The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan
Kevin Cronin | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan
21 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What influences shaped Kevin Cronin's upbringing in Chicago?
I remember I stepped on 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 that's 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.
OK, you tell me, because you were in the room.
I was fired. 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 you my almost my entire life so you couldn't help it you were from chicago in chicago we'll talk about that but um uh i want to start here uh Born in Evanston, Illinois? Is that accurate? Mm-hmm. So I was born in Chicago in the lakes.
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. Yeah. 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, REO Speedwagon, important, what you guys were talking about important. It certainly resonated with the world that I grew up in.
So, let's sort of start there, if you want to talk about sort of your upbringing and kind of... 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.
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Chapter 2: How did Kevin Cronin get involved with REO Speedwagon?
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. 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 um talking about a little about your background because i think these things are so valuable as a fellow songwriter um dad world war ii yeah what branch of the service was your dad in he was in the army they plucked him out of lyola 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 or... 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 know... Well, first of all, my dad sent me a clipping from the Chicago Tribune that basically got me out of going to Vietnam.
If I wouldn't have seen this little article, 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 Chicago, 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.
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Chapter 3: What led to Kevin Cronin's firing from REO Speedwagon?
So he was, you know, one guy away from him. You know? Uh, 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. 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... 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, I can't live like this.
This kind of, does that resonate with your experience? Totally.
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 that was, 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? I saw it. It's amazing how many artists they inspired, right? It's mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling. An artist 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, I mean, 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 to kind of... 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.
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Chapter 4: How did Kevin Cronin's solo career unfold after leaving REO Speedwagon?
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 intense. 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 my... Maybe my artistic...
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 happens to kids in the spectrum of things that can happen to you when you're a kid.
Yeah.
This was pretty... I'm pretty lucky that that's what my problem was.
Yeah, but still, it struck me as a 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... Right. Puts them in a spot where they have to go inward to figure something out and that it becomes part of the faculty that they later discovered to communicate.
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Chapter 5: What was the significance of 'Keep On Loving You' in Kevin's career?
They came out of 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, 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.
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Chapter 6: How did Kevin Cronin's return to REO Speedwagon impact the band?
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, 60, yeah. I was a junior, senior in high school. And that, I bought that record, I was waiting for that record. I went, I used to, my band used to make demos on my Tiak 4-track. Okay. And I was convinced that the only machine that our music sounded good on was that exact particular Tiak 4-track.
So I went down to Creative Artists Agency, which became CAA, but it was, they had an office in Chicago, and somehow I got, 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 CA office holding a giant TEAC four-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, 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.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did REO Speedwagon face during their rise to fame?
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.
Yeah.
Sorry, I interrupted you.
Yeah, no, no, no. $148. Yeah, $148 at 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.
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Chapter 8: How does Kevin Cronin view his journey and the future of REO Speedwagon?
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.
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, Styx, Cheap Trick... You know, it's hard to explain to people who don't understand, but there was an earnest quality to Midwestern music.
Maybe it 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 in the corner, but I still want to get out of here. Right. You know, there's something about that that'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 coasts, we were made fun of for that. You guys were. Oh, yeah.
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