Kevin Cronin | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

I'll never forget, I stood up at the piano and I looked at him, and we looked at each other, and it was like we kind of knew. I think you have something super rare, which is this earnest quality. I believe what you're singing. Well, I mean, you know, some people would say I was fired. Other people would say that creative differences arose. Okay, you tell me, because you were in the room. I was fired. the the plane was found with no seats full of quaaludes pot and guns oh yeah oh yeah i heard them all but that's a new one kevin cronin thank you so much i'm so honored to talk to you today i've literally been listening to my almost my entire life so you couldn't help it you were from chicago in chicago we'll talk about that. But I want to start here. Born in Evanston, Illinois. Is that accurate? So I was born in Chicago in the lake. So essentially we were born about 20 miles apart. And although we're a slightly different generation, we grew up in the same world, Catholic world of Chicago. And back then Chicago was heavily Catholic, heavily working class. It's changed a bit. so i feel like there's an understanding there where maybe people outside of the midwest maybe wouldn't understand what made your band areo speed wagon important what you guys were talking about important it certainly resonated with the world that i grew up in so um let's sort of start there if you want to talk about sort of your upbringing and kind of um because i found and i don't know if you found this through the years you know american culture is so dominated by New York and Los Angeles, but they oftentimes overlook how valuable artists from other parts of the country are in contributing to the greater conversation of what we experience. I agree. Whether it's artists that came up out of the bayou singing those types of songs with a little bit of French flavor. And of course, the Midwest, we grew up in the shadow of the great blues artists. You can't not grow up in Chicago and not be affected by the blues. So if you can kind of start there, please. Yeah. Well, I mean, I grew up in Chicago. I was born in Evanston, but we moved to an all-Catholic, all-Caucasian suburb. And I grew up thinking that there were Catholics and non-Catholics. And you know where all the non-Catholics go at the end of the road, you know? But it was weird. And I remember getting to be about, you know, into my teen years, and I'm like, I'm not buying this. This doesn't feel right to me. There's other people in the world, but I'm not living amongst them. So when I graduated high school, man, I hightailed it up to the north side and went to Loyola University for a couple of years, played in local bands around Chicago. And you and I share something, because I did a little homework, and I was looking for, when I went to the north side, I was looking for a guitar player and a bass player for my band. So I called the Chicago Sun-Times, and I said I needed to place a want ad for guitar player and bass player wanted for original music band. And she said, nope, you have to get you have to take out two on ads, one for each instrument. Oh, my goodness. I'm like, where am I gonna get 30 bucks? So I, long story short, I start something called the Musician's Referral Service. I'm running it out of my second-story walk-up, just off in Rogers Park, near Loyola University. I get a call from a guy who says, I'm in a band, we have one record out, we're signed to Epic Records, And you know the old saying, you have your whole life to write your first album and a year to write your second. So, long story short, that was Gary Richrath, who, if you know anything about REO Speedwagon, Gary Richrath is... He's the reason that REO Speedwagon got onto the map. Is it... Because I was gonna ask you this, but we're here now. So, uh, was, is, is, is, is, is REO's Gary's band? And it's like, does it make sense? You know, there's always gotta be somebody who's like, this is really kind of my band. Well, it was, it certainly was. And then, and then after the first album, he realized he needed some, some, he didn't want to do it all himself. Sure. So he saw my one at hanging in the Chicago Guitar Gallery, a little flyer. And, uh, so we started out. And of course he was my big brother. I looked up to him because he was just... What was the age difference? Two years. Okay. Which, when you're young, that seems like a lot. I was 21. He was 23. That's the... And he'd already been touring nationally. Already been touring. Well, kind of regionally. But still, signed to Epic. Signed to Epic. That's no small thing. Exactly. And the first album sold about 200,000 or so copies. Irving Azoff was the manager, which didn't hurt. A fellow Illinoisan. A fellow Illinoisan. Danville, Illinois. And so Gary met me. I played a song, the first real song I ever wrote, I played it for him on my Guild acoustic 12-string. And then I did one song that I used to play in the folk clubs around Chicago that I thought no one knew of. It's the second cut on side two of Mad Men Across the Water. The first cut on side two of Mad Men Across the Water is this long opus that Elton and Bernie wrote about Native Americans. And it's kind of a cool thing, but I think it lost a lot of people. Second cut is a song called Holiday Inn. I thought, sure, I was the only one in the world who ever heard it, and Gary felt the same way. So I just, of all the songs... Oh, my goodness. ...of all the songs in the world that I could have picked to play. So that, it was like, boom. It was like, it was meant to be. And so, yeah. But it was his, it was, he was the... He's the guy who Irving saw and said... Yeah, because they were playing fraternity parties and stuff like that. But when Gary came, Irving saw it and went, boom. That's interesting. Talking a little about your background, because I think these things are so valuable as a fellow songwriter. Dad, World War II? Yeah. What branch of the service was your dad in? He was in the Army. They plucked him out of Loyola University Business School, and he ended up in Germany. He was there right at the end of the war. Okay. So did he see combat or...? He saw some combat. And then he, of course, saw the aftermath of the Nazis out of power. Yeah. Did he talk about that stuff at home? Well, he never did until he got to be about, like, into his 80s, into his late 80s. And I was taking him to the VA because I'm like, Dad, you've... Well, first of all, my dad sent me a clipping from the Chicago Tribune that said... that basically got me out of going to Vietnam. If I wouldn't have seen this little article in... Because the draft numbers had happened. And they were doing the lottery. Well, the lottery. And if you got a low number, see you later. I got number like 86, so I'm like, I'm screwed. What am I gonna do? Do I go to Canada? I'm not gonna go to Vietnam. My dad sends me a clipping from the metro section of the Chicago Tribune, this big, saying, young men born between October 1st and December 31st of 1951 are exempt from the draft. I would have never seen that. I would have gone to Canada... Was there a reason for that? with? You know, my guess is that maybe they had enough guys already through the lottery. Billy, I don't know. It doesn't make sense. My dad's theory was there were some Chicago politicians who had kids, you know. That does sound about right. Like, let's just make something up, right? And it's got to be broad enough that you can't pinpoint them. That sounds very Chicago. You know, very Chicago. But back to your daddy for a second. Sure. When he did talk about his experiences, what did he relay, if you don't mind sharing that? Yeah, no, my dad was always very reserved. And as a result, he was supportive and he was a good guy, you know. But I never got to know him that well until late in his life. And when he started opening up about World War II, the one story that blew my mind is that he's, Well, there was two. He said they were rolling through the Black Forest, and Hitler had surrendered, but there were still... It wasn't like all the Nazis said, we're not going to be Nazis anymore. Yeah, war doesn't tend to end on a single day like it does in the movies. Right. So they had a bunch of troop carriers going through the Black Forest, and Russian soldiers were coming out and turning themselves in, because they chose to be captured by the Americans rather than be captured by the Germans. Sure. And, but there were still snipers. My dad was sitting on a troop carrier, just, you know, just hanging out, all of a sudden you hear, and the guy next to him dropped off the troop carrier. So he was, you know, one guy away from, you know. So, but the thing was, what he told me is that they were instructed by their superior officers to not speak of what they were seeing in Germany. Ah. Because, you know, back home, everyone was like, yeah, USA, let's go, we're patriotic. The women are, you know, in a factory making bullets and, you know, whatever. But it wasn't a movie, as you say. It was horrifying what was going on over there. And they didn't want... My dad wasn't allowed to write a letter home to share his feelings about what was going on over there. So he became, I think, very closed off emotionally. Yeah, do you agree with me? I mean, because I grew up, you know, I'm a little bit younger than you, but I grew up, you know, with this kind of closed-down war generation. A lot of drinking, a lot of kind of like, we don't talk about the war type of stuff. And I think the explosion of a lot of artistic voices in the late 60s was because it was like, like, I can't live like this. This kind of, does that resonate with your experience? Totally. You're right on the money. I mean, you know, my generation, I mean, I was 12 years old when the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan show, you know, so. And then the liberation, it was boiling under, as you say, from all the repressed feelings, but the Beatles frickin' blew the lid off. Did you see that one, that first time? It's amazing how many artists they inspired, right? It's mind-boggling. And artists of every stripe. Right. Not just, you know, rock and roll. I mean, people you would never imagine who went on to be very successful. Mom was a social worker? She was a social worker, yes. She was for Catholic Charities, it was called. She was a caseworker. And to her credit, she was an amazing woman. She graduated from Mundelein University, so to be her age, female, and have a college degree, That was some serious... That's fairly unusual for the times. It really was. It really was. And so she would go into prospective adoptive homes unannounced because everybody puts their best foot forward when they want to adopt a kid. But she was a surprise attack person. So she would see what was really going on. Yeah, I was struck by this, and correct me if it's wrong, but when you were about seven, your parents adopted three kids. Yes. That's got to... Even if you liked them, that had to be a big shift. What was the inner thinking for your parents to bring three kids into your home? Did you get an explanation? Well, the explanation I got was that, because normally your mother gets pregnant. I was the first child, only child for seven years, apple of mom's eye, right? Normally you get a little preview of coming attractions. Yeah. And so there's something to talk about before the baby arrives. For me, it was just like one day my parents came in and told me that God had brought this baby to them and that even though it didn't come out of mommy's tummy, I need to love it, this baby, the same as if it had, because that's what God wanted. Okay. So that's great. That's a nice explanation. Very clean and neat. But the problem was that inside, that didn't coincide with what my feelings were, because my feelings were, do we swear on this show? You can say whatever you like. I was like, I had this whole thing to myself, and now here's this intruder coming into the home, and everyone's making a fuss over her. It's like, I didn't consciously think that. Yeah, he's seven years old. It's hard to intellectually process that. But that's when I... And then they adopted three kids in a row over a five-year period. That's in ten. And normally you couldn't do that. The only reason we could was because my mom was a caseworker and knew the head of it. But it was... If I trace back maybe my artistic bent or whatever, I think that it kind of goes to there because my feelings were... I wasn't allowed to feel what I was really feeling because I was told what to feel. Yeah. And that's tough on a kid. And, hey, a lot of weird shit happens to kids. In the spectrum of things that can happen to you when you're a kid, this was pretty... I'm pretty lucky that that's what my problem was. Yeah, but still, it struck me as this very intense thing, you know? Yeah. You know, almost all artists, not all, but almost all that I've met seem to have some particular moment in their life that sort of shifts, puts them in a spot where they have to go inward to figure something out. And then it becomes part of the faculty that they later discover to communicate. Right. So if you wouldn't have found the guitar, if the guitar wouldn't have found you, where do you think you would be right now? That's an interesting question. And I had a chance to have a career in academia because I was a good student. But it wasn't, I didn't feel passionate about it. I love learning. Like even talking to you, I love doing the research and I love all that. I could see that. Yeah, I bless you. But a life in the arts is really, it's like a priest calling or something. It has a divine aspect. It has a non-divine aspect. But it's an incredible responsibility, you know, to sort of say, hey, I'm going to try to sum something up that I feel and understand. And then hopefully, in your case, millions of people around the world sort of go, I understand what you're saying. It's so humbling and it's an intense experience. So, you know, the beauty of great teachers is that they can inspire people, but, you know, we don't always see the fruits of their labors. Yeah, you know, I had an English teacher. I went to Brother Rice High School in Southside, all boys high school, crazy scene. If you weren't on the football team, you basically didn't exist, you know? And playing guitar was not exactly cool. That's where I was gonna go. So put those two together, like, when you started playing guitar and getting into music. Well, you know, I had been taking guitar, I wanted to play drums. My parents wanted me to play piano, so we settled on the guitar. And my dad, in his inimitable way, said, a guitar, you can take it with you anywhere you go. If you get invited to a party, you can bring your guitar. And I was like, I knew of Elvis a little bit. He was a little old for me, but I knew he played the guitar, and the girls liked him. And so I was playing guitar, playing songs like Down in the Valley and Oh, Susanna, you know, my little book and learning chords. And then the Beatles came out. And overnight, all the girls that liked the guys who used to chase me through the neighborhood to kick my ass, because I was on my way to my guitar lesson. Those same guys, of course, wanted to be in a band with me, because I was the only kid in the neighborhood who played guitar. So the Beatles changed my life in so many ways. I suddenly, the guitar, the fact that I had been playing for a couple of years was cool. But check this out. When the Beatles first came out, they were signed in England, Capitol Records in the United States were like, who are these long-haired guys? They came out in VJ. Chicago. Bill Trout, who was my first manager. Oh, my goodness. With Nickel Records, yeah. Wow. But, um, so it was kind of a mess there, with VJ and Capitol, and a lot of times, you know, I would hang out at the music store where I took lessons, and there was a rack with sheet music. And so, of course, I Want to Hold Your Hand came in, bought the sheet music immediately, it's hanging on my wall right now, in a plexiglass case, but Please Please Me came out. I saw the sheet music, but the record hadn't been played yet. Wow. So I grabbed the sheet music, snuck back into one of the lesson rooms, and they had the chords, and I knew some of the chords, and I could kind of read music, and the lyrics were there, and I figured out Please Please Me. So about a week later, and I was into it, about a week later, Please Please Me came out on WLS, Dick Biondi? Yeah, probably. Larry Lujak. Gosh, those are names, right? Dick Biondi. God bless him. What was he called? The president in charge of looking out the window. So, Please Please Me comes on, and I will beg your forgiveness for what I'm about to say, but I liked my version of Please Please Me better. That's the proclivity of a songwriter. You knew what you were doing. Well, no, what it is was that the Beatles inspired me because what I thought at that moment was, maybe I can write my own songs. Ah, okay. So I owe it all to them. How different was your virgin? You know, I wish... Please, please, please. It's like, last night I teed it to my girlfriend. Da, da, da, da, da, da. But, and the sheet music, I couldn't read that. I couldn't hear that. Was yours more ballady? You know, Billy? You know, I don't know. I wish I had it. Don't you wish you had a recording of that somewhere? I was like 13, you know. So we don't have to belabor too much, but this jumped out at me. You had a teenish band. I guess this would be your prog rock phase. Fuchsia? Fuchsia, yes. Covers, like, were you playing Cream? Yeah, oh yeah. We were playing Cream. We were playing Buffalo Springfield. a lot of Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape. Oh, wow. Yeah. Are you feeling with that first Moby Grape album? Yeah. Great band. The great band. They released every song on that record as a single simultaneously. You know, it was crazy. But, and then we sneak in the occasional original in between these kind of... So were you writing then? Yeah, I was writing some... What kind of, like, give me the vibe of the... I'll get it. If you just give me the vibe. Kind of a Buffalo Springfield-y thing. I was very into Stephen Stills. Crosby, Stills, and Nass came out when I was a senior. 67, 68, yeah. Yeah, 68. I was a junior, senior in high school. And I bought that record. I was waiting for that record. I went, I used to, my band used to make demos on my T-Act 4-track. Okay. And I was convinced that the only machine that our music sounded good on was that exact particular TAC 4-track. So I went down to a creative artist's agency, which became CAA, but it was... They had an office in Chicago, and somehow I figured out where it was, and I called, and they set up a meeting with me. So here I am, about 16, 17 years old. I go walking into the CAA office holding a giant TAC 4-track tape machine. These guys must have looked at me like, this kid is out of his frickin' mind. But on that four track was a... On that demo, we played a song called Bluebird by Buffalo Springfield. Which Stills wrote. Stills wrote. And this guy heard it, and he goes, kid, I'm gonna give you an inside scoop. There's a band that's being formed right now with a guy from Buffalo Springfield, a guy from the Byrds, and a guy from the Hollies. You must have flipped out, yeah. And I'm like, those are my three favorite frickin' bands ever. ever. Those first four Byrds albums. I mean, I had a Rickenbacker 12. I had an ES-335, my first real guitar. And when I heard Mr. Tambourine Man, dude, I traded it for a Rickenbacker 12, which I still have. And your 335 was probably worth more now than your Ricks, yeah. I wish I had. That's the only guitar that I've ever owned that I don't have still. It still hurts me, the ones I sold them. Yeah, I sold that one. But that was the vibe of my demos yeah so you were definitely attracted like let's call it the singer songwriter i mean that shows up in your music so it it makes sense to me yeah folk rock was was kind of you know electric folk kind of thing so uh at this point you're still you know mid to late teens do you have professional ambitions are you is you going to make a life of this what are your parents saying just give me that kind of read well our our band decided that we were going to join uh local 10-208, the Chicago Musician. Because you had to be in the union back then. Had to be in the union. Because my daddy played in Chicago and was the same thing. You don't have a union card, you can't play. Can't play. So we went down there, we had a, I'll never forget, it cost $148. It might have been a million. How much money have you made since and you still remember, right? It's me too, right? It's like, somebody will say, I saw you at this gig and I'm like, I made 60 bucks at the gig. It's like 34 years later, they're like, how do you remember that? I'm like, trust me, you don't forget that stuff. Sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, no. $148. Yeah, $148, Chicago Musicians Union. And I forgot the question. Why was I talking about the Chicago Musicians Union? I was just trying to get a sense on, you know, are you going to your parents like, hey, I want to be a professional musician. This is what I'm going to do. Right. You know, I, now let me ask you a question. Were you ever an altar boy? No. Okay. I was raised Catholic, but I wasn't baptized. Aha. So I was not allowed. So you're... Sorry, buddy. No heaven for you. That's why I'm here. I'm trying to redeem myself. But, uh... Yeah, so our band was... We were pretty good. Or at least we thought we were. And, uh, my parents were... My mom was extremely supportive. She was a very... She was the kind of woman that would walk into this... this wonderful facility here and know everyone by name, immediately, probably have sung a couple of Broadway show tunes to whoever was paying attention. She was a big personality. Did she have a good voice? She had a decent voice. Who had the voice in your family? You must have got it from somebody. My dad was always a choir singer. Okay. You know, I consider myself a guy who luckily wrote some songs and, you know, with an acoustic guitar and singing, And as a result, I get to sing those songs. That's what, as far as, you know, I always think, like, Becca Bramlett sang one of my songs once on a demo that I had recorded. And I don't know if you know Becca, but Becca's parents were Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. When you said Bramlett, that's who I thought you were talking about. Yeah, so Becca's their daughter, and she is fantastic. You know what, in fact, somebody recently sent me a recording with Becca Bramlett singing, so I know exactly who you're talking about. Yes. Great voice. Great voice. Soulful. Yeah. Oh, my God. Well, Bonnie Bramlett had an amazing voice. Yeah. Becca's just, you know, beautiful tone and vibe and her energy is kind of her own worst enemy sometimes, but I loved her, and I had her sing this song of mine, and I went, oh, you know, because I, and this was so dumb, and I finally figured it out, but I used to think that I put so much of myself and so much of my emotion into writing the lyrics to my songs, and I slaved over them to try to mold them to express what I was feeling, but as I said earlier, to kind of shield myself a little bit in the process. But... And I think that I thought to myself that I put so much emotion into that side of it, All I had to do was go in the studio and try to be on pitch and on time, and that was about it. I didn't think of the fact of an evocative vocal performance. It just never really occurred to me. But when I think of you as a singer, your voice is so expressive. You think so? I think you have something that's super rare, which is an earnest quality. I believe what you're singing. Huh. Well, I mean, it is mostly things that either I wrote or Gary, Richrath, wrote. Yeah. But even when, because there's, I know you guys had one big song that Gary wrote, and I just, I always feel you're an authentic voice. Oh, well, thank you. Which I think is rare, because, you know, rock is performative, you know. Not every heavy metal singer believes they're going to hell, you know what I mean? But there's an earnestness in your musical life. I feel the same way about your singing Oh thank you I really do Well I grew up with you know look growing up in Chicago in the 1970s and listening to that radio it provided a very high watermark when the bands that were successful from the Chicago area Yourselves, Sticks, Cheap Trick, you know, it's hard to explain to people who don't understand, but there was an earnest quality to Midwestern music. Baby was born of the system at the time where, and I want to talk about it, like how you guys would have to go on the road and kind of make your name in clubs. Yeah. Just because you had a record deal, that was just the beginning of the hassle. You had to really go out and beat your brains out on those road circuits. And something about those albums really resonated with the working class ethos of the time. You know, there was no shame of being earnest and hardworking. Right. And if it meant, you know, you put in a good week's work and on Friday night you're going to go out and have a good time and still fall in love. It really resonated with the world that I grew up in. And what was crazy to me about that is I believed in that. Like, it was a simple fact. Like, music that I grew up with, including yours, was like there was no shame in being straightforward about what working people go through. and what the dreams of, you know, Bruce Springsteen is probably the greatest American songwriter to encapsulate the working class ethos converted in aspiration. Yeah, I'm working on my car and I got the girl on the corner, but I still want to get out of here. You know, there's something about that. It's very, to me, it's Midwestern, but maybe it's just working class. And there's the Midwestern version. But what was strange to me is then when we first went to the coast, we were made fun of for that. You guys were? Oh, yeah. You're too- I mean, we were, but I didn't realize- You're too into it. You're like, what do you mean? Hard work? Interesting. Like, you were supposed to pretend that you didn't care? That you didn't want to be successful? Yeah, kind of. I mean, that was- But it was weird. We were like, huh? Like, we love Chicago, but we want to get the f*** out of here. You know what I mean? And who doesn't want to be successful? I mean, if you don't want to be successful, then- Well. ...don't get a record deal and, you know. This is my own harp, and I'm going to be quick about it because I really want to talk to you about your life. But it's remarkable to me that most of the critical intelligentsia that I encountered in the late 80s, going into the 90s, into the 2000s, almost all of them were from upper middle class homes and had been to college. And I'm talking about names we recognize, not Mundelein. you know what I mean the point is is they grew up in places where it's like you get to have those opinions we didn't grow up in a world where you we had the luxury of you know the first world complaint of well you're not wearing the right t-shirt so the identity of the midwestern bands particularly in in chicago 70s going to the 80s including also the the great band chicago that is is is so dear to me even when I didn't like what you guys were doing musically I understood where it came from because we went to those same, I didn't go to Catholic school, but I grew up, everybody around me was Catholic or went to this school and the nuns beat them over here. And we all shared that common experience of parents who'd been in the war, dad or mom or grandpa broke their back in some factory. And if they were lucky, they got to retire. And of course, Bruce Springsteen kind of captured, let's call it the East Coast version of that. But the Chicago version was oftentimes overlooked because of the nature of the New York in LA media. Anyway, that's a long discourse to talk about your experience. But I think that the Midwest bands also, to your point, had a tendency to... I mean, we were very... There was a lot of positive... Like, even the darkest song would have a happy ending. And I think that's very Midwest. Yeah. Well, you've got to believe in something. Well, yeah. So, but I think we also, not you, I think your generation kind of blew the lid off of it to another degree. We kind of, like I say, kind of shielded ourselves a little bit. We told stories that we didn't really let our guts out. You, you know, you let your guts out. And that was kind of, to me, that was kind of rebellious against the Midwest thing, even though you were a Midwest guy. Thank you. It was, at least for me personally, it was, I refused to accept this story. You know, because just like yourself, I sat at tables with people who'd been in the war, and you were told, don't bring it up. So you're standing there or sitting there watching somebody that you love drink themselves to death. You know they've been through something traumatic, and you're a kid, so your version of it is what you saw in a John Wayne movie. There's a cognitive dissonance that went on there, And it went on about abuse in the church. It went on there about child abuse in the home. It went on with people's secret drinking, drug use. You know, we all grew up in the generation. I mean, homosexuality was, when I was a kid, there was no such thing. It didn't exist. I mean, outwardly. I mean, it was clandestine. I feel so bad for these people. I look back at people in my own family and, of course, people in our orbit who are obviously now, in hindsight, were obviously, you know, LGBTQ, whatever term you want to use. And nobody but nobody would talk about it. And all you ever got was like a joke. Like, oh, Sally's a tomboy or, you know, Freddie sure walks funny. And now we look back in empathy and we realize they were probably really suffering. Because for people like us that were just so, let's call it, dealing with our heightened emotions, grappling with, you know, post-war America, baby boomer world and all that type of stuff. I can't imagine what people in those circumstances went through. It must have been really, really difficult. Yeah, I mean, because they were still dealing with all that stuff. And then... That's what I'm... They were... You're picking up what I'm putting down. That's exactly what I'm saying. They were going through the same stuff we were going through and then they weren't even allowed to be themselves. It was bad enough we couldn't be ourselves just being weirdos. Right? Or sensitive, right? I'm sure you've heard that. Why are you so sensitive? I still do, believe me. So just before we talk about you joining REO for the first time, just give me your kind of musical landscape. Are you down on Wells playing gigs down there, Rush Street? What's your musical life like just before you joined REO? I played the Earl of Old Town a few times, which was amazing for me. I was just a kid, but John Prine had played there. Steve Goodman had played there. all the uh bonnie and you and you and you love those writers and those artists right i did i think you had a soft spot best i can tell i did and and james taylor by james taylor jackson brown uh danny fogelberg illinois boy great that first album that he made i mean my alarm on my phone oh i should probably turn my phone uh my alarm on my phone is to the morning to the opening cut on on Fogelberg's album. And I was down there when he made it in Nashville. But, um, so, um, Just the musical landscape you were in. Yeah. Um, I, I was, you know, I played clubs kind of up on Lincoln Avenue. There used to be the Orphans was an original music club. Um, the Bulls was kind of a basement, more of a jazz club, but they had, they had singer songwriters. I, I, I played there every Sunday. I had a regular gig every Sunday, four sets a night. Do you know that I played four sets a night, and I strummed. I've always strummed pretty hard, but I used to use a medium pick back in those days. I had a guild 12-string, and I would always break at least one string. So between every set, I would totally change the strings on my 12-string. All of them? Which took the entire break. I was gonna say, that's a 30-minute endeavor, at least. And then no tuner. So it's like... Oh, my goodness. We didn't have tuners. That's true. I forget about that. Yeah. You can imagine what I saw. I mean, it had to have been horrible. But I was doing my thing, but we had a little rock band, Fuchsia, and then we had a duo called The Late Late Show that did Simon & Garfunkel covers, acoustic versions of Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape, and the occasional original. Did you think you had a talent for songwriting? I don't know if I thought I did. I was writing songs, and I loved songs. I just always loved songs. And a good song is just... It's such a... If you're lucky enough to write one, it's just such a gift that you're offering to you. And for me, it was a way to connect with people. Songwriting was a way that... Because I didn't have much luck connecting, like you and I, just in real life. So songs were a way of sharing. And I think that was my motivation. I was looking for something. You know, it wasn't going to be sports, I learned at a young age. But when I was about 13, I had a guitar teacher named Jim Nance. And he had a, I'll never forget, a Gretsch Tennessean, an orange one. Those are cool guitars. Golden knobs and the leather pad on the back. That's what Crosby played. Yeah. The Tennessean. Did he play Tennessean? Yes, he did. You're right. and he was just my hero and and he uh and one day he told me i had natural rhythm okay and i was like because my dad a couple years earlier had told me that i wasn't a natural athlete which was like it he didn't he didn't he wasn't trying to be mean but to me at 11 years old i was crushed by that. And then a few years later for my guitar teacher to say, natural rhythm, I'm like, well, I might not be a natural athlete, but I got natural rhythm. I've never forgotten that. And as a result, that's all I play is rhythm guitar. Um, so you get the call from Gary Rickrath and, uh, now you're in this band. Uh, did you feel at home? Did you feel this is the break I've been waiting for? Like, Just put me in the room the first time you walk in and you're like, okay, because this is a band that's already running. This is not like a new band and you're hoping to have a dream. They're already in the dream. Right. And you're dropping in the middle of this thing. Yeah. It was interesting because Rich Rath didn't tell anyone in the band what he was doing. None of the guys, Irving didn't know. Oh. No one knew. Oh. So you got that. So I got that going in. But I had Gary on my team. Okay. And Irving loved Gary. I mean, you had to have seen us back in the heyday. Gary was just... The first time I met him, he walks into my apartment, he's got a brown suede, fringed jacket on, this hair, this ringlet hair, he's chiseled, he's like this sinewy dude, he's got this hot chick on his arm, and I'm just like... I'm late for poetry class, you know what I mean? I'm like... I was just... The fact that he had to have seen something in me that I hadn't quite seen in myself yet. Because I certainly... It wasn't like two equals meeting. He was definitely... I definitely had a lot to learn when I met him, and he must have somehow sensed that. I don't know. But yeah, I was dropped in. Irving was not happy at all, because the first album sold over 200,000 copies. Irving's like, what are you doing? Why are you replacing the guy? And Terry Luttrell, the original singer, had a good bluesy, kind of a gravelly voice, and he didn't play an instrument, but he had the mic stand moves and the cool hair. But I guess he wasn't a writer. and the first album is all credited to written by REO Speedwagon but you know the truth is I think most of the songs I think Gary came in with most of the songs and then the band added like some prog rock side sections but then it always came back to the song song but I didn't know that I thought REO Speedwagon was about prog rock and just hard rock and riff type stuff And so I wasn't sure what to expect. But then I would come to learn that Gary was taught guitar by his Uncle Leroy, who was a country guy. So Gary, in his soul, was country. He just looked like Jim Morrison. Going back and listening to some of your guys' music for the first time in a hot minute, I was struck there was more country influence there than I remembered. Yeah. because i always remember it as being a hard charging band that kind of had the ballad side right and it was like the two sides of reo and it was it had been kind of in my mind as a kid it had been hardened by all the road work and hence the live albums did well in chicago and stuff like that so but listening today i was like wow there's a lot more country in here than i remember i don't remember that influence at all but when you say it i'm like oh yeah oh yeah no total country influence so go please no no go ahead so uh you're dropped into this thing and are you guys doing that thing where it's like you go out for three weeks and you're opening for so and so and is it what are you doing that i don't i don't know but they're in my mind they call them package tours but because i've talked to like getty lee from rush you know it'd be like they would get a call they would go to sit in a town for somewhere and sit for a week and they'd be at a holiday and they get a call okay now you're going on tour with blue oyster cult and so and so and you just jump in the next thing you know you're on a tour for three weeks and that tour friends. Yeah. So you're doing that thing. That's how it was. I mean, there were, there were regional bands and we all knew who each other was, you know, Midwest was us, you know, Texas was easy time. Give me some, can you give me some of the bands that you're sort of in that, in that loop? Well, yeah. Uh, Leonard Skinner down in, you know, the Southeast, uh, but bands would come through the Midwest on a tour. Oh, you guys would be picked, picked, oh, okay. And they dump us on the tour to open for, you know, Grand Funk Railroad. Our first real tour was Black Oak, Arkansas. And they were amazing. I mean, Jim Dandy kind of took me under his wing, and he was like, you know, kind of my father figure. Tommy Aldridge on drums. Amazing drummer. I just, every night of that tour, I sat behind with Little David, who was his drum tech, giant guy. And, uh, and I would watch Tommy Aldridge from, I'd watch Black Oak from behind, but Tommy had twirling his sticks, you know, double bass drum. I mean, he was unbelievable. One of the hardest hitters probably in the history of rock. And of course, Jim Dandy was, you know, David Lee Roth when David Lee Roth was in high school, you know? But, uh, so I learned, I, I, I just soaked it all up and I soaked it all up. That's fantastic. Every band we played with, you know? So, because there's so much to cover, I hate to skip past things, but, you know, unfortunately, this part of your life ends poorly because you end up getting fired by the band. Can you just kind of walk me? Well, I mean, you know, some people would say I was fired. Other people would say that we had that creative differences arose. Okay, you tell me because you were in the room. I was fired. No, what happened is I. Well, they made a big mistake. Let's start there because they they needed you. And that's that we'll get to that, too. Well, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't, there was nothing malicious about it. I just, I had never sung so long and so loud and so hard. And there was no in-ear monitors. It was wedges. And normally the tours we went on, unfortunately the headline acts wouldn't let you use the wedges. Because they wanted you to sound bad to make them sound better. And so I just blew my, I blew my voice out. And I went to a doctor in Champaign, Illinois, and he said I should not sing for six weeks and not talk for three weeks. And meanwhile, we're rehearsing for the third album. And I'm like, oh. And plus, I'm the new guy. I've only been in the band for about a year. So, in typical Irish Catholic Midwest fashion, I keep it all to myself. And I'm trying to not talk very much and not sing at rehearsals and only sing for the gigs. I'm thinking every note I don't sing now is a note I'll be able to sing in the studio. It was crazy time in my head. And what they thought is that I was just being an asshole. They thought I was being the cocky lead singer, didn't wanna sing, didn't wanna hang out. So eventually, it just came to a head, but I never told them what happened. Later I did, of course. But I was like, I think if I just would've been out with it, I ended up getting fired anyway, so at least I would. But I didn't know yet that you're supposed to express your feelings. Yeah, not having been in a room with you singing. I mean, because, you know, sometimes the microphone is deceiving, but I mean, I always got the feeling you sang very loud. I think I did. I think I, yeah, I did. And I think of your bigger rock songs. I mean, it sounds like you're really, it's not straining. It's a, you know what I'm saying? It's a- That's all I knew. But there's a power, you sang powerfully. Well, you know- I can imagine, because if you didn't have particular training, because I went through the same thing, it's like you start blowing your voice out. Yeah. And you know how bands are. They're off chasing whatever they're chasing. They don't care that you can't talk much as sing. Right. You know, they look at you like you're weak and you're like, I got a squeak coming out. Yes, exactly. I just, within the past, going on five years now, I started working with a vocal coach. Changed my life. Oh, interesting. We can talk off camera, but he's a local guy, Jeffrey Allen, who was a professor at USC, who was my son's vocal. My son went for the pop vocal program at SC, and just, that's a whole other story. Has your son got the pipes, too? Billy, I should be so lucky to be able to sing. I mean, he has his mother's good looks. Well, you married well, yeah. Yeah, I did. I'm married up, for sure. My father's blue eyes, and his voice is... It's got a quality that's just so unique. It's like, you know how Sting's voice? It's just unique, but totally on pitch, totally, you know. And, you know, Shane has got that... How old's your son? He's 26. Okay. Yeah, so he's working on it. God bless. Yeah. I had this note here. Where is it? Oh, I was struck, and I know you've been fired from the band, But there was a song on that album that you did with them where you say, I think I'm pretty sure it's your song, Can't You See I'll Always Be a Music Man? Aha. And I thought, well, that's fairly prophetic. You know, that actually was the song that I played for Rich Rath in my apartment. I played two songs, Holiday Inn by Elton John and Music Man, which I had literally just written. And it was the most kind of rock and roll song I'd ever kind of done. It was actually my first kind of... I consider it my first real song. Yeah, I get that. Three verses, you know, all telling a story. Yeah, I guess it was prophetic. And it was actually... There was a little manifestation in there, too, because in the... I was just singing it the other day, and the third verse, I actually sing as if I'd already attained some sort of fame, even though I hadn't. So I was hoping. I'm on the top of the mountain and I'm looking down now. Yeah. That's beautiful. So it doesn't give anything away, but you're out of the band for four years. That's my understanding. Yeah, more like three, I think about. So that's a long time to kind of, you come off the adrenaline of a tour. You know, you're hanging out with, you know, Jim Dandy. Yeah. You know, Mark Carter. I mean, come on. Amazing. Right. So, okay, now you're back in Chicago. You're back on Wells Street or wherever you are. Now what's the plan? Is there a plan? The plan was I was going to come home. My first producer was the guy who sang lead on Bend Me, Shape Me, a guy named Gary Loaizo from Chicago. American Free. Are you familiar with Gary at all? No, I don't know him, but... Yeah, he went on to produce Styx and be Styx's house sound man studio called Pumpkin Studios down on the south side. I never heard of Pumpkin Studios. Gary was an amazing singer. But I came home, I contacted Gary, Bill Trout from One Nickel Records, VJ originally, and another Gary, Gary Zulo, who worked for Triangle Productions, the original concert promoter in Chicago. And the plan was I was gonna get a solo record deal. Okay. And long story short, it never happened. Were people not interested in you, or what was the sort of general vibe? It just... it wasn't right. And looking back, it wasn't right. I understand why that didn't happen. I wasn't ready for it. But if life had turned out differently, which it didn't, what in your mind would have been the... You turn into James Taylor, you know, Dan Fogelberg, like, who are you? It's just because it's always interesting to me because you went on to so much success with the band, but like the kind of the what could have been version. So at that point in your life, what would have been the success in your mind? I mean, my band would have sounded a lot more like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Okay. Almost more American, Americana. More jangly, you know. Like Post Birds? Yeah, Rickenbacker 12, vocal harmonies. I was never the lead singer in any of my younger bands. I was always part of a harmony, of a trio of guys that sang. And each guy would sing lead on a few songs, but the big part was the three-part. But what's funny about that is by about 77, 76, maybe even, Power Pop, which Cheap Trick became associated with kind of... So if you'd actually gone down that lane, you might have had success in that because it actually became a thing, and particularly in the Midwest. Yeah, true. I mean, Cheap Trick, I mean, I heard Cheap Trick in your... You must have heard in like 75, 76, somewhere around there, right? We didn't... We've done more shows over the years with Cheap Trick. Maybe Styx and Cheap Trick are tied, but I love those guys. You know, I've known those guys fairly well through the years, and out of them, I'm closest with Rick, and I've been to Rick's house in Rockford a few times, and it's like, as you know, because you know Rick, it's like you're in Rick's house and you're like, wow, does he ever turn it off? I'm like, you're like this at home? You go to Rick's wife, he's like, does he ever turn it off? She's like, no. He's Rick Nielsen 24 hours a day. Wow. Yeah. That's funny because Dave Amato, who plays, who joined REO, been with us for 35 years, he was Gary, he took over for Gary. He played with Ted Nugent for five years. Okay. Okay. That's probably where I know his name, yeah. Yeah. So, Dave was kind of the Derek St. Holmes replacement. Right, right. And he tells a story about how he lived with Ted when he first joined the band. And he said when he was alone with Ted, they'd wake up in the morning, go in the kitchen, Ted had fresh eggs, they'd make eggs, they'd cook breakfast, just talking about whatever, you know, and it was just normal. Dave said, when one person, one other person entered the room, all bets were off. Ted turned into terrible Ted, the Motor City Madman, you know, at home. But if that person left, so it was, basically, if you were one-on-one with him, Ted kind of dropped the facade. But the minute there were two people, now it's an audience. I love that. So when Gary, I could never say, you know, the kids, we call him Rick Raff. Yeah, Rich Raff. Rich Raff, sorry. Rich Raff. He calls you, hey, come back. What's your first reaction? You must be thinking, ah. I remember what I said. My response was, it's about time you called. Because by that time... That's amazing. By that time, REO had made a couple albums with Mike Murphy singing. Murph, extremely talented dude. But he was more of like a singer-songwriter guy, right? He was more of a blue-eyed soul guy. He was all about R&B, and he played great piano, great guitar, sang, had a really unique voice. Good-looking guy, too, right? Yeah, I guess, yeah. Maybe not your type. But he was Irving's... Irving had Gary, and Irving's partner down in Champaign had Murph. So when I joined the band, the expectation was... I think the word was out that REO was maybe going to make a change at lead singer, but the expectation was it was going to be Murphy. Rich Rath came and found me. And so when I left, Murphy was the obvious replacement. So they made a couple of albums with Murph, and it never really gelled musically. Murphy's, like I say, extremely gifted, But you know Gary more country MRF was more R and it just never felt right to me Because you don strike me as a bitter person but what did you think of their musical output in the time that you were gone There was no bitterness about it. I knew that I cooked my own goose as far as that was concerned. I didn't hold it against them for firing me. But I wasn't a huge fan of those records. There was one song called Lost in a Dream that Murphy wrote with Bruce Hall, who ended up joining REO. I really dug that song. That was the title song of the middle album that they made, Lost in a Dream. But the next album, I listened to it, of course, I was curious. And I was also... I went through a pretty dark period when my solo career didn't take off. And that lasted for a good nine months of kind of isolation. Had an apartment up on Marine Drive in Chicago, little studio place that wasn't really seeing too many people. I'd stopped going down to the Wood and Nickel office, because what am I doing down there? But I met a few people, and I finally started playing again. I started going back to the clubs, playing solo. And I had a new kind of energy or something. Something was different. My voice was... I'd healed my voice, and I was just... And I started writing again. I wrote a song called Keep Pushing. I was walking down the street in downtown Chicago, and it just came to me, the cadence I was walking with, and that song was kind of like... I made a demo of it. I made a demo with it with some great Chicago players, but I thought, I could hear REO doing this song. Interesting. Yeah. And that demo got back to the band somehow. Because Irving's partner is a guy named John Barrick, who I was always closest to him with the management. So I think I must have sent that demo to John. I think John got it to the band. And they were... Well, they were smart to do that. Well, they liked what they heard, and that was the song, I think, that got me the gig back. Keep pushing. The album that you were on before you got fired, two, REO two, you know, you certainly hear the successful, it's almost like it's hard to put it this way, but let's call it the successful REO rock architecture with you singing. Like, I can hear that then. But then when you come back and it's keep on pushing, it's like, that's the band that I heard growing up. It's like all of a sudden it just all snaps into place. Could you feel that? Yeah, yeah. It was a big change. And I think the biggest thing for me was I wasn't the new guy anymore. I knew that if I, because they flew me out to L.A., because that's where they were living. And I knew that the only way it was going to work is if I were treated as an equal. Okay. Because I never was. Did you negotiate anything coming? I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about just I'm back and let's just move on. Yeah. It was in the back of my mind that I wasn't gonna be... When I first joined the band, Rich Rath would have his microphone right downstage at the far lip of the stage, but my microphone couldn't be that far up. So I'd be singing lead. I love how bands somehow... I know, bands... Bands are the weirdest... If people really knew how bands really are. Do you know that back in those days, Gary, every night after the show, He would... The audience would leave, and of course, the ground is littered with beer bottles and trash and stuff. Gary would come around to the front of the stage, and that was back in the day of the flash cubes. Every camera had a little flash cube with four flash mics. It would rotate after you. And after your fourth picture, you took it out and discarded it. He would come and look at the front of the stage at each mic position, because he wanted to make sure sure that there were the most flash cubes in front of him. And there always were. That's a new one. I heard them all, but that's a new one. And there always were. And I knew it. But I was determined that I was gonna, you know. You showed him. No, it's not that I showed him. It's a... I know, I'm just being silly. But you know what I'm saying? I didn't want to be more than him, because I knew that I wasn't. I just wanted to be equal with him. Okay. And I think when he heard Keep Pushing, I think that was a signal to him that I had kind of arrived at a new place. Sure. And I think he respected it. He liked that song. And that was the beginning of, you know, bands have an arc. Oh, yeah. And Gary and I, our arcs kind of met right after this period that we're talking about now. Yeah. I love this quote, and tell me if it's not accurate, because sometimes I tell people quotes that I find, like, I didn't say that. We play for free, but we get paid for traveling. You know, that was actually, I can't take credit for that. That was our keyboard player, Neil Dowdy. But I've- It's certainly true. I've adapted it, and I've used it for sure. um had anything shifted in the culture because you know this is and this is where the story gets really easy to tell this is where you guys start to really take off but did you feel that internally well i mean could you see it coming does it make sense did you do you start to see more people that's something click this way we we kind of felt like when i came out to la and we we rehearsed for the first time. We started with Keep Pushin', and then we started playing some of the songs off REO TWO, the album I was on, and they sounded different. They sounded better. The band sounded tighter. I was singing with more confidence. I felt more confident. And I think that that equality of spirit It kind of just manifested itself there. And we felt like we... I don't know. It wasn't anything outside the band. No, I did. I totally understand what you're saying. Yeah. But the one thing we knew we needed was... Up until then, Epic had chosen the producer. And the producer were always highly pedigreed guys. Bill Halverson from Crosby, Stills & Neck. Oh, yeah. You know, Simzik, Bill Simzik from the Eagles. I mean, big names. But for whatever reason, it just never quite worked with us. Maybe we were a little slower than these guys wanted. I don't know what it was, but we just, Gary and I made up our minds that we were going to produce the album. Interesting. And because we just figured nobody knows this band better than us. And every producer we had, we would go in with songs, and then by the time the album was done, it was like, that's not what we want the song to sound like. Was there pushback from the label on that? Well, by the time we finally got to that point, it was a live album. Peter Frampton had come out with his live album. Don't you love the music business? It's like, now you got to do a live album. Yeah. Well, no, the live album was always just like an excuse, like a bookmark the whole time while you finish writing some songs. But suddenly, Peter Frampton is on top of the world. 20 million albums or whatever the heck it was. Same songs that no one heard on his studio albums, the live ones, people liked. So they kind of paved the way for us. But Gary produced that one. I wasn't a producer on that, but I kind of was. You're talking about the live record. The live record. And I didn't get billing as a producer, and I was fine with that, but I realized that I kind of was being a co-producer. And so the next album... I want to talk about the live album, because that's where I really have strong memories. They played... You guys at that point in Chicago, like, I felt like I heard you every hour for a long time. I mean, that was the first album that got played in Chicago. Okay, I didn't know that. We were much more popular in St. Louis, Indianapolis. Was there a reason that Chicago stations were resistant to play a hometown band? Well, we weren't a hometown band. See, we were a downstate band. I know, but that's so silly to me. I know, but there was a distinction. I'm going to say this because even when Cheap Trick got to popular, it was like, well, they're from Rockford, which is like 60 miles away. I know, but Chicago was pretty... Think about that here. We're in Los Angeles. It'd be like saying you're from the Inland Empire, not from Los Angeles. That's how silly that is, but it was how it was. There was a little... Chicago saw itself as a little nacho box. At some point, I referred to Styx as a Chicago man. Somebody goes, no, they're from Dalton. It's like 20 miles away from Chicago, Dalton. I was like... I call Styx in Chicago. But I'm saying it's like, no, no, they're from Dalton. Dalton. What's Dalton? Who the fuck cares? They're from Dalton. It's a suburb. It's such a strange thing. No, dude, when I was a kid, when I was in high school, our band, Fusion, got involved in a battle of bands at Brother Rice High School, my high school. And the band that we... We thought, we got this in the bag, because only one band got paid at the battle of bands. Then we heard who our opponents were, and they were from about 10 miles east of Brother Rice. Southside, near the lake, kind of a little rougher area. They were called the TW4. And I heard that they had a keyboard player, lead singer, who was pretty talented, pretty cocky. And so they came into my high school, and we either heard the rumor or started the rumor that their girlfriends, who are a little older, they were a couple years old, a little hotter, went up to the guys and talked them out of their ticket stuff, which was the ballot. And these girls, as I have been known to say, stuffed more than their bras. Because we lost the Battle of Vands, and it turned out that that was Dennis DeYoung and the Penazzo brothers and John Curlisi. They were called the TW4. Amazing. And so we go back a long way with them. That's amazing. So I know where they're from. They're from 10 miles down 95th Street, baby. I love it. So am I wrong in remembering that Ride in the Storm Out was sort of the breakout song from that live record? Yes, it was. And again, correct me, but you had not sung the original, right? Well, I sang the original in that all my vocals are on the third album. In fact, my picture was on the album cover. Are there tapes of you singing Ride in the Storm Out from the third album session? I think there probably are. Have they ever come out? That's an interesting... I don't know. I got to dig around on that. I don't think they ever... Because I was looking, I was like... Because my memory is, of course, you singing Ride in the Storm Out. So when I went to look in the albums, I was like, well, he's out of the band here. Yeah. So I was so surprised by that. So I thought you were maybe singing somebody else's song. Yeah, no, they released it with Murphy singing lead, and it did okay. But the version on the live album, the live album was my savior, because up until then, there had been three different lead singers in the band. So we'd be pulling into town to play a gig, we'd have the local rock station on, and I would hear the radio spot for the concert, and it would be riding the storm out with the wrong guy singing. And it was so deflating. It would be like, everyone in this town is hearing that version. Now, I gotta go up there. It was hard enough as it was. But when the live album came out, now my voice was on all their best songs. It was kind of a best of album cuts. So that was the album that really helped me out big time. So if you don't mind indulging me for a second, I have a beautiful memory. Okay. My step-grandparents lived in Schaumburg, and I was out riding my bike one day, and I had a boombox in the basket of the bike. And it was one of those Chicago days where a storm was coming in. You know, you could see, you know, about 10 miles out, here comes the storm. The winds are picking up, and I'm listening to the radio, and the guy goes, you better get home or something like that, and he plays riding the storm out. and you do the introduction, you know, riding the storm out, people, or whatever you say at the beginning. And I had this incredible memory of listening to you sing as I'm trying to race the actual storm that's catching up to me on my bike. It's like somebody got a wizard out. The winds are coming up, it's starting to drizzle a little bit, and you're singing, and I timed it where I got home exactly at the end of the song. I can't make this up, and now I'm sitting with you. So it's a fantastic memory. I love that. You're forever in my heart, because it's like, I remember that moment like it was yesterday. I love that. And you know, it's so weird, and I'm sure you've experienced this. I have songs that represent a certain moment to me, but to hear that someone else has one of my songs that's that moment for them, it kind of blows my mind a little bit. It's like the ultimate... I think, sorry, for me, it's the ultimate compliment. It is, the ultimate compliment. That's what I was about to say. It's like, wow, it's so cool, right? So there I was in Schaumburg listening to you, whatever that year was. So, um, so yeah, so in Chicago, and I didn't know that you guys had, that was your first kind of breakthrough. I just remember Chicago was just like, like they, when they got on you guys, they went hard and you guys just went like this straight up. Yeah. We played Soldier Field that year. Wow. Did you headline that? Uh, we, I think we were second on the bill. Who was the headliner? I know you know. Bob Seger. Wow. Okay. Not bad. He was ahead of us. He was a little ahead of us, for sure. So the breakthrough moment comes with the next album, Can't Tune a Fish, But You Can Tune a Piano. You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish. Sorry, yeah. Which Pitchfork named one of the worst album covers ever. I saw that. Did they really? Well, that's interesting. You know, it's like, I'm digging around. I've had my battles with Pitchfork, you know. And I thought, it's like, who does a list of the worst album covers of all time? Because, you know, Chicago, we thought it was funny. Yeah. Because it's the fish and the... And there was no Photoshop back in those days. So our crew... Oh my God, you had the fish. ...went down to Long Beach Harbor, picked out the fish, drove it out to Joshua Tree. We were out there on that little lake, freezing our asses off, held the fish up, stuck the tuning fork in, got the right angle of the... I mean, there was a lot that went into that album cover. Okay. Because this is where you start to come in heavy. roll with the changes yeah great song time for me to fly thank you uh time for me to fly is where sort of like let's call it the the true appearance of like you know the the ballad side of the band is that fair i'm not saying you guys didn't play ballads but that's like that becomes the reo signature ballad like the beginning of that that run was that you asserting more uh presence in the in the the song picking and the because it seems to me that's where it starts to become more and or your band? Is that a fair way to put it? I would say that's where Gary... That's not to take away anything from Gary. Yeah, yeah. But at some point, you search yourself maybe or something. I was. You know, those songs, both those two songs you mentioned were definite confidence builders for me. Time for Me to Fly, I brought in on the album with Keep Pushing, and the producer, of course, turned it down because it only had three chords. What? I'm like, who cares how many chords... Are you listening to the Beatles? Yeah, exactly. Have you heard Tom Petty? So that was part of why I wanted to be part of the production team, because I didn't want any producer to take... I had rolled the changes in Time for the Fly, and I'm like, please, don't give these to a producer who's gonna perhaps potentially ruin them or spoil them. And so when Gary and I went to New York, we went into the to the uh president of the label and we're like who was the president at the time ron alexenberg at the time at epic and uh and there was a guy sitting in the back of the office so so we walk in and we're talking to alexander guy yeah and here's the guy sitting back there we didn't know who he was and uh we're like you know if we don't produce this album we're not going to record you know this is work this is us coming in you know and alexenberg looks at us he goes it's fine if you guys produce the album. I just ask one thing. And we're like, first of all, we're about to hit ourselves. He goes, see that guy back there reading the book? It'd make me feel more comfortable if he were in the control room with you as you're co-producing the album. His name is John Boylan. He just produced the Boston album, the debut album from Boston. The one that went 14 million copies. Great sound, too. Yes. That was the Rockman sound, the Tom Schultz sound. And the engineer is a guy named Paul Grupp, passed away recently. I loved Paul. But we're like, sure, John Boylan. And so John came in, and I loved it, because it gave Gary and I the total freedom to mold the music and to choose what we were gonna do. And John was sitting back there, and if we ever had a question, or if we ever ran into a blind canyon, we could always ask him. And he was always there. And about a month into the album, I was listening to some playbacks, and I'm like, this is not right. This is not right. We need to go back into rehearsal. Do you remember what was not right about it? I don't remember what was not right about it, but it just wasn't feeling right. Yeah, you just know, yeah. You just know. So I went to John Boylan, I took him aside, and we had become friendly over the past month. And I said, John, how crazy would it be if I asked you if we could start this, if we could leave the studio, we were at Sound City, leave the studio, go back into rehearsal, come back and start over again. And he looked at me and he said, do it. And that, I mean, you have no idea how good that made me feel, because I was afraid to say that to anybody. But when I had his imprimatur on it, I was like, okay, he must have been hearing the same thing. So we went out, went back into rehearsal for about three and a half weeks, and worked on the arrangements, and we sat up in Gary's living room. He was the only one who had a big enough house that we could, and we turned his house into our clubhouse. and we just got into it. And, you know, there were people there, and there was parties going on, and it was a whole kind of a... almost like a communal atmosphere. We worked up the songs, we started from scratch, came back to Sound City, and got into it. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty... It's fun to think back to those times. Yeah. Because you take them for granted when you're going through them, but when you ask me the question, I go, oh, yeah. No, it's just... I certainly think times where it's magical, but you don't know it's magic. Right. Because you're just so, like, tunnel vision. Right. Have you reached a point in your musical journey where you're like, okay, I'm living the rock and roll dream, this is working? You know what I mean? Yes, totally. Totally. We, at one point, Led Zeppelin had an old airplane that they used. The Doobies had the Doobie Liner, and we thought... The Doobie Liner. The Doobie Liner. So we thought, we're on the road all the time. Yeah. We need an airplane. So Irving's like, okay, I'll find you an airplane. So we show up at Santa Monica Airport. Here's this tail-dragger, old World War II plane. It was called a Lockheed Lodestar. But the Ario Wing logo there painted on the nose. And so we're now flying. We couldn't afford it. There's no way we could afford it. But we didn't want to ask any questions. We did notice guys in the airports a lot of times kind of surreptitiously taking photos. And then you thought, well, maybe these are our fans, you know? So fast forward, the pilot, who had become the sixth member of the band, says, we need to go meet the owner of the airplane. So he goes, we had a day off, took off out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. He goes, it's about an hour and a half to where the owner of the airplane is. So we're flying, we land in the middle of nowhere, this airstrip, like in the middle of the desert, Here comes this guy walking, and he looked like the bad guy in a Western. You know, his face was just like a thousand miles on bad roads. He gets on the plane, and we're always, you know, throwing around, laughing. We're, you know, we're... You're young. We're young, and we're fun. We're having a great time. He gets on the plane, and my seat was right in front of the door. It was a tail-dragger. So he gets in the plane, and it was silence. His vibe was so scary. He walks up to the front row, sits down, puts his tray table down. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I heard the sound of this snorting sound that was just like... And normally, a brother would share. No, no, no. So now we take off, we're flying, and I'm looking out the window, and normally, after 10 minutes, we're up at 10,000 feet. I'm noticing we're still right above the ground, we're like 500 feet, 500 feet, maybe 750 feet. Now we're 15 minutes into the flight. I'm like, what is going on? All of a sudden, this guy gets up, walks down the aisle, goes back into the back compartment, and I hear what sounds like giant wrenches. I'm like, what's going on? Next thing I hear is the door of the airplane opens, and the wind starts rushing in. Now I'm like, okay. I was afraid to look around. I look over my shoulder. I swear to God. He's sitting on the floor. His feet are like this, up against either side of the door. He's got a weapon. And from my seat, I could see the cows. I could see the markings on the cows. That's how close we were. He takes this thing, and it's like an Uzi or an A-cum, whatever it was. It was a combat-level machine gun. And he's like having target practice. I'm like, I can't even believe this. All of a sudden, door closes, gets up, clank, clank, clank, goes back to his seat. We never met him. No one ever introduced us. He never said a word. So fast forward. We're in our hotel in Washington, D.C. Knock, knock, knock. I look through the peephole. There's a group of young fans, and they've got a book that looked like a high school yearbook, but it said Department of Drugs, Alcohol, and Firearms. It was a department of the U.S. government. Open the page. The photo is from the perspective of an unmarked vehicle with agents with their DEA windbreakers on, drawn down in the distance. There's the airplane with the REO Speedwagon logo painted on the nose. Turned out they had, during our days off, they had been taking that plane. We were their cover, basically. And they were running guns from Mexico. The plane was found with no seats, full of Quaaludes, pot, and guns. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. Irving. Irving. That's all I got to say, Irving. I love it. God bless Irving. If he's on your side, you're in a good place. And Irving has always been on my side. He's even after our men. Despite our occasional battles, I think Irving still likes me somewhere in there. Have you had your moments? I have had my... I believe the last time Irving wrote me an email, he said I was destroying my life. What was the context? What were you doing to destroy your life? We had been, Irving had a management, I call it a pyramid structure. I don't mean that as a pejorative, kind of like, you know, Irving sits atop, he kind of oversees all these junior managers. It was called frontline at the time. I think it's been disbanded at some point. So we were working with a couple managers under Irving's aegis. Yes. And in the beginning, Irving was very invested, and as time went on, and it didn't turn into the big reunion tour that everybody anticipated, Irving got less and less interested. The managers and I, at some point, didn't see eye to eye. And, you know, I basically called the managers and said, I'm going to leave. But it was peaceful. I'm still, you know, I would go out to lunch with either of the managers now. I still love Irving. and just as I was about to go out the door, I get a long email from Irving basically saying, you're destroying your life. If I could put it in a nutshell, and I don't think he was wrong in what he was suggesting and I don't think he would be mad even with me sharing this. He basically was saying, every artist in your position at some point has to accept that it's more about the past than the future. And, you know, you face those challenges, I face those challenges, And maybe a fan wouldn't understand it. You know we all start as young people with a dream And at some point if somebody kind of taps you on the shoulder and says you know it really more about what in the rear view mirror than what in the front windshield That a hard day to kind of reconcile even if you disagree, because why are they tapping on the shoulder? They're trying to tell you something. So Irving in his very Irving way. And, and, and again, I love Irving and have nothing to respect for him. I think he was trying to tell me it's that moment in your life. And I wrote him back very nicely. And I said, Irving, you don't know me. And here I am, some 15 years later and the band's bigger than ever. We're still releasing new music. I've just done an opera in Chicago, you know, that's focused on one of my past records, but I've completely reinterpreted it in a different way. So I don't think Irving saw that capability in me. And I don't mean this disrespectfully to Irving. I just don't think Irving understands the psychological mentality of an alternative artist. And when I say alternative, I mean an artist who came up in in the Gen X late eighties, early nineties generation, because we came just like when you were inspired by those artists in the sixties, who at the time, the Neil Young's and the stills, they were all counterculture artists. Absolutely. Well, we were counterculture artists in a different generation. So just like those artists, you play by a different set of rules. You're never going to pull a Graham Nash or Steven stills or, or a Neil Young or David Crosby and tell them that they have to play by the rules. no matter how many times you tell them, no matter how many times you tell them, the music business is going to change. They're like, we changed the world. And you can't take that out of somebody's DNA if they're one of those types of artists. And we were absolute total punks. We got away with murder with the stuff we did. So when somebody taps you on the shoulder and says it's time to be an adult, you think, it's not really my gig. Well, you're more the exception than the rule, too. Oh, absolutely. And so from Irving's point of view, you can see why he would have said that. That's why I said, I don't take it disrespectfully, yeah. Yeah, but from your point of view, it makes perfect sense what you did. I thought it was insane. Yeah. I thought it was insane, because I'm like, I got plenty of years to mess things up. Right. So, thank you for listening. So, let's just talk, because, you know, there's only so many people who reach the top of that particular mountain in the next record, the high-fidelity record. High-infidelity, yes. High-infidelity, sorry. uh i mean you guys hit the absolute top of that particular mountain for that particular time yeah we kind of did we kind of did that was uh 10 million records the record goes diamond yeah and we share that in common we both had diamond records i noticed that that's a pretty exclusive club we're in right it is so you did it yeah and uh i i mean i know you've been asked about it a million times uh of course you know the great hit number one record i mean just just whatever you want to say about i'm happy to just you know because i because i'm i like to not ask the question that everybody asks you so you talk about whatever you want to talk about in that experience well i i can say that that the the experience of recording that album that that went on to become high infidelity you don't know what it's going to become you're just writing songs yeah it's just another record, you're going. Making demos. And so we made demos of 10 songs, and then we took a week off to listen to the demos. I think the demos are out, right? They're part of the deluxe package. The album is at least 50% those demos. Oh, wow. Yeah, we couldn't beat them. Ah, you know what we call in the biz, demo-itis. Yeah. But in our case, I was the only one who, I heard these demos, I listened to him over and over and over, driving around LA, and I was like, I'm starting to fall in love with the way, not just the songs. Normally, I hear the demos like, oh, we got to put this here, we got to move this. I'm listening, I'm going, this is, I don't see that much work that I have to do on this, on the arrangement side, or on the lyric side, or it sounded really good to me. Gary had some guitar parts that were just like, how did he do that? You know, the feedback that opens the album, we could never duplicate that. But I had to convince the band. Really? Yeah. And the engineer, who, you know, it was just a rough demo. And I'm like, these are... So we went back to the studio, played Beat the Demo, finally couldn't do it. And we ended up using the demos as the foundation and built the album on those tracks. So I just feel like... And then the album goes on to be one of the biggest albums there is. It just... I like the fact that it started so organically, that there was no... You know, REO Speedwagon gets a rap for... that we somehow manufactured the power ballad. And, hey, of course we wanted our record to get played on the radio. Who doesn't? But Keep on Loving You, I woke up in the middle of the night, kind of felt my way down the hallway of my little house in Woodland Hills, sat at my little Wurlitzer red plastic piano that Gary Loizo had owned, and played that little piano part of Keep on Loving You, wrote those verses, and I know where it came from. you know it just happened and there it was and was so i went back to bed because it was i was too tired next day i go into sir where we were rehearsing and i immediately sat at the piano and started playing those verses over and over again you can imagine the band is sitting there going what the is this guy doing when is he going to stop playing this stupid and you're in a rock and roll band i'm in a rock and roll band and there's a certain type of song that's an reo Speedwagon song, and some songs are not REO Speedwagon songs. And I would contend that if a member of REO Speedwagon writes a song... So, I'm sitting there playing this, all of a sudden, and I didn't have a chorus, and I'm just playing along, and it's kind of dark, and then this chorus came to me, and it's like this hopeful chorus. And Rich Raff, I don't know, I don't exactly know what was in his head, but at some point, he got up, plugged in his left pawl with a curly cord directly into a Marshall, which is how we used to play. Sometimes he had a wah-wah pedal, that was it. And he started playing along with me. Or he might have just been trying to drown me out so I would stop playing this stupid slow song. At one point, we kind of hit on something. And I'll never forget, I stood up at the piano and I looked at him, and we looked at each other, and it was like, we kind of knew that something had... Some brain cells had something had sparked. It was like, oh, this is what we've been trying to do for the last four years. Without thinking that we were trying to do it. I get what you're saying. It came from an organic place. It wasn't a record company thingamajiggy. I think it became that. No, trust me, that's on the piece of paper next. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. So, you guys end up having two number ones. That's one of them. And I think the next one is on the next record. You know, classics. I mean, you can't, they're worldwide phenomenon songs, you know, once you have one of those songs. So, as a guy who grew up listening to the rock side of the band, I didn't understand it. And I'm sure you got that from a lot of, like, fans, right? Like, what is this, right? is that REO Speedwagon, you know, the band I grew up with. So I don't need you to speak to it necessarily in the personal because I think it's more interesting to me that Chicago ended up doing it. You guys certainly leaned into it. Why wouldn't you? You just had a massive record. But looking backwards, you know, it's the stuff of people getting married. But isn't it interesting, I don't know, you tell me, but that these road-tested bands that really came out of rock, progressive rock, 60s music, it ended up turning into this other thing, which some people kind of go, I don't know about all that. You know, a lot of DX7 all of a sudden, if you get the joke. I do. You know, even the Doobies, right? I mean, who were basically kind of almost like a bar band. Jam band, yeah. Yeah. I mean, they got Michael McDonald, and they went down that. So as a fan of the time, it seemed like it suddenly was like somebody flipped a switch somewhere and suddenly everybody's doing ballads and and in the 80s it was the same complaint with the hair metal bands that they all went uh ballad crazy too so well that was the way to get your record on the radio and but but for us we were kind of like time for me to fly you mentioned time for me to fly there was no piano in time for me to fly that was a that was a pure guitar song it was a folk song and and so for us it wasn't so much ballads. It was just mixing kind of hard rock with folk songs. Can I say it slightly differently, though? Okay. I think you're a really strong rock singer. Some people, like, you know, they're better at one thing or another, but you sing rock very, very well. And like I said, I always identified with you as a rock singer. So it wasn't like I couldn't identify you with you as a ballad singer, but something about the way you sang ballads, it was like, oh, there's this other thing that you do. And maybe the definition of the time, the times, of course, is part of it. But you seem to step forward and sort of like, I don't know, it's like, I don't wanna say it's the best you, that's the wrong way to put it. It's like all of a sudden there's this other version of you too. Like it was one plus one equals seven or something. And that seemed to expand the vision of the band. I didn't understand as a fan at the time, but as a writer now, I get it like, oh, okay. How could you not go there? there because you were really good at it it's not like you were bad at it it was obviously the public agreed yeah i i think i'm a better rock singer than i am a bad i i have to sing ballads because i write them sometimes but uh but yeah and we did we what after high infidelity the record company definitely started oh yeah it's like we want another one yeah we have about seven more of those if you can. Yes, could you please? And everyone in the band was like, yeah, let's go back in the studio. And I'm sitting there going, with what? I have unfinished songs. I'm not ready to go back in the studio. I still haven't digested the phenomenon of what just happened to me. Billy, you know, it changes your life. Suddenly, you're clawing to be recognized and you want to be famous. And now you can't sit down and have an Italian dinner with your family without somebody coming up and asking for a picture and autograph for... And even worse than that, I always thought that fame and fortune and hit records would cure everything. All the insecurities would go away. Everything would... And so when you get to the top of the mountain and you're like, oh, sh**, not only is it not curing all this stuff, it's exacerbating it. Sure. People are looking at you, and you're hiding all this stuff, and now everyone's looking at you, and it makes it harder to hide when people are looking at you. So my mind was blown. I was like, oh, my God, this is crazy. Well, the rest of the guys in the band are like, let's go. And I'm like, you guys are out of your mind. Hey, write another one of those things, Kevin. Yeah, you're out of your mind, you know. um so uh i i googled or something i i asked uh you know whatever one of these ai systems how many records have you sold in your in your musical life over 40 million really yeah so i should probably get a royalty check then at some point well i can't speak i can't speak to your deals. We should, we truly, we recouped by that. But look, the band, at least from my perspective is an institutional band. So as a way to kind of bring it to a restful thing, you know, the most recent news, and I don't do click bait. So I'm not asking you for the dirt on the kerfuffle with the band, with the name and the thing and you on your own and all that. But what I am, I guess what I'm after is, I just thought, you know, maybe the easiest thing to do is try to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You've got, you know, huge songs that are crossover hits. You know, you're singing ballads that are still being played in Thai cafes, right? Two things occur to me. Number one, you stay with the band, and you've stayed with the band up until really recently. You guys just toured last year as the time of us taping this but secondarily you resisted the temptation because i'm sure somebody went to you and said hey you know it might be time to jump off the ship if you want a lot more money and it can be about you and because we've all been in that so i guess what i'm saying in a very kind of amorphous way is uh not do you regret staying not do uh had you wish you'd have a solo thing It's like, where does that all land for you in 2025, the time we're taping this? Are you cool with it? If you've reached the end of the road with the band, with that group of people, like, how do you sit with all that? Because it seems to me, and this may be an unfair way to put it. and again, I'm putting myself in your shoes, if I'd stayed loyal to my band through the thick and thin, through the great gigs and the bad gigs and the county fairs and the fans wanting to hear Keep On Loving You for the 8,000th time and all of the stuff that only people like us kind of know what that feels like, it's not a bad thing. It's just a particular type of pressure. Where do you sit with all that? Are you at peace? Are you, you know, like, because you don't strike me as somebody who's got any, you know, what's the axe to grind. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Yeah. No, I really don't, Billy. During the pandemic, I think people tend to downplay the impact that the pandemic had on everyone. And it's really easy to look in the rear view mirror and say, ah, it was nothing. You know, people overreacted. But I was one of the guys who would be washing down my groceries at home. So the pandemic, it just shut everything down. You know, I was walking to Soundcheck on Friday the 13th, Friday, March 13th, 2020, when the plug got pulled. But what happened is I was home for a year and a half, and I really started to like it. I liked seeing not just my kids' ballgames and graduations. You have six, right? No, I don't. That's somehow, I know. I should have warned you about that. A touring musician. Yes. Who knows? Maybe there are some that I don't know about. If you are, hello. I love you. Yes. But that time really affected me. And I started kind of reassessing some things. And I started wanting to reach further. I think Ariel Speedwagon had kind of, you know, with Gary's death, Gary leaving the band was difficult. His death was difficult. And I think I was wanting a little more. And not necessarily outside the band. I wanted to lift the band in some way. uh tommy shaw and i have be became friends in in the year 2000 and he has a similar uh tommy shaw from sticks he has a similar idea as i do and he um we kind of balance each other and and uh uh so i'm getting a little lost here but but i i wanted to lift the band i wanted to stay within the confines of REO Speedwagon, but I hired a vocal coach. And I started working on my singing, working to really get the most that I possibly can out of my voice, to put the most emotion into the songs, to really get that thing that Becca Bramlett showed me back in the day in Nashville. And so I really started working hard. And when I leave here, I'm going to my vocal coach. He's in the neighborhood. And so I really started putting in the 10,000 hours on my voice. So when the band got back together after the pandemic, I was psyched. And some of the guys in the band shared that excitement, and some of the guys didn't. And so it became a little bit of a, like, wait a what's going on here you know and um so uh there was a little bit of a of a of a chasm uh opening within the band and then then uh uh you know bruce hurt himself uh our bass player bruce who was my my sidekick every every side project that i ever did bruce was always part of it and we were just simpatico. Musically, he was a Beatles guy, as I am. But Bruce hurt his back a long time ago, and I had been working on a presentation for the band for a Las Vegas residency, which has to be different than what you do on tour. So the idea was to perform the entire High Infidelity record all the way through with a massive audiovisual presentation, different, very theatrical in a way, but still rock and roll. But I put a lot of work into it with our content and lighting director, Paul Dexter. And when Bruce heard himself, it was a week before we were supposed to open in Vegas. And I put a year of work into this. And people buy tickets for all over the world to come in for a residency. And so I didn't want to lose the residency. And I said, Bruce, you've got to go home, take care of yourself, you know? And he did. And I just was, if there's a way to salvage this thing, I'm going to salvage it. And it just so happened that Elton John had retired, and his bass player, who's named Matt Bissonette, Greg Bissonette's brother, all friends of ours. and Matt came out, learned our entire set list overnight, came in with a stack of charts, read the charts for a couple of days, threw the charts away, and there's something happened in the band, and it just, and I was trying to lift the band, now I felt the band lifting me, and I felt myself, and I was in the midst of this, of this, taking these vocal and suddenly there was this new energy. Someone, uh, one of the guys in Elton's band told me, uh, not long ago, he goes, Matt Bissonette's the kind of guy where any band he's in, the band gets better. And so it was just like, unplanned. Completely unplanned. Life just sometimes happens. And then what do you do? Right. So that was kind of the scenario, because I think I love Bruce, and I think he might feel like I was out to get him. I've heard that from people, that there's a feeling there, and it's just not the case at all. I hold no ill feelings toward him. It just became an impossible situation where it's always been my job, I felt, especially since Gary left. I remember the day that I was either going to go and do a solo album or stick with REO Speedwagon. I was standing with John Barrick, and John said, well, if you're going to end the band, I guess we got to empty the lockers, sell the equipment. And it was like the ice water thing where they pour ice water in your head. I was just like, wait, what? That just blew my mind. And I thought at that moment, I haven't really given this my all yet. Because before it was Gary and I, and then the band, of course, Alan and Neil and Bruce were all part of it, but Gary and I were sitting in the front seat of the roller coaster, you know? And so I felt it was my job to continue to keep REO Speedwagon moving forward. My relationship with Tommy Shaw and our relationship with Styx helped that, because Tommy felt the same way about Styx. Tommy joined Styx right about the same time I rejoined REO. And there was talk of Tommy and I being in a band together for a hot second. But, um, so there was never any preconceived notion on my part that I thought that REO Speedwagon would ride into the barn, we would all retire at the same time as friends, the crew would be with us. Life is funny that way, though, right? I know. It just didn't work out that way. And it's been a year for me of kind of my mind being a little blown by that, because like you said it, REO Speedwagon is an American institution of sorts. And so there's a lot of people that are disappointed by the fact that REO Speedwagon has put out a statement saying that we're not going to ever tour again. So, um, but the good news is, is that for the last four months, where normally I'd be thinking about the 2026 tour, I haven't been thinking about that for the first time in 50 years. so it's a so my and my wife was out of town my wife went down to florida uh and reconnected with she wanted to hang out with her sisters down there she loves her family she's a wisconsin girl beautiful i love her to death without her i'm not sitting here right now but um so i'm home by myself back from the road and not thinking about the next tour it's like who am i what am i what What am I doing? I'm laughing because I know this feeling. You know the feeling. Oh, absolutely. So it's like, what am I going to do? And what I found myself falling into is challenging myself. You know, when you're on tour, I don't know if your tours were the same as this, but our tours were very male-oriented. We had one woman on the crew. Our band is all men. I know you've had a female in the band before. I'm not sure how that works. So your male friend group is pretty much spoken for. But I had a few male friends at home, you know, husbands of my wife's friends who I've been close to. But I'm like, I'm gonna... One of the neighbors was walking his dogs. Great guy. His name's Michael E. Dell. Brilliant. I've always loved him, never really hung out with him. So we went out and had sushi together. So I've been, just like Pat Benatar and Bryan Adams played the Forum, and Tommy, who you might have met, manages Pat and Spider, and said, come down to the Forum, see the show. I'm like, I'm going to sit in traffic for two hours to see someone else's show at the Forum? And I'm like, yes, I am going to do that. And I did. And Billy, it was just like this inspiring, mind-expanding feelings that I had being there. So I'm just challenging myself and pushing myself. One of our neighbors up at the beach invited me to go out on a little boat ride with him out to the islands, to the Channel Islands. I'm like, okay, let's go. You know, so that's kind of where my head is at now. I'm just like, I'm going to finish my book that I've been working on for nine years. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm not going to be living between tour legs for the first time in 50 years. And you know how that is. I understand this very deeply. You're out, you're out for three weeks. You come home for 10 days. It takes you 10 days to catch up and everything you missed in the three weeks, and then you're gone. Out you go. So, yeah. So here we are. Well, my last question I was going to ask you is to ask you to define happiness, but I think you just did. Well, as a matter of fact, it's funny you should say that, because when my wife got back from Florida, I was sharing some of this with her, and I said, I said, Lisa, I feel like I'm fighting for my happiness. And she said, well, that sounds kind of negative, fighting and happiness. And I said, well, I don't feel like it's negative. I feel like I'm fighting for it, like I have to push myself. And she kind of helps push me too. She always has. That's been kind of a piece of our relationship. She's a brilliant woman. I met her, she worked for David Geffen, back in the day. And yeah, she believes in me, sometimes more than I believe in myself. And she pushes me to, when she hears me wanting to challenge myself, she's like, yeah, that sounds good. Do that. Yeah. Thank you. I love talking to you. Thank you, Billy. Thank you so much. What a pleasure. Thank you.