It’s a rare occasion that a band releases a greatest hits compilation at a time when they’re still in their commercial prime. By the time a group has amassed enough hits to make a collection, they likely don’t have many left in them.
That was the case for REO Speedwagon. They released a 1988 greatest hits album that included their final US Top 40 hit. It also signaled the end of the band as most fans knew it.
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The Power Ballads and the Glory
Once upon a time, a promising band could conceivably be given a long leash by their record company. That could be the case even if hits weren’t immediately forthcoming. Take, for example, REO Speedwagon. They churned out eight albums in nine years in the 70s. And nary a song reached the Top 40 in that span.
By the end of the decade, they had cut down on their jammier tendencies and started to focus their approach for radio. Still, the shift to commercial success mostly happened for them in one fell swoop, thanks to the power ballad “Keep On Loving You”. The song went to No. 1 in 1980. Hi Infidelity, the album that contained it, followed it to that pinnacle soon after. Lickety split, REO rocketed from journeymen to superstars.
Frontman Kevin Cronin wrote and sang “Keep On Loving You”, while guitarist Gary Richrath provided the pyrotechnics with a searing guitar solo. Yet the song launched REO in a direction that would push these two crucial members of the band far apart.
Hear “Here”
REO Speedwagon soon started churning out hits on the regular, most of which were softer ballads. Even as Richrath strutted through the 1984 No. 1 hit “Can’t Fight This Feeling” with a solo, the song, another Cronin creation, skewed far closer to adult contemporary than rock.
Richrath wanted the band to stick closer to their rock roots. But the record label was certainly pleased with the hits Cronin was delivering. That included “Here With Me”, a sentimental slow one written with Rick Braun as one of two new songs from The Hits, released in 1988.
Richrath pops up out of the electric piano-driven “Here With Me”, which reached No. 20 on the pop charts, to solo for a few bars. It turned out to be one of his last main contributions to the band.
Speedwagon Repair
By the time the band returned with their next album in 1990, both Richrath and longtime drummer Alan Gratzer were gone. In the case of Richrath, reports vary as to what actually went into his departure.
Some insist that he could no longer abide the direction of the band. Others say that band members were given a choice of following either Cronin or Richrath, and they chose Cronin. In any case, Richrath never played on another REO album (there were only two more of them), and he appeared in just one reunion show with the band again before his death in 2015.
It’s likely it wouldn’t have mattered even if the core of REO Speedwagon had stayed together. Music changed drastically in the 90s, essentially leaving them out of the pop radio loop. They never again released a song that made it higher than No. 65 in America.
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