Ouch! Mainstream American Arena rock iwas dealt a horrible blow when REO showed up. Arena rock pretenders is closer to the truth. No doubt, the guitar player could light it up and was all that was good about the band.
Cronin could not ever sing a note and they heavily modified his vocals on the albums to make him sound more human than he really was. Maybe they had what, three hits? Their albums were uniformly bad in retrospect, including hi-inf-- just my opinion. Of course, I had many friends that loved them for the whole guitar hero thing. REO falls into the *Journey* category for me. Bad band, good guitarist -- sugar flavored (wish we were Aerosmith) rock trash... Always the trailer(trash) band for more worthy great bands of their era
Boston, Chicago, Yes, SuperTramp and other big-sound bands at least had real talent, excellent writing and charismatic leads. Styx as well, had top to bottom talent, great song writing and skilled musicians at every instrument. Quick, name the Roy Bittan wannabe on the keys for REO, the drummer? All journeymen. There were no Dennis DeYoungs, Bill Brufords or Roger Hodson's playing for REO...
My grade school age daughters were watching some singing show called do you know the lyrics or something like that a few weeks back, and called me to see if I knew who the special guest star was. There was Cronin, sounding even worse than I'd have imagined, hobbling his way through wrecthed pop tunes... oh yeah, they were icons alright... :o)
All in fun really. Have to admit I may have done my guitar hero act to one or another tune of theirs way back when (Riding The Storm Out?). Hell, I was only 17 after all... It;s my 45 year old brain now that thinks they sucked...
