Music
You Need to Listen to This Song Right Now #37
Heavy Rotation — Roll With the Changes, REO Speedwagon (You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish, 1978)
Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that, one way or another, got incessant airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotations that a particular record was given on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales. These were good for record companies and artists alike.
Today, some of us still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, just in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.
For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that you come back to from time to time and still feels just as good.
This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.
Here, I aim to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. We should know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history, and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at, and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?
I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read this than the song itself. To that end, I’ll put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I’ll stick a live clip on at the end.
What song is in your head right now? Here’s the one that won’t leave mine today:
#37 — Roll With the Changes, REO Speedwagon (You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish, 1978)
Not feeling so hot today? In fact, feeling kinda shitty? Things got you down? Well, then, this is your song. Put it on and let ‘er rip.
Say what you want about REO Speedwagon — and people will based mostly on their frequent hearing of such middle-of-the-road, early 80s radio-friendly unit shifting power ballads such as “Keep on Loving You”, “Take It on the Run” and “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore.”
Forty years later, these hits are still classic rock radio staples. It would be strange not to hear any of them at least once if you were to spend a full day or two in a dental office.
But it’s a shame when a great band is known mostly for a few songs that may have filled stadiums at the time but don’t really tell their whole story or speak to their entire range. Roll With the Changes is such a song for such a band.
The hits that came in the 80s were easy listening, somewhat saccharine love song ballads. But this one is pure rock music. At this point, REO was already six albums in, and their biggest sellers were still a few albums away.
Their seventh, the very oddly titled “You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can’t Tune a Fish,” marks the end of the rock and roll guitar-forward era, powered by guitarist Gary Richrath and then next album, “Hi Infidelity” in 1980 saw the band move into a more pop-oriented sound lead by the vocals and piano of Kevin Cronin.
Roll With the Changes is the moment when both kinds of REO combine, like the middle part of a Venn diagram, to create a high-energy stomper that is guaranteed to have anyone playing air guitar and drums when they hear it.
Things kick off with a rolling piano introduction that will lead much of the theme throughout the song. The first wailing guitar lick by Richrath blasts in at 00:09, and we are off. They are not wasting any time here.
At 00:20, it’s Cronin’s distinctive vocal style in a love letter to a woman he has been waiting on to figure it out one way or another for a while now.
Whether this is him shooting his last shot with her or him telling her that he’s got nothing but time and patience is up in the air.
“As soon as you are able
Woman, I am willin’
To make the break that we are on the brink of
My cup is on the table
Our love is spillin’
Waitin’ here for you to take a drink of”
On the one hand, it’s “what are you waiting for?” and on the other, it’s “take your time; I’m not going anywhere.” Whatever cup we have been drinking from together is overflowing, and I’m ready to explode. But I’ll wait.
Chorus one punches through as the piano rolls along, and the guitar reappears. “So if you’re tired of the same old story / oh, turn some pages / I’ll be here when you are ready / To roll with the changes.”
The first guitar break at 1:02 reprises the intro. I love how emphatically the guitar takes over and mirrors the ecstatic nature of Cronin’s voice. The piano chugs along, and together with the power chords on the rhythm guitar, everything keeps moving.
Verse 2 has Cronin getting a bit more introspective about some of the not-so-greatest moments of his life when he didn’t have much idea what to do or to rely on, except for his relationship with this woman.
“I knew it had to happen
Felt the tables turnin’
Got me through my darkest hour
I heard the thunder clappin’
Felt the desert burnin’
Until you poured on my like a sweet sunshower”
Beautiful stuff. Who wouldn’t be convinced by that? Chorus 2 does the same at first, but with a longer guitar solo, followed by a repeat of the chorus again.
To me, this has already done everything I want out of a great song. The lyrics have made me smile for having been in the same situation enough times, and the music has caused my foot to start tapping.
But at 2:39, things move in a different direction which cements this song’s position as one of the all-time classics. The background vocals tell the listener to “keep on rolling.” Yeah, we got that part, but now the gospel choir sound and feel that comes in makes the message take on a religious significance.
You have to feel the joy in the struggle.
But it’s not over yet. Now, after thirty seconds of exhortation to keep on keeping on, here comes the organ, ready to take us to the next level. That’s the sound of a band perfectly in sync, which keeps on rollin’ when the guitar comes back in at 3:59 while the piano is still stomping away underneath.
Oh, and one last thing, at 4:43. Let’s get those gospel voices and the guitar together and see what happens while the song carries us out for the epic, over-the-top finish.
If you’re not out of breath and your heart rate isn’t up at this point, then you did it wrong. Try again. I promise you’ll feel better.
Here they are, live in 1981 at the height of their powers.
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #37 in this series, then there must be 36 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #36. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #35; at the bottom of that, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #34. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1.
