Okay, I'm going to admit right off the back that I'm not a huge REO Speedwagon fan. At all. I will also admit to buying two REO Speedwagon albums in my life, "You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish" (based solely on the fact that the ten-year-old me really dug the title) and "Hi-INFidelity" because my tastes were not nearly as developed as they are today (!).
I remember scoring tickets to see the Steve Augeri-led Journey in Las Vegas just after Journey's "Arrival" CD had come out. I realized I'd never seen a once-great band perform minus their original lead singer and thought it would be interesting. Plus it was at Mandalay Bay and any excuse to go to Vegas, for me, is one I will accept.
I mention this concert because the opening act that night was REO Speedwagon.
Let's jump into the wayback machine, shall we? Whether you like REO or not, theirs is one of the most unusual career archs in rock & roll, harking back to a time when labels took a whole different approach than they do today.
After forming in the late 60's the band was signed to Epic Records and released their self-title debut record in 1971. It sold maybe a dozen copies. That may sound like an exaggeration and, yes, I admit that it is. I rounded up to a dozen.
Singer Terry Luttrell jumped ship to join Starcastle and Kevin Cronin was brought in as his replacement.
Undaunted by low sales and personnel changes, the label funded a second album, "R.E.O./T.W.O." a year later. It sold even fewer copies than the first one had.
With the label still behind them, they began work on a third album, but Cronin's growing differences with Richrath led him to quit the band during the sessions. He was replaced by Mike Murphy and the band released two albums in 1974; "Riding The Storm Out" and "Lost In A Dream". Both of these albums managed to hit the Top 200 Albums chart. "Riding The Storm Out", for example, included the soaring title track that succeeded in getting moderate radio airplay throughout the Midwest. Heck, "Lost In A Dream" actually hit the Top 100, although I have no idea why. There's not a single song from that album I've ever heard on the radio, or, come to think of it, heard period. Murphy and the band then recorded the aptly-titled "This Time We Mean It" in '75 and continued to build upon their success. The album peaked at #74. It included a cover of the Eagles' "Out of Control".
Then, as luck would have it, Cronin returned to the band in 1976 and they issued the album "R.E.O.", losing much of the ground they had made during Murphy's tenure. The album crawled to a lowly chart position of #159. Still, the band's label remained dedicated to the cause it seems. In and around the band's hometown of Champaign, IL, they were the next best thing to the Beatles, playing major venues to sold-out crowds. That alone must have kept the brass at Epic confident that, at some point, the rest of the country would catch on. Of course, as far as recording budgets go, the least expensive album is a live album and so the band released their first concert album "LIVE: You Get What You Play For" in 1977. Aside from being inexpensive and quick to record, it achieved their highest chart position, #72. Within months of its release, the rejuvenated band was playing sold-out gigs and recording their next studio album, which would be released in 1978. The album was the aforementioned "You Can Tune A Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish", which included a little song called "Roll With The Changes" that got a lot of album-rock radio airplay and became the band's first charting single. The album also made it to #29.
Keep in mind that this was their eighth album for the label.
Would the band have been given that much of a chance if signed to the Epic Records of today? Heck no.
The 70's were a time when major labels developed artists. Bands like Journey, Styx and Cheap Trick, for example, took a few albums to hit their commercial stride and had the support of people at their respective labels who believed that success would come in time.
But I've never seen a situation like REO's, where it took eight albums to finally hit paydirt.
Of course, Epic must have looked like geniuses when the band's eleventh album, "Hi-INFidelity" hit #1 and scored the band's first #1 single in "Keep On Loving You".
To this day, REO has sold over 40 million records. Epic's investment in the band during the lean years has obviously paid off and the fact that they released so many albums gives Epic a larger catalog to exploit, thereby continuing to sell copies of the band's records to this day.
That is something lost on the bean counters that rule the industry these days and see no problem in cutting their losses early. If a band's first album doesn't sell enough copies, or create some reason for there to be interest in a second record, the band is dropped. All money invested in the band is lost and the label starts from scratch with someone else.
In R.E.O.'s case, the first ten years of their career saw the recording of eleven albums and the development of a band - and a brand - that eventually became very popular.
By comparison, ten years of labels cutting their losses when a band's album fails to meet expectations leaves them with no bands, no brands, and no back catalog.
Maybe the industry has forgotten that the only thing that kept them afloat through the latter part of the 80's and into the 90's, aside from the occasional hit album, was the fact that the introduction of a new format - in this case the compact disc - led millions to re-buy their music collections. Thus, back catalog sales thrived and the industry flourished.
The growing bean counter mentality at most labels, however, has failed to recognize this in their rush to score immediate hits at the expense of artist development. The result is that there are few bands from the 90's, for example, with anything remotely approaching the sizeable back catalogs of bands like R.E.O., Journey, or Styx, to name just a few.
Third Eye Blind, by comparison, came out with their first album in 1997 and sold six million copies. They have released only two albums of new material in the ten years since.
This "live for today" industry mindset has eaten away at the industry's foundation, leaving only a hollow shell. Gold parachutes fly out of every window as executives continually fail upward by ignoring the obvious fact that this industry - and their paychecks - are funded by the continuing sales of albums that came out twenty and sometimes thirty years ago, back when labels took the time to develop bands (and, again, brands) over the course of several albums.
Unless they return to this sort of mindset, the major label system will implode upon itself. Until then, there are hundreds of worthy bands not getting the attention they deserve, held prisoner by a business that is in such steep decline that it sees quick hits and big opening weeks as the only answer. The industry sees no reason to take the slow road of "artist development, even to save itself. Unlike any other industry that reacts responsively to changing consumer patterns for its own preservation, the music industry would rather spend itself broke to get us to buy the new Fergie single, all the while copies of "Dark Side of The Moon."
Roll with the changes, indeed.
[Music Reviews Update]
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