Image Courtesy of CMTREO Speedwagon continues to mourn the death of founding lead guitarist Gary Richrath, who passed away this past Sunday at age 64 of unrevealed causes. Frontman Kevin Cronin tells Billboard that the band will be “dedicating every show we do for the foreseeable future, probably forever, to Gary,” who left the group back in 1989.
“Every song we play, Gary’s all over it for me; we either wrote it together, produced it together, rehearsed it together, arranged it together, fought over parts that we played,” Cronin explains. “So every song that comes by, as I’m singing it I’m also seeing him in my mind, feeling those stories about Gary.”
The singer also maintains that the sadness he and his band mates are experiencing over the loss of Richrath have been mixed with positive feelings, as they have been celebrating Gary and his music at their shows.
“Everybody feels like Gary is back in the band,” Cronin tells Billboard. “It’s a weird feeling, but it’s like he’s in our thoughts and in our minds more now than he’s been for years. It’s ironic and it’s sad, but it’s also joyful.”
Kevin adds that “the energy in our concerts since his death has been on a different level, and his spirit and his energy has actually had an energizing effect on us.”
It was Richrath who invited Cronin to join REO Speewagon in 1972, when Kevin was just 19 years old. The singer says, “I learned pretty much everything I know about being in a rock ‘n’ roll band from Gary Richrath. He was like the big brother I never had.”
In Richrath’s honor, Cronin has been playing a brief acoustic set at the beginning of REO Speedwagon’s recent gigs, and the band also has added “Golden Country,” a 1972 tune penned by Gary, to its set list.
While Richrath’s departure from REO Speedwagon was acrimonious, Cronin tells Billboard that he was happy that he and the guitarist had the opportunity to reconcile not long ago. Gary even joined his old band at a December 2013 benefit concert for tornado victims in Bloomington, Illinois.
“We did have that cathartic moment that a lot of times people don’t get the chance to have,” says Kevin. “I’m extremely lucky that happened, because I can’t imagine how I would feel now having all that still inside me and not having it expressed.”
While Richrath’s cause of death hasn’t been unannounced, Cronin tells Billboard that Gary’s wife informed him that the guitarist had undergone an abdominal procedure shortly before he died and was hospitalized when he passed away. Kevin also reports that the band plans to attend a private memorial for Richrath that will be held soon in his hometown of Peoria, Illinois.
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