In a way, “Hi Infidelity” was one of the templates followed by most artists who released albums during the 1980s. It would not be inaccurate to say it was the album that gave birth, for better or for worse, to the power ballad. Songs like “Keep on Lovin’ You” and “Take it on the Run” were appreciated both because they were love songs, but also because they still rocked.
The band played with a power and ferocity that showed off their long career of playing on the road. Neal Doughty, the main keyboardist, hammered away at his piano and synthesizer solos with a speed me and my three years of piano lessons couldn’t comprehend. Guitarist Gary Richrath held the songs together with glittery melodies, explosive solos, and hammering acoustic strumming in the background throughout.
The only standard of cool that mattered in the junior high hallways was whether or not you had the REO Speedwagon tour shirt. Not the black concert t-shirt but the classic 80s concert jersey, with the tour design on a white background and black sleeves. Even the heavy metal burn-outs who populated my school bus had the band's logo sketched on the homemade grocery bag book covers of their school textbooks. I remember hearing about how the kids in choir wanted to use “Keep on Lovin’ You” in some performance, but the choir teacher shot it down because of something to do with inappropriate lyrics. To this day I don’t remember what it was that was so awful, but I think a decision like that stands as a testament to a more innocent time, when it wasn’t as necessary to release separate versions of albums with both clean and explicit lyrics.
My favorite song on the album was, and still is, the opening track, “Don’t Let Him Go.” It was supposedly a single toward the end of the album cycle, but I don’t remember hearing it on the radio until the band had crossed into classic rock territory. “Don’t Let Him Go” was all power and energy, and one of the best album openers I can think of. The off-beat cymbal splash you hear in the drum riff was something I tried duplicating many times in my bedroom, using my seventh grade band drumsticks, my practice pad, and a few of my dad’s hardcover spy novels borrowed from the living room to complete my imaginary drum set. I never quite felt like I mastered it.
I was still a few years away from my first real rock concert so I couldn’t go to the show, but I did get the LP, then recorded it onto a blank cassette so I could listen to it in my bedroom through the headphones and not irritate my parents. It wasn’t a very long album, so I was able to squeeze it onto one of the mythical 120 minute length blank tapes, where it shared space with at least two of my other junior high touchstones: “Foreigner 4” (we never called it “4,” it was always “Foreigner 4”), Styx’s “Paradise Theater,” Journey’s “Escape,” and Billy Squier’s “Don’t Say No.” Combined, those albums served as an early 80s hard rock starter kit/tutorial for an emerging music fan only months out of Catholic elementary school. They all stayed in heavy rotation on my cassette player (and loudly on the turntable when our parents weren't home) for at least eighteen months, until “Pyromania” was released and Def Leppard conquered the world.
I don’t know if music is like this anymore. I think it would be a challenge for anyone to name more than a small handful of bands who would release albums now that were essentially collections of love songs, most of which were happy, and all performed with undeniable musical talent. I don’t know of current artists that bridge genre so thoroughly the way this album did. If that’s something we’ve culturally lost, it’s really a shame.
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