I didn’t plan to review back-to-back rock albums from 1984 but here we are. If you missed the first one, check out Billy Squier’s Signs Of Life here. Oddly enough, they turned out to be the opposite of what I expected. I had hoped Billy Squier would turn out to be a lost classic but it came up short compared to his earlier work. R.E.O. Speedwagon, on the other hand, surprise me on Wheels Are Turnin’.
Opening with “I Do’ Wanna Know”, R.E.O. Speedwagon ring in the middle of the 80s with a solid rocker that wouldn’t be out of place on a Meatloaf record. Four years after the immense success of Hi Infidelity, it is refreshing to hear a band that hasn’t allowed it to go to their heads. This is the sound of an arena band putting in the work of writing serviceable rock songs designed for singing along with while drinking beer from a plastic cup in the parking lot before a show.
The band’s lyrical positivity (and hair) might forever keep them out of the canon of cool but the swift commercial decline after this album seems unjust. Other bands made better videos for MTV but the songs here hold up to modern ears. Sure, “Can’t Fight This Feeling” is saccharine sweet but if Bon Jovi had recorded it, we would still be holding our lighters high.
Here comes the sacrilege but if you can’t hear The Hold Steady’s musical template on a song like “Rock ‘N Roll Star”, you are fooling only yourself. Singer Kevin Cronin’s soaring voice gives the songs a different vibe but the dual guitars with an organ formula worked in 1984 just as it does today. It is one of several quality songs that explain why we had Album-oriented Rock in the 1980s. Wheels Are Turnin’ relies on a familiar formula which was perfected on Hi Infidelity: blue-collar rock songs with a few ballads to tug the heartstrings. Raising the lighter for this crate find!