep music for I Want to Hold Your Hand, which
Speaker 2: I still have framed above my desk, that exact piece
Speaker 2: of sheet music. But one day I saw a piece
Speaker 2: of sheet music, and you know, because it was such
Speaker 2: a such a feeding frenzy that sometimes the sheep music
Speaker 2: came in before the song was being played on the radio.
Speaker 2: So I got I saw the sheet music for this song.
Speaker 2: I said, please please me the Beatles, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what's that. I've never heard this song. So I sneaked
Speaker 2: the sheet music back into one of the lesson rooms
Speaker 2: and I've got my little guitar and I opened the
Speaker 2: sheet music and I wasn't good enough to be able
Speaker 2: to play the song the there was. I knew some
Speaker 2: of the chords and the lyrics were there, so I
Speaker 2: just kind of faked it. And I so I had
Speaker 2: a version of please Please Me, which I thought I
Speaker 2: learned from the sheet music. Well, a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 2: the song comes on WLS and it bored no resemblance
Speaker 2: of all to my version. Right, And as blasphemous as
Speaker 2: this will sound, I kind of like my version better.
Speaker 2: And it gave me the thought, as a twelve or
Speaker 2: thirteen year old kid, that maybe I could write my
Speaker 2: own songs. So I even owe that to the Beatles.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know that I owe everything to them
Speaker 1: In any event, till next time, this is Bob left sets,