REO Speedwagon

• Genre: AOR
• Hometown: Champaign-Urbana
• REO Speedwagon Website

About

From the late '70s through the 1980s, REO Speedwagon packed arenas with AOR fans who had big hearts for ballads and no taste for the harder side of rock. From the baby, I'm-yours-forever power punch of "Keep on Loving You" to the yank out the hankie and fly the red lighter angst of "Can't Fight This Feeling," REO took your lovelorn, your downtrodden, and your bad Supercuts hairdos and gave them all hope that New Wave would not steamroll all of '70s rock. "Roll With the Changes" and "Time for Me to Fly" took to the charts with the other vein of REO inspirations--more along the lines of pick yourself up by the jeans and do your own thing, man. In this new decade, the band picks themselves up out of Los Angeles very rarely, really only leaving their hometown to help die hard fans who can't fight the REO feeling anymore ring in the New Year in Vegas casinos.

- Jennifer Maerz