Kevin Cronin

He didn't want to do it all himself.

Sure.

So he saw my one-ed hanging in the Chicago Guitar Gallery, a little flyer.

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.

I was 21, he was 23.

Well, kind of regionally.

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 Madman Across the Water.

The first cut on side two of Mad Men Across 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.

Okay.

I thought, sure, I was the only one in the world who ever heard it, and Gary felt the same way.