From: Kevin Cronin
Subject: Re: Fandom
Hey Bob,
Back in the Roaring Eighties, REO tour manager, now my personal manager, Tom Consolo was famous for his ubiquitous “roll of hundreds.” I once kicked and shattered an automatic plate glass door in the Little Rock airport, because it came too close to hitting me. (Of course, I was walking through on the wrong side!) Tom was there in a flash, peeled off a healthy batch of “hunskies”, and saved my ass, once again. Ah yes, the good old days when frontmen could live life as they pleased and float comfortably above the law. You do make mention of a certain “frontman” who has managed to retain that privilege to this day. But that’s not why I am responding here.
I want you to know that I appreciate the name-check, albeit in a difficult context. It’s not like I didn’t understand the power of the REO Speedwagon name and logo. When my friend Rob Light (CAA) reminded me of examples such as Daryl Hall, Ann Wilson, and John Fogerty, all amazing singers, songwriters, and front-persons, I understood what Rob was saying. But I feel it is safe to say that all of them, myself included, are musicians first, and let the music lead the way.
The Kevin Cronin Band has fed my soul in so many ways, and revived an energy in me that I didn’t even realize I was craving. Was it the best business decision? Hell no. But I knew that going in. Our summer tour with Styx, (who have always had my back, and me theirs), is in its final weekend: St Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The circle is complete, as Milwaukee’s Busch Stadium was the final stop REO’s 1981 Hi Infidelity tour.
That said, I feel like I am just hitting my stride. I am going on five years with my vocal coach, the great Jeffrey Allen. Just finished a rocking new song with my long-time friend and collaborator, Richard Marx. Zeroing in on completing my memoir. I love the fans. I’m still hungry. I am not done yet! … kc
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From: William Perkins
Subject: Re: Released In September 1970
"Idlewild South" by The Allman Brothers Band:
Idlewild South was the name of a fishing lodge where the band briefly stayed and often partied. It was located in the countryside just outside of Macon and was a favorite fishing spot of Duane's. Don't know if the name had any connection with the NY airport name? I was with the band when they played the track from that album "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'." for Eric Clapton at Criteria Studios just before Duane joined the Layla sessions. I will never forget the look on Eric's face as he listened to Duane's slide work. Neither of the first two albums sold very well until they were paired as "Beginnings" later and went gold.
Willie Perkins
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From: Gary Gold
Subject: Re: Pretzel Logic
Bob,
I must’ve played “Pretzel Logic” with Donald Fagen fifty times. Maybe more. It was never a question—it always found its way into the setlist, whether we were at the Lone Star on one of those electrifying birth of the whole damn thing New York Nights or upstate at Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, where the air smelled like Chinese food and patchouli and the band smelled like guitar strings.
The funny thing is, I can barely remember what we called half of those shows. Libby’s Place? Uptown Lone Star Nights? The names blurred, but the music never did. “Pretzel Logic” was the anchor, the secret handshake. And sometimes—every so often—it became a kind of religious experience.
There’s one night burned into my head. Lone Star Café. Donald at the keys, doing that thing he does where he makes irony sound like gospel. Mac Rebennack tossing lightning bolts across the room with his voodoo piano. Phoebe Snow took a verse, and the whole place held its breath because she could crack your heart open with a single note. And then there was Mindy Jostyn—criminally underrated, a true narcissus in full bloom that night—stepping up, taking her verse, and blowing the roof off the joint. Drew Zingg on guitar and Libby Titus (the ultimate connector… whose spirit carried on in her daughter Amy at Levon’s Barn.)
That was a once-in-a-lifetime molotov cocktail moment. Those people. That tune.
It was a blues. Infinitely, deceptively playable. We played that tune everywhere, with every combination of misfits and geniuses you could imagine. And it never got old. Sometimes ragged, sometimes transcendent, but always the real thing.
And then today—reading you Bob, going on about “Pretzel Logic”—it triggered something. A flood. The kind of memory you don’t summon, it just ambushes you. Suddenly I’m back in that sweaty club, watching Donald lean into the mic, hearing Phoebe wrap her voice around the lyrics, seeing Mindy light the place up. It hit me like a freight train…
That’s the thing about music. You think it’s just another blues until it’s not. Until one night, with the right people in the right room, it becomes a time machine, a soul-killer, a resurrection all at once.
So yeah, “Pretzel Logic.” Fifty times or more. But that night at the Lone Star? That one was everything.
Thanks for reminding me Bob.
Gary Gold
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Subject: RE: As For Me...
Hey Bob,
At 75 I really understood your penultimate communication, I and my best friend of 50 years, same age, have been drifting along through 20 years of retirement, still enjoying most of the cultural and consumable parts of old age as if we were still 30, until a few months ago we both had check ups, and we are now both in the middle of treatment for cancers, mine a nice dual package of bowel/prostate and his a nastier version of the viral throat cancer that was made famous by Michael Douglas, it’s strange, I smoked for 40 years and got the big C down south, he never smoked and got it in the neck, and he swears he can’t recall having oral sex with over a thousand women like Kirk’s little boy apparently did which apparently can spread the virus that causes the type they both acquired.
Needless to say, our outlook and lifestyles have been abruptly inhibited by the treatments and their side effects, and we like many of our contemporaries blissfully never thought it would happen to us… until it did. Prognoses are fairly positive, so we are still rockin’ in the free world (Ha!) for now at least, but the aura of invincibility is long gone…
Cheers from Oz,
Tony Barnes
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From: George Kahn
Subject: Re: As For Me...
If you ask 100 people how they want to die, 90% will say, "I want to be healthy and active until the day I die".
BUT if you are healthy and active, you probably aren't going to die yet! So what is your plan?
Get ready, it's coming.
_____________________________________
From: MIke Garson
Subject: The Darwin Poison Exposed (Ageism)
There’s a discrimination nobody talks about. It’s not in the headlines, it’s not on the protest signs. But it’s everywhere: age.
When you’re young, the world loves you. You’re “productive.” You can grind, hustle, stay up all night. The bodies move faster, the sex is rampant, the energy seems endless. Nobody questions your value.
But the moment you hit 70 or 80, society quietly files you under done.
Doesn’t matter if you’re writing, recording, teaching, creating every day.
The assumption is: you’ve had your time. You’re expendable.
The root of it is Darwin’s old program—survival of the fittest, natural selection. Somewhere in the back of people’s minds, they justify it: “The old ones are weaker, so they don’t count.” That’s ageism.
And it’s nastier than racism or antisemitism in one way: at least those are visible. People call them out, protest them, push back. Ageism hides in silence. No outrage. Just the quiet delete key. And silence is deadly.
Because what really kills people isn’t just the body slowing down—it’s the feeling of being banished. Vanished. Like you no longer exist.
Here’s the truth: older people aren’t finished. We just operate differently.
Younger people run on speed and hormones; older people run on clarity and organization. What they burn in stamina, we multiply in leverage.
One sharp hour at 80 can outweigh sixteen scattered hours at 20. That’s not decline—that’s a different kind of power.
The antidote isn’t marching or shouting. It’s refusing to vanish. Staying funny, creative, alive, visible. Showing up.
Mike
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From: Edward Bicknell
Subject: As For Me...
Hi Bob,
Ok. Let me first brown-nose you as we say over here.
This is some of your finest writing in a catalogue of fine writings.
I bet it’s resonated with many and you’ve had numerous responses, here are a few thoughts, print if you want, your call, I long since suffered ego death.
.
I’m 77 physically but I like to think my mind stopped developing at 50 and that I’m still as hip and happening as I was in 1985 aged 37 when Brothers In Arms was topper most of the popper most and I was King for a Day .
So 40 years ago.
Who knows where the time goes?
Then I was a huge sh*t, elephant sized.
Now I’m a tiny turd watching old videos of me interviewing Peter Grant in Toronto, and of Live Aid which was a great event punctuated by a good dollop of musical sh*t that nobody remembers and that doesn’t matter.
The moment overshadowed the content and rock music morphed into MOR.
But for those in Ethiopia or a hundred such places since that didn’t matter, when you are dying from lack of food where it comes from is irrelevant.
Oh, and I listen to your interviews of me at least once a week, hours ( literally) of fun which help me sleep way better than the pills, I have so many pills in me I sound like a maraca.
Supertramp (Rodger Hodgson I think) came to see me as many did but I passed, not because of them but I already had a creaking empire…..one “artist" was a bi polar alcoholic which eventually killed him, two others had become unbearable narcissists, a third took seven years to record 37 minutes of music and split his band up on the day they charted at 6 in the UK.
Only Scott Walker was a true artist, completely unmotivated by fame, celebrity and money, an extraordinary man touched by genius, him I miss.
By the time the Tramp arrived I had run out of gas and patience, the romance of being a fan having been at least partially destroyed by proximity to the creators, or at least the bunch that I got excluding Scott.
Yes I made alot of money which gave me and my family a good life, and I guess if that were now I’d be revelling in it, because when you’re young you think that's what is important, money, glory and possessions.
Then you end up with a storage unit full of stuff you don't care about or maybe even remember you have.
I’m AFRAID to go to mine.
The Acquisition of Stuff would be a great name for a band.
I fit your description 110%.
I’m doing endless stuff knowing that none of it matters or that it certainly won't 15 years from now if I last that long .
Documentaries on forgotten lives.
I'm writing a memoir but when that's finished and I've done the book tour what then?
What comes after?
Painting?
Photography?
Fishing?
Or as Robert Plant said to me once “I’ve been telling lies to young girls”.
I stopped doing interviews at conferences ( about 70 +) because I didn't know what the guests were talking about and found myself bored with the "process of pop" as it’s become, that probably sounds big time but so be it.
Everything in modern culture is generational.
I still listen to Elvis and the Fabs and Duke Ellington and I know plenty of folks who have never heard of any of them and have no curiosity.
The Who I put on at University in 1968.
The only gig I've ever been involved in where when after they finished in a sea of destruction no one applauded and no one left.
They couldn’t, too…….stunned, and deaf.
I watched a You Tube gig on the current tour last week and had to stop as they must for exactly the reason you offer.
There comes a time where both sides of the equation have to let go and listen to mid period Miles Davis or Vaughan Williams, or Ennio Morricone or Marvin Gaye, or Vangelis, or Leonard Cohen, or Sabrina C.
I saw Cat Stevens and Neil Young in Hyde Park in July, I wish I hadn’t.
It reminded me of when my brother died and the undertaker asked me if I wanted to see his body.
I didn't, life is about the creation of memories and I didn't need to add that to the good ones I had of him.
My partner is way younger (of course!) but I have learned so much from her, so much.
A different way of thinking.
I have a 25 year old friend (woman) who is way more intelligent than me and uses words I can't spell, its like being plugged into the mains with the power turned on.
I had dinner with my son Joe last night, he’s 43.
“You’re middle aged” I told him, but he’s into hip hop and Megan Thee Stallion, AND George Clinton.
My daughter Lauren is a couple of years older and has blessed me with two edible grandkids and is a mega lawyer ( “Make Entertainment Great Again”. )
Ollie just sent to his first festival aged 16 and loved it. Travis Scott, Limp Bizkit, Hozier.
His sister Isabella is not far behind.
I worry for the lives they will have, especially right now as the worst government in my lifetime runs this country into the ground.
But aside from that I have the best family and amazing friends, I mean really extraordinary who have helped me when I needed without question as I like to think I would help them.
And I’m close with all my significant exs except one.
Plastic surgery is not on my screen but I am grateful for the glue that keeps my hair on in high winds.
We get alot of high winds here in the UK, especially “up North” where men are men and the sheep are frightened.
And I've got Peter Guralnick’s book on Colonel Parker to read and Bill Curbishley’s to look forward to and then maybe one from you?
There you go, I’ve solved your problem.
This is a bit like therapy.
One last thought.
The last text I got from Mark Knopfler was about a mutual friend who’d passed (I get and send alot of those now), "we’ve just got to keep on keeping on” it said.
So you’re in good company Bob, and much loved though he’s never heard of you.
Take care, we need you, write that other piece.
Your grovelling acolyte.
ED.
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